According to MaGIC, some 31,500 Malaysians stand to benefit from the efforts of 63 social enterprises who received the RM10 million Social Impact Funding Grant from the PENJANA stimulus package.
SIM Grant was designed by the government to rebuild the livelihood of communities through social enterprises in five impact areas, namely, environmental protection, food security, health & social well-being, community livelihood and heritage preservation. The grants are channeled through the social enterprises to the beneficiaries for capacity building that will provide them with additional skills to improve job prospects, increase income and improve their overall livelihoods.
Altogether, the 63 social enterprise grant recipients from across 9 states are forecast to deliver an estimated social value of more than RM40 million through their various initiatives Amiruddin Abdul Shukor, Acting CEO at MaGIC added “We are thrilled to support these social enterprises who have worked hard to raise an equal amount of funding, or more, through crowdsourcing programmes and other corporate sponsors – thereby doubling their total financial support through the matching grant.”
More than one third of the approved SIM Grant funding is directed towards initiatives on community livelihood, followed by 26 percent of the approved funding going to health and social well-being. Marginalised communities, youth and children form about 50 percent of the beneficiaries, whilst indigenous communities make up another 30 percent.
The supported social enterprises predominantly provide education, food & beverage and agriculture related programmes, interventions or solutions, with at least 30 percent of the initiatives selected run nationwide or online. The SIM Grant Joint Approval Committee, composed of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), MaGIC, Yayasan Hasanah and Yayasan Inovasi Malaysia, assessed applications for feasibility, effectiveness and intended outcomes, towards making a decision.
One of the recipient, Melissa Gomes from Edvolution, an education-related social enterprise said, “Through our work with educators on the ground, we found that the pandemic has created an increased demand for quality online professional development courses. As such, the Penjana SIM grant has been a huge help in enabling us to meet the demands of our beneficiaries who are predominantly from the B40 category. Many courses are delivered in the local language.” One month after receiving the grant, Edvolution created a one-stop online professional development platform for teachers, education leaders and schools called CikguHub. Here, they offer 20 short courses, three online programs and one tailor-made school solution.
