PETALING JAYA, Feb 11 — Non-profit organisation SEED Foundation has launched a mentorship programme in Melaka to educate and empower transgender women to help those within their community.

SEED Foundation co-founder Nisha Ayub told Malay Mail that the lack of government support towards transgender people during the Covid-19 pandemic means that the community has to look out for themselves to survive.

She hopes the Melaka Mentoring Programme (MMP) can mould young trans women into leaders and motivate them to help trans people who are dealing with poverty, homelessness, or other hardships due to the movement control order (MCO).

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The programme is made possible by SEED Foundation’s fundraisers as well as a grant from the Canadian government’s Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

“Melaka was one of the states that constantly reached out to me for assistance so we decided to do a programme for the community there.

“We managed to have workshops there to empower the trans community in Melaka and motivate them to assist their own community.

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“Our goal is for them to open their own groups or organisations in Melaka, or perhaps even start a sub-division of SEED Foundation there,” said Nisha.

The programme kicked off while Malaysia was still in its conditional movement control order (CMCO) but all workshops have been held virtually since then to adhere to MCO rules.

Ten trans women in Melaka are currently participating in MMP as mentees and they were given the freedom to choose what kind of projects they wanted to work on.

Using the skills they picked up in the programme, the mentees organised a donation drive to buy groceries for other transgender women in need.

They set a fundraising goal of RM10,000 and have already distributed 50 grocery packs to the transgender community in Melaka in the last two days.

Nisha noted that the usual problems that plague the Malaysian trans community have only been worsened due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The groceries are mostly for transgender people in the B40 group because many of them aren’t eligible for government aid.

“That’s why it’s an urgent need for us to ensure it goes directly to the trans community.”

The Malaysian trans community has been hit hard by the pandemic and Nisha says this is easy to see by the rising number of people seeking refuge at T-Home, a safe haven for trans women in Kuala Lumpur run by SEED Foundation.

The lines of people waiting to receive free lunch distributions at SEED Foundation’s Chow Kit centre have also grown longer since the pandemic began.

“All of a sudden, we have requests from many young trans women seeking shelter at T-Home.

“They lost their jobs due to the MCO and they cannot go back to their families because they will end up being oppressed by them.

“We used to have 20 to 30 people coming into our Chow Kit centre as well, but that number has gone up to 100 to 200 people due to the pandemic.”

 

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Posted by Nisyhaa Ayuub Yva on Tuesday, February 9, 2021

 

To shed further light on the issues faced by the trans community during this pandemic, Nisha hosts regular talks on Facebook to raise awareness and inspire young trans women to make a change during this tough period.

Her recent session featured Ell Rashid, a young trans woman in Melaka who has been devoting her time to volunteering with SEED Foundation and MMP.