Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices

I have been part of a long term capacity building project to develop women leaders among the Orang Asli community (Indigenous People) organized by Empower (Persatuan Kesedaran Komuniti Selangor). The communities we have been working with come specifically from Peninsular Malaysia. At the beginning we started out with a basic focus group discussion in 2014 with 13 women, to find out what the burning issues were. Tijah Yok Chopil  This brings me to an amazing activist who has really challenged the stereotype of Orang Asli women, Tijah Yok Chopil . She commands great respect for her ceaseless work challenging land grabbing of customary lands and confronting the state for human rights violations. Her journey has been long and of late, she shares of having lost long time comrades to the struggle. Tijah was instrumental in bringing together this group of women who became our initial trainees under this program. It was a purely capacity building workshop to increase women's lea