Visit to Protestant Church in Sabah

By Wai Leong

Lutheran Church in Singapore (LCS) has been supporting the preschool works in Sabah since 2018. However due to the Covid pandemic, we were not able to make any trip to Sabah until the country’s border reopened.

LCS decided to arrange a trip to Sabah in August 2022 and since LCOR has been supporting the works, LCOR mission committee decided to join LCS to explore the Sabah Preschool ministry.

The purpose of the visit was to ascertain the work that LCS has been supporting from 2018-2022 and to establish a partnership if LCS congregations continue to be supportive of the ministry. The trip also enabled us to understand more about the work and the area of needs.

The LCOR team comprised of Wai Leong, Chris How, Kris Tan, Mark Lim and Bock Chin. The trip was led by Pearl (JCC congregation representative to LCS mission committee).

The Protestant Church in Sabah (PCS) is a member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF – a global communion of

Lutheran churches). PCS’ membership is primarily made up of the indigenous people of the different tribes from the rural interior of Sabah, such as the Rungus, Tobonuvo, Kimaragang, Garo and others. In recent years, the Malaysian government had started many preschools and kindergartens even in the rural interior of Sabah. With the funding from the government, many perks were also provided to encourage families to send their children to these schools. With the lack of Christian preschools within their reach, many PCS members had no choice but to send their children to these government schools as well. However, they were dismayed when their children came back influenced by the schools’ religious practices. They had appealed to the church to run preschools for their children to attend instead of the government schools.

In Singapore you can find preschools or kindergartens around the neighborhood. However, that’s not the case here. It is really challenging for the villagers to find Christian preschools within their villages. As such, the church members appealed to the local churches to run the preschools. Hence during our visit, we observed that almost all the preschools were located beside a local church or within the church premises (eg. shared with Sunday school premise), having only one teacher and one assistant to cater to the children from its members and the community.

The physical condition of the preschools and kindergartens vary, from concrete structure to simple wooden hut. Some were also in need of repairs. As most of the preschools were not properly built, only 2 out of the 17 centres have successfully registered as a ‘Tadika’ (kindergarten) with the government. Being a non-registered kindergarten posed problems for kindergarteners’ - applications to primary schools, as primary schools can only admit students from registered kindergartens. However, thanks be to God that some primary schools do not enforce this policy as they recognise the higher quality of kindergarteners from PCS centers compared to those from the main stream public kindergartens.

The team visited 9 of the 12 centres that LCS supported in 2022 with 6 centers located in the rural villages separated by hills and muddy roads. The other 3 are near or within Kudat but still hours away from the city Kota Kinabalu. The inner locality makes procurement of resources difficult and expensive. Within Kudat, there are limited or no options for purchasing education materials, that is why they need to print their own materials. For example, one challenging centre was Kg. Lumikog. The teacher, Esther, rides a motorbike. To buy resources in bulk, she had to hire a car. A round trip alone costs RM80, when the monthly disbursement for materials is RM150. She is unable to keep the materials or even the printer in the hut as they get bitten by rats. There was a termite infestation in the school even though the hut was just about 5 years old. During a recent flood, the toilet was washed away. Due to its location in a flood prone area, the centre had to be built on stilts.

Despite all the challenges, we observed that the teachers were committed and dedicated in their roles. Some teachers have also made attempts to be creative with their teaching materials. The quality of the teachers varies from centre to centre. Some teachers were already trained in early childhood at the point of employment, while some were pursuing their diplomas. But most of them were trained on-the-job or they learnt through online resources together. Most of the teachers are members of the parish where the centre is located.

During the trip, Pearl and Wai Leong met up with PCS Sabah Management Committee to listen to their future plans for the PCS preschools and kindergarten. With limited resources, and the difficulty in getting more kindergartens registered with the government, PCS is studying the possibility of converting the kindergartens to PCS Children Learning Centre, which covers a wider range of activities that may include after-school care and tuition centre.