The story of Cikgu Kickstart Awards 2021
This is the story of Cikgu Kickstart Awards, a seed grant project organized and delivered by a group of teachers under the brand Edufication. If you’ve heard about Cikgu Kickstart Awards prior to this — great. If you haven’t, then I hope this piece of writing will shed some light on how a group of teachers came together to launch a project that has directly impacted 10 teachers and more 300+ of their students. [Disclaimer: Pretty sure the project had impacted more people, but we don’t overclaim]
It was in August 2020 that Samuel Isaiah and I laid out the plan of creating a platform for teachers to discuss issues from critical lenses. Initially, a friend of Samuel from his teacher training college days, Azhan Kanipan, joined us as we initiated this project. Later on, as Azhan left the project, Auzellea Kristin Mozihim joined us as part of the steering committee. The initial goal of Edufication was to publish articles on education. Hence, we approached a few more teachers to join our grand mission — Soffea Rahim, Stefanus Lucas, Sylvia Shanti, Kasvini Muniandy, and Faiz Shakri formed the initial team of Edufication. And of we went, publishing short articles on our website. It was also at this time that the Covid-19 pandemic was at its peak. At this critical juncture, we realized the prolonged school closures have had a detrimental impact on learning. At this point, Sam’s Global Teacher Prize nomination further magnified his reach and this is when we knew if we had the right proposal and right team together, we can actually do something for ours students. As we brainstormed a few ideas, we noticed our own limitation to reach out to all Malaysian students, and this is when we realized mobilizing and empowering teachers is the most effective way to curb learning loss. Hence, the idea of Cikgu Kickstart started to take shape. As Sam and I drafted the proposal, he started to approach potential funders. This exhilarating process got me thinking of how a group of teachers with no prior experience in managing such programs but came together as a team to deliver this project. Pooling our personal skills together, armed with some copywriting skills, I wrote the press release and got Faiz to translate them in impeccable Malay.
Fascinatingly, each one somewhat instinctively knew what they were good at and worked on it. Zell headed the marketing department, as well as the social media operations along with Stacey David and Evanna Dewi. Stefanus took over the technical operations, while Soffea Rahim did the designs and certificates. Meanwhile, Kasvini, Sylvia, Stacey, Asri and Evanna also became the face of Cikgu Kickstart as they took over hosting roles for all our webinar sessions. Asri also developed the judging rubric for the initial selection process. As I mapped and designed the program, I saw the need to empower teachers even before the application process, so we conducted workshops on getting teachers how to write kickass proposals and plan their budgets. With the likes of Sirhajwan Idek, Cikgu Hailmi, Cikgu Nazmi, Fadli Salleh, and our own members helming the workshops, this enabled teachers to navigate the process of grant writing, a highly-prized skill. Sam also came up with the idea that instead of merely giving out cash prizes, it would also be enriching if professional development workshops could be conducted for the 15 finalists. It was here that we opened up our collaboration with Teach For Malaysia, Project ID, Pemimpin GSL, Cikgu Nazmi, and Dr Mariah Ibrahim.
As the 15 finalists were announced on April 2021, and three winners (Ishwaar Singh, Team Educogator, and Cikgu Aliff) finally being selected after a round of live pitch on June 2021 — Cikgu Kickstart Awards finally came to a close. The last series of the bootcamp conducted by our 15 finalists on May 2022 marked the end with only the Social Innovation Toolkit yet to be published. Personally, I believe Cikgu Kickstart was not just another competition to empower teachers, or another competition to give out seed grants, Cikgu Kickstart isn’t a novel idea but as a group of in-service teachers, we built the grammar of how a teacher-based award should look like. This is the novelty that lies within the soul of Cikgu Kickstart. Overall, the project gave me the opportunity to meet 19 other amazing educators that continue to operate on the ground.
