With the opening of preschools in Penang in July, our Hasanah Project teams at Tadika Permai and Tadika Islam USM are invited back to conduct Focus on Literacy Outreach sessions. From the third week of July, our team is also back at Butterworth Buddhist Preschool. However, teaching sessions continue to be online for children in Than Hsiang Kindergarten and other schools as well as for children who normally come to our centres. Face-to-face sessions will start after all children have returned to school.

We held our first online staff meeting on 1 April to discuss how to meet the challenges of the MCO. Our partner, ACS, has already taken the lead in conducting online sessions for First Step intervention program. In mid-April, BOLD joined the NECIC’s Teletherapy stimulus program which provided training with some financial support from UNICEF. By the third week of April, staff and team members conducted online Storytelling and Focus on Literacy with the children.

Almost all our teams are conducting online sessions as contacts are established with more families. To help team members improve their skills and teaching strategies online, training sessions were conducted by BOLD Committee member Ms. Chia Kien Eng and BOLD Consultants Mr. Tan Kien Hooi & Dr. Lee Soo Hoon.

In the first two weeks of March, all Hasanah Project team members visited their assigned schools to conduct pre-intervention assessments of the children they will be teaching. But with the lockdown on 18 March, our centres were closed and all programs came to an immediate stop.  A new committee was elected at BOLD’s AGM on 16 March, just two days before the MCO lockdown begun.

Work begins as soon as we receive news that Yayasan Hasanah is nominating BOLD as one of its Community Partners for 2020. The project is to take Focus on Literacy Outreach to 6 preschools or primary schools teaching in 3 different medium of instruction to help children with reading difficulties achieve functional literacy.

A very happy new year from all of us at BOLD and ACS! We are looking forward to working harder and supporting more children in 2021 !