But when the movement control order was imposed early last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, she slumped into depression. With no school, music, art, and especially no internet connection, Putri felt cut off from her friends and the world.
She cooked and cared for her siblings while her mother went job-hunting. A month later, Putri was approached by a group of people who provided her with art materials and a mobile phone.
They encouraged her to join their online classes and to express her feelings through colours.
These were the folks behind GoodKids, a social enterprise that helps empower at-risk youths through the performing arts. Its founders are Koggelavani Muniandy, her uncle Balasubramaniam Somasundram, and his daughter Naaraayini Balasubramaniam.
Koggelavani tells FMT that before GoodKids, she worked as an engineer for five years. “It was great but at the end of the day, there was no sense of fulfillment,” she says.
It took her a year of self-discovery to realise that teaching came to her naturally, after tutoring children from shelter homes.
“My uncle, who is a counselling psychologist, was running a programme for at-risk kids in Ampang with my cousin. They have been doing volunteer work for years.”
Koggelavani grew up watching Balasubramaniam foster children and regarded him as her role model.
The founders quickly noticed that their methodology involving percussion, music instrument-making, stomping, and acting received positive feedback from parents and teachers.
“In 2016, we decided to formalise and run GoodKids as a proper organisation. We got into the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre’s accelerator programme and began working with at-risk children from the B40 community and Orang Asli kids,” Koggelavani says.
Apa Pandang-Pandang
When the pandemic hit, face-to-face classes had to be cancelled and the team quickly realised they needed to shake up their usual teaching methods.
“We realised that the children’s mental health was affected. They asked when they could return to playing drums and meeting the teachers, and said they missed having classes,” Koggelavani recalls.
So the programme moved online. And the team delivered art materials such as drawing paper, crayons, colour pencils and watercolours to the children’s homes, hoping it would be an outlet for them to express their emotions while under quarantine.
“If you look at some of the artwork on the Apa Pandang-Pandang website, you will see drawings of big plates with small portions of food, kids drawing cups of instant noodles for their meals, and their parents arguing,” she notes sadly.
The team also raised RM8,000 through crowdfunding so they could provide phones for all 50 children.
Koggelavani explains that they usually hold a showcase of the children’s talents in August or September every year. But when the pandemic hit, they were unable to provide a fun finale for their students.
So they hatched an alternative plan – an exhibition of the children’s artwork. But a physical event was out of the question.
“Then, when we put all the artwork together, we saw a very strong storyline emerging from the kids. And that’s how Apa Pandang-Pandang was born,” Koggelavani says.
“We put the artwork together with some of the self-expression modules we had created last year and asked the kids: if they had a superpower, how would they overcome their challenges during the pandemic?”
The team learnt that there are many other children in Malaysia who need access to content that allows them to express their feelings comfortably, through a medium that is not language-dependent.
“When we saw how visual art worked for them, we wanted to make it available to more kids who needed help. This is why we want to develop the GoodKids Digital Academy.”
GoodKids is currently raising funds to put these modules online so that children are not just able to express themselves, but can build resilience and be better decision makers and critical thinkers.
GoodKids welcomes monetary contributions of any amount towards this goal.
Koggelavani also encourages those who are capable of being a buddy and mentor to get in touch. “If every one of us has the ability to pick one kid and guide them, it will make a huge difference,” she says.
Check out the children’s artwork on Apa Pandang-Pandang and head over to GoodKids Digital Academy to find out how you can help. You can also visit GoodKids’ Facebook page and Instagram profile for more information.