Daniel Ngiam, COL & WH ’27, Short Hills, NJ
I spent this summer with the Zotung Refugee Catholic Learning Centre (ZRCLC), a UNHCR-recognized school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for child refugees from Myanmar. I’ve been with ZRCLC as an administrator and organizer since 2015. I helped establish Zotung’s virtual learning program during the pandemic, which I oversee year-round at Penn. Nevertheless, on-site opportunities remain critical for responding to the evolving needs of the Burmese refugee community. Thanks to the Turner Schulman Endowed Human Rights Internship Award, I was able to return to ZRCLC amidst dire regional and global developments within the refugee climate.
Malaysia is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention; therefore, refugees lack legal protections and access to public services. Their lives largely rely on the tolerance of the state and public, and it’s left mostly to NGOs to provide essential needs. However, charitable organizations in Malaysia, much like their counterparts around the world, have been severely impacted by slashes to global funding for humanitarian aid. This coincides with an escalating refugee crisis in which 10% of Myanmar’s population has been displaced by growing civil war. Release values have also been tightened—within the past year, pathways for asylum to third countries have closed off considerably.
These trends were immediately tangible once on the ground. Conversations with the families of Zotung students reiterated despair over rising costs, constant fear, and complete uncertainty regarding the future given the current landscape. During a portion of my stay, I was attached to the ACTS Arrupe refugee clinic. Their outpatient location, which used to operate every weekday, is now forced to run three days a week on a shortage of medical resources after their international funding was entirely cut. Refugee organizations in Kuala Lumpur are now forced to provide basic assistance with fewer means in a time of unprecedented demand.
The philosophy at ZRCLC remains anchored on delivering a core education that can be transformative for its children whether they are resettled, remain in situ, or return home should the situation improve. Within the past few years, Zotung has experienced a drastic 50% increase in class size, and new students have disparate backgrounds and academic levels. The current challenge is thus twofold—how to improve our educational offerings, and urgently, how they can be effectively scaled up.
Instituting the academic structure and rigor required to do so involves several hurdles. Our teaching staff are refugees themselves with no backgrounds in education. At the same time, unique resource and cultural considerations prevent ZRCLC from copying conventional frameworks for instruction. I was tasked with assessing both teachers and students to gauge what pedagogical areas ZRCLC can improve. Through teaching daily classes, watching staff-run lessons, participating in curriculum planning, and conducting extra exercises, I gathered insights and piloted new strategies alongside local organizers. I leveraged my observations to calibrate educator training with ZRCLC’s goal to further systemize our curriculum. Now back in the U.S., I’ve been given the responsibility of developing resources and hosting our ongoing staff training.
My time on-site was additionally dedicated to improving ZRCLC’s online learning program. The initiative currently accounts for a quarter of the students’ total instruction time. Our international online educators have become instrumental in accommodating surging enrollments and gaps in local volunteers. I streamlined ZRCLC-side procedures to minimize downtime, limit technical difficulties, and identify best practices for our virtual classrooms. Importantly, regional UNHCR officials have noted the program’s enduring impact on our students’ communication skills. They have approached Zotung about expanding the virtual model to similar resource-constrained refugee centers. As part of this nascent initiative, I categorized bodies of teaching materials, codified procedures, and shared technical guidelines to serve as the initial scaffolding for eventual implementation.
My summer at ZRCLC re-centered how I approach my involvement with the learning centre and human rights. I continue to be reminded that refugee organizations are driven by community resilience and on-the-ground commitment, especially as they must navigate competing priorities, funding crises, and public apathy. As top-down institutional support is often ad hoc, we risk doing a disservice to our students with reactionary measures. Actions at Zotung and similar refugee organizations are more impactful coming from initiatives that prioritize accountability and grassroots design. I hope that as my summer experience motivates and informs my current and future projects with ZRCLC, I can keep this forward-thinking resolve.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2025 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
