#CharitySpotlight: Yayasan Chow Kit

Each month, we talk to a charity listed on GIVE.asia to learn more about who they are, what they do, and how they use our platform to fundraise. This month it’s the turn of Yayasan Chow Kit. Ananti Rajasingam is the CEO at Yayasan Chow Kit. Here, she talks to us about how she and the team are supporting vulnerable children affected by poverty, marginalisation or statelessness in Malaysia, and how GIVE.asia is supporting their fundraising efforts.

Can you tell us a little more about Yayasan Chow Kit?
The aim of Yayasan Chow Kit is to help and support vulnerable children aged between seven to 17. We provide activity centres in Kuala Lumpur and safe houses a bit further out for the extremely vulnerable. We also run a homeschooling programme that is catered to each child’s individual learning needs, as they are often at different stages of their journey.

How is fundraising going for Yayasan Chow Kit?
We have been fundraising in a very traditional way through grants and corporate donations. A challenge for us has always been that we fundraise on a project basis which makes it hard to cover our operating costs. This has not been a sustainable approach. We also run our programmes with a mixture of volunteers and full-time caregivers, due to the fact that we need trained professionals to support the children. All these add up significantly to our operating costs.

How do you work with GIVE.asia?
We wish we had met GIVE.asia years ago. We have two parts to our fundraising approach with GIVE.asia. One is called GIVE.asia YCK and the other is called GIVE.asia Healthcare Fund for Children.  GIVE.asia YCK is a general fundraising approach which can be applied throughout the year and not to specific causes, while GIVE.asia Healthcare Fund for Children supports individual children’s medical needs. The GIVE.asia team has been outstanding in their support, in all aspects, including back end support and weekly meetings.

How did COVID affect fundraising?
We saw that donations were suddenly being channelled to COVID specific campaigns, for example, food aid, and this meant our donations dropped. However, GIVE.asia has been a great support in our fundraising journey during the pandemic.

You can click here to make a donation to YCK on GIVE.asia. If you would like to register as a new charity on our platform, you can click here. Tune in next month for our next #CharitySpotlight.