Most of you have heard of the global refugee crisis. The ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip. The tighter border controls in Europe. And as a result, many of the refugees and asylum seekers have sought refuge in Malaysia, while waiting to be resettled in a country that signs the 1951 Refugee Convention. 

In January 2017, over 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers are registered with UNHCR Malaysia. While majority of the group comes from Myanmar, almost 17,000 of them come from other countries which include Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

This is where MSRI comes in. For almost a decade, we have been providing service assistance to these particular groups, through our range of programmes, such as:
- MSRI Education Programme
- MSRI Family Health Programme
- MSRI Livelihood Programme and Emergency Support

We have registered approximately 1,847 refugee and asylum seeker families by December 2016, totaling up to 5,764 individuals. That's only almost 4% of the entire refugee and asylum seeker population registered with UNHCR Malaysia,  but already more than enough to amount to needs and demands that go beyond what we can provide based on our limited capacity.

As a non-profit organisation, we rely solely on YOUR generous contributions in order to keep our operations going. The money we receive goes a long way towards:
- Effective implementation of our programmes
- Providing allowances to refugees and asylum seekers who work with us, be it as interpreters, teachers or assistants (to minimise hand-out culture, we provide as many income-generating opportunities as we can to refugees and asylum seekers)
- Getting more vouchers to allow highly vulnerable families purchase their own basic needs such as food
- Appointing full-time quality specialists such as doctors and counsellors for our health programme
- Producing educational materials
- Keeping our premises which contain all of our services

Here's a a breakdown of some of our costs:
- MSRI School Nutrition Programme: RM1 per child x 250 children at MSRI School for 20 school days in a month = RM5,000 per month.
- Food Voucher: RM200 voucher x 80 highly vulnerable families per month = RM16,000 per month.
- MSRI Outreach Work: RM3,000 per case worker (1 case worker can conduct 24 house visits in a month, 288 house visits in a year).
- MSRI Health Programme: RM8,400 per month for medical supplies and medication.
- Language services: RM1,300 per month for an interpreter (Farsi / Arabic / Somali).
- RM9,400 (inclusive of maintenance and rental costs) for each facility of respective programme.

And here are some of the impacts that your support can deliver:
- RM20 can provide food to ONE child for one school month.
-RM150 can go towards effective monitoring and evaluation work (which are crucial for MSRI in identifying gaps, needs and impact assessment) for a day.
- RM200 can provide one monthly food voucher for one family, enabling them the freedom and dignity to purchase their own needs such as fresh vegetables, toiletries, or even toys (which can have positive psychological effects on their children).
- RM300 can help with medication for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, epilepsy or other. The same amount can also be used to sustain our operations within our premises for a day.
- RM1,400 can be used to appoint one teacher from the refugee / asylum seeker community, which gives them not only income generating opportunity, but also skills to develop themselves and their communities.

Why RM500,000?

Although RM500,000 seems like a gigantic figure, MSRI requires at least RM2-3million each year to run its programmes effectively in order to reach out to almost 2,000 refugee and asylum seeker families. Through this campaign, we hope to address each and every existing gap in our work, and optimise our services to the target population.

Please support us in delivering more effective service assistance to more refugees and asylum seekers! Tax deductible receipts will be issued upon donations made.