Berita NECF Newletters

Reaching out through Reading

Reaching out through Reading

Teachers Cheli Tamilselvam and wife Lai Mei have education coursing through their veins.

Passionate about educating children and teens, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, they founded Bethany Home in Kuching seven years ago, a centre that provides needy students a place to study and get free tuition. So committed are they to helping the underprivileged students that they even feed and transport the students.

Recently, this Cameron Highlands brother and his Ipoh-born wife kicked off another project - a mobile library called the "Reading Bus" that reaches out to the rural villages near Kuching.

Besides bringing English books to the villagers, the Reading Bus also conducts English language classes and organises programmes to enhance the English language competency, such as reading competitions, among the children and youths.

But the crucial component of the ministry is the Alpha Course, which is conducted for the adults in the villages. (Alpha Course is an evangelistic programme.) Cheli shares the story of the Reading Bus with Berita NECF and testifies to God's divine providence for the much-needed books and facilities required to help marginalised students living outside the cities.

 

How does the Reading Bus work?

We started with one Reading Bus last year and we now have three Reading Buses. Reading Bus 1 covers the Lundu and Sematan region, Reading Bus 2 covers the Padawan and Penrissen Region and Reading Bus 3 covers the Saratok and Sri Aman region.

The buses travel out of Kuching every fortnight, leaving at 3p.m. on Friday and returning to Kuching on Sunday morning. The volunteers spend two nights running the Village Alpha Course at night and running the Library cum Reading Programme on Saturday morning and afternoon.

 

What inspired your idea of having this mobile library?

In November 2008, someone from Alpha Malaysia gave me a contact of a publishing company in the Klang Valley which had books to give away and asked if we had need of them. In February 2009, the books arrived in the thousands and we took them to the villages to bless the village folks. We initiallyused our vans and when the vans got back to Kuching, we found that they were a little noisy and the absorbers were weaker.

We saw students in Bethany Home teaching their younger peers using these books and so we prayed and asked God to provide us a strong four-wheel vehicle if He wanted us to continue taking the books to the villages.

We prayed and spoke to about a dozen of our friends and within aweek, the Lord gave us enough funds to buy a good second-hand Toyota Land Cruiser. We made our first trips to Kampung Pasir Ulu and the response from the villagers was overwhelming.

In June, we bought Reading Bus 2 and the momentum began to pick up, more villages heard about the Reading Bus and asked for us to visit them.

The local churches were also very keen to know more about the Alpha Course. In November, we bought Reading Bus 3 to cater to the growing needs.

 

What kind of response have you received to the Reading Buses?

We have, at an average, 40 children and schoolgoing teens who turn up for the Library cum Reading Programme. In the evenings, the Reading Bus runs the Alpha Course in the village.

The adults turn up in the local church to go through the course which is in BM. We have made it such that the visit of the Reading Bus to any village must comply with two basic conditions.

Firstly, they must allow us to run the Alpha Course in the local churches (this is to empower the church with a basic tool for evangelism).

Secondly, they must provide a cupboard to stock up about 400 books which will be left behind at the end of the Alpha Course and the completion of the Reading Programme (this is to empower the local community to carry out their own library as an outreach to neighbouring villages).

 

What do you hope to achieve with the Reading Bus?

We aim to:

  • Motivate young people and children to take an interest in the English Language;
  • Teach them how to read and enjoy English Language books and to help build their confidence when they return to school;
  • Equip the students and the villages with the Alpha Course so that it could be used as an evangelistic tool in their respective schools and neighbouring villages;
  • Empower urban youths to be involved with rural ministry in loving and sharing their time and knowledge with youths and children of other ethnic races and cultures; and
  • Close the gap between the academically marginalised (due to the lack of proficiency in English Language) and the academically privileged by teaching them basic English Language and helping them to enjoy school at least.

 

How are the churches and Christians in Kuching responding to this ministry?

The response from Christians has been encouraging. We also get a lot of support and encouragement from the Methodist churches and friends from the Anglican churches.

Most of our support has come from friends whom we have known in ministry for a long time. More than 80 percent of the support for the work has come from outside of Kuching.

 

How can we be of help to you?

To enable the Reading Bus to go beyond Kuching and even to West Malaysia, we will need NECF to help champion the cause for us.

This is a very easily duplicable project and if one church can own and run one Reading Bus, then the nation's poor and academically marginalised can be re-duced phenomenally.



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