Invitation Letter

Here is the e-mail which initially sent out to announce the creation of SPAP. This is your invitation too! Participate in Students for Penan Awareness. Send this to your friends to get them interested.



 Hey everybody! I hope everyone is doing great. I'd like to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya and an awesome week ahead. Anyway, I am sending this e-mail to invite you all to participate in an awareness project I am starting.

I am starting the Students for Penan Awareness Program (SPAP) , and I hope it catches your interest. It is a project that is aimed to alert people our age in Malaysian secondary schools/institutions about the plight of the Penan people, apart from giving people a taste of social activism in the spirit of volunteerism. It is affiliated with the People to People International Student Chapter of Kuala Lumpur (Sri KDU).

You may have heard about the Penans in the popular press lately. They are an ethnic group belonging to Sarawak that have long lived in the forests, but they are now coming under threat by certain multinational logging companies. Although much of this logging is illegal, the Sarawakian state government allows and subsequently profits from illegal logging. The Penans have opposed this, but are threatened and harassed by logging workers. Rapes, physical abuse, and even murder are ways certain logging companies, through logging workers, traumatise the Penans to keep silent.

Because corrupt officials in the Sarawakian government receive so much money from illegal logging, they are reluctant to help the Penan people. With 90% of Sarawak’s primary forest destroyed, many Penans are forced to live different lifestyles, unable to find their food and tools in the jungles. Limited aid reaches these Penans and they are still largely dependent on non-governmental aid.

The time now is a window for us to help the Penan people. Before larger initiatives that will change their lives can happen, more people have to know that this issue is at its grave state. So now, I am inviting all of you to take part in the Students for Penan Awareness Program. As the young generation, we have the power of influence among our peers. SPAP hopes to spark awareness amongst young people so that like-minded people can plan for future action.

Participation in this program is free. Taking part means involving yourself (and preferably a group of friends) in organizing activism activities in your school/institution. After all, the idea is to tell people about the issue. So, just how does this program work? Well:

• Materials such as posters and leaflets will be distributed to your institutions to be displayed in central locations. This is to briefly tell people about the issue.
• Advocacy day; spread the news about this project and designate one day in your school/institution to tell people about the Penan people or any social/humanitarian/environmental issue that concerns you.
• Any other activities that you can think of! A one-day fast at school, creating murals with finger prints... anything that will generate awareness. Remember to have fun!

Apart from advocating for awareness in your institutions, you can also help out with taking posts and jobs within the Students for Penan Awareness Program. We will need help with creating designs for our posters, ideas for activities, and people to maintain our/blog. We have many vacancies in the Student for Penan Awareness Program team, join us!

Participating in this project will give you experience in social advocacy and hopefully spark your interest in other humanitarian issues as well. This is also a good cause to volunteer for! Interested? Forward this to your friends who may be interested too!

Thank you people!

Mark Chan,

Head Coordinator,

Students for Penan Awareness Program