Free Education For B40 Communities

The Problem

In Malaysia, income divisions are commonly categorised into 3 groups: B40, M40 and T20.

The B40 (or Bottom 40%) denotes the lowest income group on or below the poverty line.

From our research, here are the 3 most important challenges B40 Malaysians face:

1. A high dependency on single income – making them vulnerable to financial instability and income risk.
2. Poor financial resilience – creating vulnerability to financial shocks and emergencies.
3. Educational disparities – which impacts their future earning potential and opportunities.

As we recover from the financial crises caused by the pandemic, interventions are needed to quickly increase opportunities and access to education and provide skills to assist with employment and retention. We need to move more people out of the B40, and reach middle-class outcomes.

This is difficult for the B40 because their income can’t sustain them to learn new skills or take extra classes that will give them a better chance to thrive. It is too expensive to afford to upskill themselves.

The Solution

The only way to sustain this is by making education 100% free for B40 communities.

Our team provides free online classes through our online learning platform. For those who don’t have access to digital learning, our team also runs mobile training units – bringing in person digital education to the doorstep of local communities.

So far we have run classes for Orang Asli, urban poor and B40 TVET students throughout Malaysia.

The Impact

SOLS Foundation was founded in 2000 in Cambodia, and has since impacted over 750,000 learners across 6 countries.

In the past 16 years in Malaysia, SOLS has run over 11 programmes in the sectors of Education, Technology, Solar Energy and Mental Health.

Our market traction and impact reaches a wide range of people through several initiatives.

We started our online platform to offer free education with real teachers in April 2020. And in less than 4 months, we educated over 20,000 learners on our online learning platform! We are pursuing our mission with great urgency – and we’re rapidly growing!

100% of your donation will go to these 3 aspects which directly impact our B40 beneficiaries:

1. To reach and target more B40 communities virtually and in-person;
2. Hiring teachers to develop and deliver classes;
3. Support the platform’s tech stack.

Even a minimum contribution of RM10 can support one individual in Malaysia to learn online for free through our platform for a month and obtain an official certificate from us.

Update 2: 31st October 2023

Skills Hub won Audience Choice Awards and 2nd place People’s Choice Awards in the Digital Equity Accelerator Global Summit supported by the Aspen Institute and HP. Thank you for the support!

Update 1: 31st January 2021

Thank you to the 729 donors that helped us raise RM 56,704.07 by 31st January. We have extended our campaign and increased our target to RM300,000.00. We are determined to keep providing free education for Malaysia and to reach even more B40 communities that need access to quality online education during these tough times.