Covid-19 has undeniably affected our lifestyles. It’s not easy to adapt to the new normal, but life goes on and we all need to adapt and make the best out of the situation. In braving the Covid-19 Crisis, the way of education in Malaysia has undergone drastic changes and classrooms has mostly been digitalised and been taken online.
In line with Malaysian government’s efforts to encourage reading and literacy among young children in Malaysia, especially the special needs and the underprivileged ones, AFO Radio recently partnered with Traqkid, Kiwanis Malaysia and VGI Transit to encourage reading among children with the #SaveWithStoriesMY campaign.
Inspired by celebrities in the United States who launched an Instagram account that features celebrities and other notable figures reading children’s books under a fundraising project called Save With Stories, the Malaysian version of Save With Stories program will be told in three languages namely Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and English. Each story aims to raise the awareness of reading among young children by selecting interesting children’s stories that will inspire the interest of viewers or listeners to listen and develop a culture of reading.
The highlight of this storytelling project is that each stories is read by an individual who may be a celebrity, a radio announcer or a popular individual on their choice of social media platforms.
William Lim, Chief Executive Officer of AFO Radio explained, “This MCO we saw many people getting involved in helping the underprivileged and we wanted to do our part. When we stumbled across Save With Stories online, we thought it is a wonderful campaign that we can adopt here in Malaysia.”
“We wanted to work with partners that can further enhance this initiative and were fortunate to find Traqkid, who provides solutions surrounding kids’ health, safety and environment, Kiwanis Malaysia that has a history of over 45 years in the promotion for the betterment of children and VGI Transit who will support awareness of this campaign through its advertising platforms.”
“Each of us will use our capabilities to help raise the awareness of the importance of reading in education and at the same time appeal to donors to fund our campaign to help the less fortunate children. And what better way to do this than with our very own celebrities to help read to the children and their parents. We hope this campaign will help inculcate a reading habit with children especially now that we are all confined at home,” added William.
“Traqkid wanted to make a difference in everything we do for our children. Education is the foundation of knowledge and with everything going digital, listening online is the new trend to go. Having a platform such as AFO Radio to help broadcast this campaign on air and online will truly reach out to many people,” says Simon Chin, CEO of Traqkid and also the President Elect of Kiwanis Club of Damansara Uptown.
Kiwanis has been in Malaysia over 45 years. Currently we have 20 permanent projects representing centres for children with special needs established and managed by various Kiwanis clubs all over Malaysia. These centres run intervention program, job training and other skills development. Beneficiaries of these centres are mainly children with Down Syndrome, Dyslexia, Autism, ADHD, slow learners and other physical or mental conditions. With SaveWithStoriesMY, our aim is to raise RM100,000. The money will be used to continue our efforts in providing the under privileged education and also to feed those in need.
“We had embarked on digitalization project to support the Kiwanis clubs and community since 18 months ago. It is timely that phase 1 of the project was recently completed with the revamped website & payment portal with 2C2P. A few of clubs have been able to take advantage of this project to raise more than RM40,000 online for families affected by the Covid 19 pandemic,” said Dr Laurence Lim, Governor of Kiwanis Malaysia District added.
The #SaveWithStoriesMY campaign kickstarted a week ago has already garnered an impressive pool of celebrities in the likes of Deborah Henry -Miss Universe Malaysia 2011 & Miss Malaysia World 2007, Carey Ng – Miss Malaysia Universe 2013, Steve Yap – Actor, Wan Wai Fun – previously MYFM announcer & actress and not forgetting Selene and Kym who are both anchor radio announcers at AFO Radio, just to name a few. Many more postings can be found via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/savewithstoriesmy) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/savewithstoriesmy).
The objective of #SavewithstoriesMY to inspire everyone to read as well as raise funds to support projects that will help children to gain access to books and education materials, improve their wellbeing and education programs that will nurture their overall development.The campaign will continue throughout Covid-19 Crisis and beyond.
For more information on SaveWithStoriesMY, please visit
https://www.aforadio.com/shows/-storiesmy
https://www.facebook.com/savewithstoriesmy
https://kiwanis.org.my/savewithstoriesmy/
To donate, please visit Kiwanis Malaysia website https://kiwanis.org.my/savewithstoriesmy/. With just a few simple steps such as filling up your details, click donate to select the amount you would like to donate which start from as low as RM15 up to RM1,000.