🐻 The Buddy Bear Childline 🐻
Findings from the Malaysian National Health and Morbidity Survey 2019 showed that about 424,000 or 30% of children are living with some form of mental distress. Buddy Bear was born during MCO with the aim of providing a safe place for children to talk about their worries and concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Encouraged by the response, we decided to continue with
the work on a more long-term basis. Call 1-800-18-BEAR (1800182327) ☎️
This is our helpline. It operates from 12 noon to 12 midnight, 7 days a week. At present, we have volunteers who can speak Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin, and Tamil. Our Methodology
Kind people from different backgrounds volunteering their time utilizing Psychological First Aid (PFA) to provide psychosocial support to children through a helpline. The potential issues that the children may face during the pandemic include, but not limited to:
● Isolation/loneliness
● Conflicts with siblings/parents
● Self-harm, sexual harassment and abuse
● Academic stress
● COVID-19 related concerns
All volunteers are carefully screened and trained to work with children, including PFA-certified. Background checks are conducted on all volunteers to ensure none are on sexual offenders list. The volunteers are supervised for compliance with ethical guidelines. This initiative would not be possible without the support and advice given by Dato Dr. Hartini Zainuddin, Datin PH Wong, Shaney Cheng and Michelle Usman. HumanKind acknowledges the support of MicroTel and Tommy Ng for our telephony services. We appreciate the generous contribution of Lim Sue Ann, Edward Ong and Sandra who designed the logo, collaterals and publicity strategy for the Buddy Bear Childline. 🙏
