Most Malaysians come from third or fourth generation immigrant families, and hearing which of us is stateless after our families have been here for so long seems almost impossible.
However, this is not the case for some third or fourth generation children born in Sabah, including the natives, according to UNHCR.
“Unfortunately, there are millions in Sabah who are stateless. Our beneficiaries bear this burden on behalf of their ancestors who failed to register their birth with the Malaysian National Registration Department,” said Roda Nazran, CEO of the company. Global acceleration, With Vulcan Post.
This is where the social enterprise steps in to address youth unemployment, especially for the disadvantaged and marginalized, through skills improvement programs to help them become entrepreneurs.
An opportunity through the Pineapple Farm
A stateless person is denied a nationality, which in turn deprives him of access to health care and education, and of course, limits his travel.
When Rawda and the Accelerate team learned of statelessness in Sabah, they were looking at the residents of Kampung Saga 1, Sepanggar, which is just a 5-minute drive from Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
This village is located near the mangrove area, where houses were built in mangrove swamps.
“It is so devastating to me seeing tall buildings and luxurious living across the area when there are people who are struggling to feed themselves and their families near you,” Rawda said.
Fortunately, the soil of the mangrove area in which they lived was also suitable for growing pineapples, and this was how they started their pineapple farm to feed themselves when they ran out of money.
Show the ropes of entrepreneurship
Before Accelerate explored them, the community had no knowledge of entrepreneurship and hadn’t considered starting a business to generate income.
From here, the Accelerite team trained 43 young men and women in the community through a 4-month program divided into 4 stages, which was the beginning of Nanslab.
The first stage, personal growth, is to help them build confidence and motivation, and encourage them to dream again, especially since they work with some of the beneficiaries who have lost hope in life.
“Some of them were cheated or lied, while some were traumatized by the arrest of family members by the authorities,” Rawda said.
The other stages help them understand the basics of financial matters, the concept of entrepreneurship, pricing and marketing, and finally pineapple jam making.
Pineapple jam was chosen as the first product many make because it takes the least costs with their current resources.
The road to business independence
In all Accelerate entrepreneurship programs, their beneficiaries will go through incubation for two months after they graduate from the program.
Before they can fully take over the business, they will first undergo a shade program with the Accelerate team to better learn how to manage orders, postage and deliveries.
In this case, the Accelerate team is also working with beneficiaries to manage requests in West Malaysia while enhancing their social media skills, all in the first month.
In the second month, the beneficiaries will run the entire business and the Accelerate team will monitor and provide final feedback before the operations are fully transferred to them.
As of now, patrons have been divided into 6 groups for 6 steps of the jam making process: preparing pineapple, cooking jam, incorporation of preservatives, packaging, labels, delivery, and quality control.
Pak Muhyiddin, the village chief, is currently leading the quality control team.
Since they cut cost as much as possible now, the Nanaslab team only performs bottlenecks when receiving orders to avoid waste.
Participate in the “Start-up capital by Accelerate Global” kindergarten and for the first batch of pineapple jam the profits are split equally among everyone, since everyone has invested the same amount of time and energy.
Their pineapple jam is priced at RM20 for 180ml, excluding postage. So far, Nanaslab has already managed to sell nearly 100 jars of pineapple jam.
Not allowing statelessness to define their lives
“After they have suffered discrimination and slander due to their being stateless, they hope this act will be a symbol of strength and determination to bring about change whatever the circumstances,” he shared the kindergarten of community hopes.
“They hope to show the world that they too can succeed despite being denied education and work, and that this work of their own can change their life story.”
As for the Accelerate team, they hope that this community will become more self-sustainable and that they use these entrepreneurial skills to achieve their best advantage in times of adversity.
- You can learn more about Nanaslab Here And global acceleration Here.
- You can read about the other social enterprises we wrote Here.
Featured Image Credit: Roda Nazran, CEO of Accelerate Global and Adviser to Nanaslab
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