Hajah Normah Suria Hayati b. PJDSMDSU Dr Hj Awg Mohd Jamil Al-Sufri

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Starting Point

Hajah Normah Suria Hayati has been working on social issues since 2014, particularly on poverty deprivation. Although her work is not specifically focused on women, when she became the ASEAN Commissioner for Women, she began addressing women's issues, which relates to her current involvement in women's issues.

She is the founder of a social enterprise called Bantu Service. She was touched by her late mother, who cared for unfortunate families. This act of kindness inspired her to establish the foundation to continue this effort. There were over 40 families under their care, but now there are only around 20. She also actively keeps in touch with them every day. Hajah Normah said that this enterprise does not specifically focus on women’s issues, as she concentrates more on children. She believes that children and their education will bring about a better future. 

Initially, Bantu Service worked with a Zimbabwean PhD candidate studying poverty in Brunei Darussalam at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). He collaborated with Hajah Normah to build tools for dealing with deprivation, and they developed deprivation metrics.

Peace Journey

Hajah Normah sets up a food drive every month and delivers the food to the unfortunate families that the enterprise supports. She also encourages her daughter to participate. Many of the families listed live in Kampung Ayer. She has established a communication channel with the families through a WhatsApp group and remains connected with them to this day. 

She once discovered a case where two families shared one house. There were fifty people living in that house, with one family residing in the lounge and another living upstairs. Under such conditions, she was concerned about the children, especially the girls, as they had to share sleeping space with their brothers. This situation was unsettling because, in her Islamic belief, if children are over 13 years old, girls and boys must sleep separately.

From that discovery, she provided housing and asked the children to move in there so they could live more comfortably. Aside from a better living space, she and her enterprise also offered them educational opportunities to improve their conditions. However, they discovered that not all children achieved the expected results. Through scheduled meetings she held every Wednesday to meet and chat with the children, she found out that not everyone was interested in studying, as each child has their own special skill. Additionally, this might be because there is no role model to inspire them. 

As the members of her team age and want to focus more on caring for their grandchildren, her new challenge is to create a new team for her enterprise.

Success Stories

Reflecting on her success, she thinks that the most essential thing that drives her effort is her desire to break the cycle of poverty. She believes that one way to overcome this problem is through education. She recalls that the first child whose enterprise helped is currently a lawyer. 

She realises she cannot force all children under her care to have an education. Yet she thinks that she can encourage them more by proposing an idea of a dormitory. In such environment, she argues that it can encourage the children to optimise their best potential. However, she acknowledges that this proposal a big project that still needs to be developed.