Fulbright Alumni Team brainstorm together for first planning meeting

Siew Lee, Intan, Liz, Wai Sheng, and Patricia (Virtual Meeting member: Colleen)

We met, both live and virtually via Skype at Malaysian American Commission on Education Exchange (MACEE)

July, 2012

We had our first meeting in person, and not in person but through Skype. Wai Sheng led the meeting with Liz, Patricia, Siew Lee from the Fulbright Alumni team along with the support of the US Embassy in Malaysia with Intan, the Fulbright Alumni liaison, and Colleen was virtually at the meeting through Skype. 

We worked on the planning, roles, and timeline. We brainstormed how to manage the challenge of working with refugees with multiple languages - Refugees in Malaysia are largely from Burma, but they are also from Somalia, Afghanistan, among other countries. And, even in Burma there are multiple dialects. Luckily, most of the schools are taught in English so our target group of refugee teacher should know some English, but how much?

MACEE was kind enough to provide the venue for our meeting and the help with how to best implement our budget from the US State Department. So, we met with Kim Ho from MACEE to get her wise financial advice on budget payment logistics.

We thought it would be best to start the intervention after the Chinese New Year, given that EVERYTHING shuts down in Kuala Lumpur before, during, and right after the Chinese New Year. And, we need the time this fall to do focus groups with the target community schools to get a sense of how we can best collaborate with and help the refugee students and teachers via training and consultation in the refugee schools. 

Next step: Focus Groups with refugee teachers in September!