It started in September 2013. Suzanne Ling, Lee Swee Lin and Kim Lim were all students at UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur and had worked on a college project with the refugee communities in Kuala Lumpur. After their project ended, they felt they needed to continue helping the refugees. The following year, the trio started Hands of Hope Malaysia, a platform for college students to volunteer to teach refugee and special needs children.
“The fact that they (refugees) don’t have rights to education or any basic rights just made us so uncomfortable. We couldn’t turn our backs on them. We had to do something,” says Lee who graduated with a degree in accounting and finance last year.