This article was written by Sangeetha Mahendran, Corporate PR Intern.
Education offers underprivileged children a path out of poverty toward a promising future.
A significant part of my life journey has encompassed looking at how society can improve the state of education for underprivileged children.
Growing up in a middle-class family, I see my parents working long hours, and having multiple jobs, but at the same time, ensuring that their children are being educated for their future. Despite struggling to pay my tuition fees, they never gave up efforts to ensure the best future for their children, which only encouraged me to study and work harder, giving my best at everything I do.
As I matured, it always saddens me to see children peddling wares on the streets as they need to work at a very young age to support their families. This marginalization in education inspired me to pursue a life goal to do my part to improve access to education for underprivileged children in Malaysia. It is the idea that everyone needs a little opportunity and chance to prove themselves and we can do this by ensuring easy access to good education for everyone.
Towards the end of my fruitful internship at elfo, I took the opportunity to develop a passion project that tackles the issue of the lack of access to good education, by leveraging the expertise and resources available at elfo.
elfo’s role as a MarTech and AdTech company ensures that brands, agencies, and businesses are always on top of the latest trends and innovations in the marketing sphere.
As we began our journey in serving children in need through education, we collaborated with Dignity for Children Foundation, a non-governmental organization that provides holistic care and education to marginalized and underprivileged children in urban areas. Located on Sentul Raya Boulevard in Kuala Lumpur, the one-stop learning center hosts 1,559 children from age 2 to 18 in their education programs.
The result of the collaboration was The Art of Woo: An Introduction to Digital Marketing, a two-hour course developed and presented by Jesslyn Giovanni, elfo’s own performance marketing strategist.
Held virtually on April 29, 2022, the goal of the workshop was to introduce key digital marketing concepts to 16 and 17-year-old students who were on the road to planning their professional futures. Through the workshop, we hoped to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset along with key resources that will enable them to become better marketers.
“I am happy to be given the opportunity to share my knowledge of digital marketing with the students at Dignity for Children Foundation. The students were not only keen to learn but really used the session to ask questions and absorb as much as they can. It was a very engaging session and I look forward to seeing more of these initiatives from elfo.” shared Jesslyn.
Guiding a class of 12 students through key concepts in the world of marketing, Jesslyn introduced the digital marketing ecosystem and the world of digital marketing funnels. She also covered vital factors behind the customer journey and ways to envision the customer persona. This was further supported by group activities that allowed the students to apply these concepts.
Eager students broke into two groups and were tasked with creating an imaginary business with a marketable product, then tried to build a customer persona for said product. They even had the opportunity to build the customer journey and explore how digital marketing can help in each marketing funnel.
We wrapped up the workshop with an informative quiz that allowed the students to compete in a series of questions that checked their understanding. Jesslyn took the time to explain every answer at the end of each quiz question to ensure the students understood the concepts.
“I’m glad that we collaborated with Dignity for Children Foundation and truly inspired by the eagerness of the students to dip their toes into digital marketing. We are looking forward to more collaborations where we can contribute back to society and this was just the beginning! elfo will remain an open door to the world of marketing technology and digitalization with our goal of building connections with the next generation of talents,“ shared Sri Yosephin, the General Manager of elfo.
I would want to thank everyone who helped me with my passion project and for being part of my journey in educating underprivileged children. The children from Dignity for Children Foundation joined the event during their holiday, they were spirited to learn a new topic and were very engaging during the Q&A session.
I had a wonderful experience organizing this workshop with a supportive team from elfo and the Dignity for Children Foundation. Through this event, I learned that if you have a big dream; do not be afraid to take a little step when you get the opportunity to work on it.
