Anderson Selvasegaram is the Executive Director of SUKA Society. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from University Putra Malaysia. In 2016, he was appointed as the International Detention Coalition (IDC) Regional Advisor for South East Asia. He is also a steering committee member of the End Child in Detention Network Malaysia and serves as a member of the National Project Advisory Committee (PAC) for the EU-UNICEF Children on the Move Initiative.

Before founding SUKA Society, Anderson worked on a project that provided educational programmes for juvenile offenders in prison. It was then when he felt strongly about how the lack of opportunities and resources affects marginalised communities.

He remembers a conversation with a young offender who shared about how his friends would make him break into houses by squeezing him through small openings in the house because of his tiny body size. When asked how he got caught, he said that when the authorities arrived, his friends had fled and left him in the house after squeezing him through the window. When the boy was asked about his plan after leaving prison, he said that he was going to return to the same friends again. He believed he had no other choice because that was the only life he knew.

That conversation has remained with Anderson. ‘Why did this young person believe that he had no other options but to return to the same friends who had left him behind and got him arrested?’ Fueled by the desire to serve diverse marginalised communities, he teamed up with Sarah Teo to start AKAR UMBI Society as a sister organisation to SUKA Society. Akar Umbi was going to focus on eliminating marginalisation and creating equal opportunities.

Chen hails from a small town in Melaka. She studied Multimedia Design at The One Academy, Kuala Lumpur. When Chen walked to college daily, Chen would come across mothers with their half-sleeping children asking for help along the pedestrian bridge. Most of the time, she would give them some money from her weekly allowances until she realised that she was left with as little as RM10 to last her and her brother the entire week. She eventually decided to avoid using that route and started to ask herself if there was a better way to help people like them.

After graduating, Chen found a job at a digital agency. Five years into the work, she discovered a passion for the marginalised communities. Chen started working with SUKA Society as a project coordinator and ran programmes with refugee and Orang Asli young people, empowering them in building resilience. In the seven years of working with SUKA, she was also active in creating programmes that focused on peacebuilding between refugees and Malaysian youths.

Chen believes that the willingness to listen and create a conducive thinking environment, in partnership with the grassroots communities are the keys to resolving community issues. The grassroots themselves are an asset. She believes that communities can thrive if time, opportunities and resources are invested into building people up.

Anderson Selvasegaram is the Executive Director of SUKA Society. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from University Putra Malaysia. In 2016, he was appointed as the International Detention Coalition (IDC) Regional Advisor for South East Asia. He is also a steering committee member of the End Child in Detention Network Malaysia and serves as a member of the National Project Advisory Committee (PAC) for the EU-UNICEF Children on the Move Initiative.

Before founding SUKA Society, Anderson worked on a project that provided educational programmes for juvenile offenders in prison. It was then when he felt strongly about how the lack of opportunities and resources affects marginalised communities.

He remembers a conversation with a young offender who shared about how his friends would make him break into houses by squeezing him through small openings in the house because of his tiny body size. When asked how he got caught, he said that when the authorities arrived, his friends had fled and left him in the house after squeezing him through the window. When the boy was asked about his plan after leaving prison, he said that he was going to return to the same friends again. He believed he had no other choice because that was the only life he knew.

That conversation has remained with Anderson. ‘Why did this young person believe that he had no other options but to return to the same friends who had left him behind and got him arrested?’ Fueled by the desire to serve diverse marginalised communities, he teamed up with Sarah Teo to start AKAR UMBI Society as a sister organisation to SUKA Society. Akar Umbi was going to focus on eliminating marginalisation and creating equal opportunities.

Chen hails from a small town in Melaka. She studied Multimedia Design at The One Academy, Kuala Lumpur. When Chen walked to college daily, Chen would come across mothers with their half-sleeping children asking for help along the pedestrian bridge. Most of the time, she would give them some money from her weekly allowances until she realised that she was left with as little as RM10 to last her and her brother the entire week. She eventually decided to avoid using that route and started to ask herself if there was a better way to help people like them.

After graduating, Chen found a job at a digital agency. Five years into the work, she discovered a passion for the marginalised communities. Chen started working with SUKA Society as a project coordinator and ran programmes with refugee and Orang Asli young people, empowering them in building resilience. In the seven years of working with SUKA, she was also active in creating programmes that focused on peacebuilding between refugees and Malaysian youths.

Chen believes that the willingness to listen and create a conducive thinking environment, in partnership with the grassroots communities are the keys to resolving community issues. The grassroots themselves are an asset. She believes that communities can thrive if time, opportunities and resources are invested into building people up.