Helping underprivileged youth be independent through upskilling “The thing that came to mind while feeding the homeless was how unsustainable it was. How do you help them be financially independent?” Raudhah Nazran pondered. However, as an 18-year old in 2016, she did not have the answer to help the marginalized break out of their chains of poverty.
“I thought that it was a beautiful concept and I rejected a couple of job offers upon graduating to return home,” she said. This had become her calling - to provide functional and life skills to the underprivileged. “Otherwise, they will be stuck in a vicious cycle over and over,” she said. Which is where Accelerate Global comes into play. Raudhah launched it as a social enterprise on her return to Kuala Lumpur in 2019 with a face to face, B2B model which depends on corporate players utilising their CSR budgets to commission Accelerate Global to deliver its upskilling programs to marginalised segments.
However market response has been lukewarm since its release 10 months ago. Yet Raudhah is undeterred. “Every startup starts from scratch,” said the founder who has a natural flair for dressing with style. Pointing to iProperty, a well known startup in Malaysia, she reminds the writer, “It took off after almost 10 years.”
As of January 2023, 157 students have graduated from the 13 cohorts Raudhah has run since 2019 with class size ranging from 20 students to as high as 50 with a 90% average passing rate. It came to quite a surprise that she was still able to not only survive but thrive during the pandemic. “There was a rising demand of people wanting to upskill themselves for fear of being unemployed,” she explained.