Retired editor Sheila Rahman presented Muhibbah Award for helping stateless children

31 Oct 2023 08:26pm

With the support of friendly neighbours, Sheila Rahman Natarajan (centre), 69, has been like a "fairy Godmother” to the five, then aged four to 11, and her home has since been their refuge, school and sanctuary for all their emotional and physical needs. - Facebook

KUALA LUMPUR - A retired editor who helped transform the lives of five stateless children by providing food, shelter, and access to education over the past six years, gained her the latest National Press Club-MacroKiosk Muhibbah Award.

With the support of friendly neighbours, Sheila Rahman Natarajan, 69, has been like a "fairy Godmother” to the five, then aged four to 11, and her home has since been their refuge, school and sanctuary for all their emotional and physical needs.

Her long journey has won the vote of media editors who sat as judges for the October award. Sheila Rahman, a retired editor of Sunday Mail, first noticed the children roaming aimlessly each day in her neighbourhood back in 2017.

Left without their mother's care and with their father struggling to make ends meet, they were confined to a single room that served as their makeshift kitchen, dining area, and bedroom, and they were usually silent which was not a good sign.

Moved by their plight, Sheila and her husband Abdul Rahman Ishak stepped up to help and they gained the father's cooperation and consent to have the children come under their watchful eyes while he worked.

Coincidently, all the five children are now enrolled in Dignity Foundation School, an organisation previously honoured with the NPC-MacroKiosk Muhibbah Awards in June 2023. Though being older than their peers, these five children, now aged between 11 and 18 years, bravely coped with their new educational journey.

Sheila said the journey to document the children's status and secure their rightful place in society was another formidable challenge that she had to undertake starting 2018 and made countless visits to the Welfare Department and the National Registration Department.

Their efforts led to mandatory court-sanctioned guardianship in 2019, and this was followed by securing late-registered 'Bukan Warganegara' (Non-Citizen) birth certificates for these children in 2021.

Finally, after a thorough assessment by the Welfare Department, they achieved legal adoption in 2022 by their father, a prerequisite for citizenship applications.

The National Press Club of Malaysia (NPC), together with enterprise solutions platform provider MacroKiosk, launched the monthly award series in April to recognise any individual, group or organisation that best exemplifies the true spirit of Muhibbah in Malaysia.

NPC deputy president Haresh Deol, in presenting the award today, said it was indeed meaningful that this award series, created to reward people who propagated the spirit of Muhibbah, has now concluded with the final winner being a retired member of the media fraternity.

Meanwhile, MacroKiosk chief executive officer Datuk Kenny Goh described Sheila’s outreach to the five children as "an extraordinary act of compassion” that continued for over six years.

The NPC-MacroKiosk Muhibbah Award carries a cash prize of RM2,000, a certificate and vouchers from top regional lifestyle tea brand Tealive, leading lifestyle fresh market brand Jaya Grocer and top natural yoghurt brand llaollao. - BERNAMA