For 14-year-old N Karthika, Sunday is the best day of the week. Not because she gets to laze about at home but because she can attend tuition.

Many teenagers would balk at this, but Karthika thoroughly enjoys attending the classes which are organised by a group of volunteers.

The Form Two student feels that the classes have helped her improved tremendously in her studies.

Hailing from the squatter areas in Petaling Jaya Selatan, educational achievement is not a top priority in her family and Karthika readily admits that she is not 'top-of-the-class' material either.

However, it is apparent that her volunteer teachers have lit the lamp of hope.

"I know I have improved after coming for tuition classes here. I have been here for seven years and I am confident of doing well in my PMR exams next year," she told malaysiakini.

Karthika is a proud product of Atmah Project, an initiative by the Malaysia Hindu Sangam to address social problems involving the urban poor from all races.

Programmes under the Atmah Project are focussed on education and human values awareness as well as enrichment via tuition classes.

"Our tuition teachers make learning fun, they teach us in different ways to make us understand," said Karthika who has learnt to use 'mind mapping' methods to better understand her lessons.

Different approach

Atmah coordinator Suzy Sivasegaran said the volunteer teachers prefer to employ a different approach in their teaching methods.

"We like to do it differently from the school syllabus. We have different levels of students and we try to cater for all of them," she said when met recently.

"We teach the children according to their level. The number of our students is small so it makes it easy for us to give attention to all of them," she added.

The tuition classes are now conducted at SRK Bandar Sunway.

When Atmah kicked off the project, classes were held at a community centre with three make-shift classrooms and 25 students in the KTM Rumah Panjang Squatter settlement in Kg. Medan, Petaling Jaya - the hotspot during the March 8 racial incident in 2001.

Most of the students in the pioneer batch came from the areas affected by the riots, which left several dead and scores others injured.

"Our immediate concern was to provide free tuition classes for all the weak students to ensure that they stay in school," said project chairperson Kana Sabaratnam.

Better tomorrow

Today Atmah's project has expanded to 15 classrooms and over 200 students of all races, attending classes from Standard One to Form Five.

The squatter areas have since been demolished and replaced with low-cost flats, resulting in the target group of students moving further away from the Atmah centre.

To ensure that the students continue to get these valuable lessons, Atmah has provided a bus service to ferry students from their homes to the tuition classes.

According to Kana, the bus service was an expensive venture, taking up a large portion of Atmah's annual budget of RM25,000.

"Don't forget we are all volunteers here but we still need money to run this project," he said, adding that they have been managing through sponsorships and fund-raising activities, mainly their annual treasure hunts.

Asked what prompted this 39-year-old IT consultant to invest so much of his time and energy into the project, he replied: "I feel good giving back something to the community."

With the likes of people such as Kana and the Atmah volunteers, poor children now have hope of a better tomorrow.

Watch a six-minute video of Atmah here: