Rays of hope in Desa Mentari’s dark halls

Desa Mentari’s dark halls

PETALING JAYA: If you’ve ever visited one of the many low-cost flats in Klang Valley’s slums, you wouldn’t need someone to tell you how terrible the living conditions are.

The Desa Mentari Apartments here, made up of 10 blocks with roughly 1,000 families a block, is only one of these examples.

FMT’s recent visit to the flats was greeted by the smell of urine and alcohol and a delightful hint of curry some mother was cooking at one of the top floors. These are familiar odours in such places.

Block 5, Desa Mentari.

It was about 11 o’clock in the morning, but the dark halls and lack of sunlight made it easy to get lost or stumble over dead rats or step on lurking cats, which would invariably let out eerie screeches.

But there are rays of hope in the dark halls and stairways of Block 5, thanks to Suriana Welfare Society, a child rights organisation. In November 2016, it set up Kidzone Mentari at the block in an effort to tackle some of the problems so synonymous with urban poverty, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse and gangsterism.

Walking into Kidzone Mentari was like stepping out of the dark and into the light as Suriana executive director Scott J Wong opened the door and welcomed FMT with a warm smile.

Settling on a chair in the small reading room allocated for the children, Wong said Suriana was trying to expose Desa Mentari’s children to some positivity amid their dreary lives.

Suriana executive director Scott J Wong

“We know that setting up an office somewhere out there would not work,” he said. “We needed to provide these children help from within.”

Parents have welcomed the effort, eagerly registering their children for the programme. Kidzone Mentari had enrolled 250 children just a few days after it was set up.

“Parents are happy because they know they can send their kids here and the children will be safe,” Wong said. “This is the only safe place for them in the neighbourhood.”

If it wasn’t for the kidzone, he added, the children would be exposed to older teenagers taking drugs along the hallways or in the playground.

“These younger children will look up to these older teenagers and become just like them. The cycle would continue. We came in to break that cycle.”

Vandalised bicycles at Desa Mentari’s playground.

Wong told of a case of an eight-year-old boy whose brother committed suicide at the age of 18.

“The older brother was involved in gangsterism,” he said. “He ended up hanging himself three months ago. Today, we stay close to the younger brother, providing him emotional support.”

Two of the facilitators, both retirees and both working at the centre as volunteers, also spoke to FMT.

Anne Arokiasamy said she worked in a shelter for children before she started teaching English at Kidzone Mentari.

“I know how important it is to have a place like this, where the children can receive help from within their own neighbourhood,” she said. “The children can just come here after school instead of roaming around the dangerous halls.”

Anne Arokiasamy (left) and Palamiandy Bala.

Palamiandy Bala, who teaches Math and Bahasa, said it was difficult at times to teach some of Desa Mentari’s children because many of them had never gone to school.

“But I’ll tell you, give me a few months with the children here and they’ll turn out to be even better than the students who do go to school,” he claimed.

Wong said Suriana had brought positive changes into the lives of Desa Mentari’s children and hoped to open more kidzones.

“We’ve seen the huge demand for such centres from the parents,” he said. “We want to open more in other flats in other urban areas.”

Kidzone Mentari is funded by donations. Participation in the programme is free. -FMT