One of the most successful social entrepreneurs in Malaysia, educational revolutionist and social activist, Teacher Raj Ridvan Singh began his career amid the social and financial poverty of Cambodia in the late ’90s. As a 14-year old, Teacher Raj experienced sacrifice, selling his material possessions as he co-founded an NGO, SOLS 24/7 Cambodia, to provide free education and personal development to Cambodian youth. By the age of 17 and becoming the youngest Microsoft Computer System Engineer in ASEAN, Teacher Raj once again faced the choice of continuing his successful career in Malaysia or sacrificing financial comfort for the life of a social worker.
With spirituality and a strong social activist background governing his decision, Teacher Raj left the comforts of Malaysia and returned to Cambodia, before heading to Timor Leste during a time of civil war to found and run SOLS 24/7 Timor Leste. His innate business skills and continuous activism guided him through the challenges of setting up and running an education-based NGO, helping it grow to become the largest non-formal education provider in the country.
After returning to Malaysia, and now with more than 20 years in the social service sector, Teacher Raj started a tax-exempted, humanitarian organization, SOLS 24/7 Foundation and began tapping into his entrepreneurial strengths to pioneer the concept of blending the worlds of social service (NGO) and entrepreneurship. 400,000+ individuals have benefitted from SOLS 24/7’s programmes and projects and it has grown into one of the leading and most innovative NGOs in Malaysia.
In 2010, he set up SOLS Social Enterprises, from start-up stage to a multi-million Ringgit organization within nine months. SOLS Social Enterprises focuses on four sectors, Education, Technology, Mental Health and Renewable Energy, all which play a crucial role enhancing the quality of life of people transcending race, gender, culture and age.
Most recently, Teacher Raj was elected President of TeAM (Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia) in 2019.
Danutcha Catriona Singh is the Director for SOLS Academy of Innovation, under the SOLS 24/7 Foundation.
After winning the title of Miss MalaysiaIndian 2003, Danutcha was selected for a cultural exchange program to Cambodia. There she met with the Malaysian Ambassador to Cambodia, the Minister of Woman and Community Affairs, along with various NGO’s, to get a clearer idea of the struggles faced by Cambodian women and children.
She was also part of a week-long recce mission to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, after the tsunami disaster in 2004. While there she displayed cool-headed compassion, meeting displaced villagers and assisting in translation for the foreign aid workers.
With what she’d seen burning in the back of her head, Danutcha acquired a degree in Communications from Murdoch University, Australia. While still in university, she spearheaded an Alzheimer’s disease awareness campaign for the Alzheimer’s Disease Foundation Malaysia (ADFM), while participating in various cancer and HIV/AIDS campaigns in universities and colleges throughout Malaysia.
After graduation she worked as an editor with national broadcaster, Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) and as a journalist with the New Straits Times. During this time she was part of various community service projects.
She then took a bold step to join SOLS 24/7 as a volunteer in Timor Leste. She made the decision to continue in the humanitarian sector upon her return to Malaysia. As SOLS 24/7 expanded Teacher Danu, as she was now known, took on ever increasing responsibilities until she found herself in her current position, leading the humanitarian troops.
She strongly believes that the success of the various programmes and projects run by SOLS 24/7 is a testament to the wonderful women and men who are and have been a part of #teamSOLS.
With more than five years of project management and training experience in international non-formal education in Europe and one year in a multinational corporation in Romania, Daniela moved to Malaysia in 2014 to start working in grassroots education, currently being the Executive Director of SOLS 24/7 Foundation.
To her, impactful education is the one that not only informs but transforms; the kind of wholistic education that converts into the objectives of the learner, be those further studies, work or spiritual enlightenment. Because she feels that this type of science based, transformative education is not yet equally available for everybody, but a luxury for some, she decided to join efforts with Malaysian education providers to create more such opportunities.
She believes that the most important mission each individual has is becoming the best that one can be. What makes her heart sing is to generate a positive change for the people around her, so she works to help others grow towards becoming the truest, highest version of themselves.
Ash Luques is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for SOLS edu Pro the social enterprises at SOLS 24/7.
Ash graduated with a Bachelor in International Hospitality and Tourism Management.
She started her journey with SOLS 24/7 in 2008 when she first joined as a volunteer in Melaka. Since then, Ash has been freelancing with SOLS 24/7 off and on. In 2018, she decided to join the SOLS 24/7 family full time and came on board as a Digital Marketing Executive.
Ash has spent 4 years in Advertising & Print industry and another 4 years in E-commerce Marketing. She also has experience in Mobile & UI/UX development.
Anand is from India, He worked many years in IT businesses as Software and App Developer and as an individual contributor for centre IT organisations like IBM, Mindiii Systems and Man Power Group.
He gets a kick out of the chance to take care of issues and offer the right ways for the work processes, share thoughts.
He loves to create automation tools, programming projects and applications. He has created a variety of applications with a large number of downloads in training, travel and sites for different fields like blogging, picture control, portals, created own content, applications and web instruments.
He is an inquisitive and procedure driven person. He likes to compose verse, make inspirational recordings, quotes, compose thoughts, cooking, watch scientific and time travel space films.
A cheerful, Double degree holder from Malaysia & London college. With many years of experience in the corporate world, Alya decided to be a social activist, a very active one.
She has been on the ground for seven years (and still counting) focusing on helping to empower high-risk kids, their parents, families and other communities. Her philosophy is to work smart and play harder, and in her opinion that makes her stand out among other NGO leaders.
“Everyone keeps on talking about leaving a better planet to our children, instead why don’t we leave better children to our planet?” This drives her to join SOLS 24/7 team. She believes that education is the main key to transform communities in order to develop people’s true potential and break the cycle of poverty.
Alya also is a Google Certified Educator, UN Volunteer , Rakan Yayasan Kebajikan Negara and Program Director of PMG DBKL.
Amir holds a Master of International Business from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He started his career in IBM as a Consultant under the team Blue Program, then with various organizations such as AC Nielsen and Singaporean startup JamiQ. Amir then spent the next 8 years in Cyberjaya where he worked in the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Center (MaGIC). He has accumulated experience mainly in Strategy & Planning whilst covering various other areas such as Government Stakeholder Engagements, Business Development and Project Management. During his time at MaGIC, he led the CEO’s Office spanning across 2 CEOs and 1 Acting CEO.
As SOLS 24/7 is one of the pioneers accredited Impact Driven Enterprises under MaGIC, back in 2017 is when he started to work closely with the team on a variety of special projects, including NBOS initiative Actyvate and the Edupreneur pilot program. Since then, the interest and drive to contribute to social and environmental impact grew stronger, and at the opportune time took the chance to play his part with SOLS 24/7.
Amir continues to be active in the digital economy and entrepreneurship ecosystem taking on advisor and mentorship roles, as well as on judging panels.
In his spare time, it’s usually spent on sports, music, movies and his daughter Olivia.
Hamdan first started his journey in the year 2008 in Malacca (12 years ago), as one of the students in the first batch from the first generation of SOLS 24/7 and now continues his passion as the first Orang Asli youth to be a Director in Organization.
He finished his studies in Form 5 (SPM) but because of not so good results and also as a believer in second chance, he started to rebuilt and find the right path for him. During his journey as a student with an outstanding performance, he was chosen for the International Internship in Timor Leste for 18 months (2009-2010).
He returned to Malaysia in 2010 and started as a Project Manager to set up the Community Center in his home town in the year 2011. This was the first SOLS 24/7 Community Project in Malaysia. From there he has played many different roles as a Project Manager, Community Development Officer, Regional Manager, Outreach Executive ( NGOhub) and Regional Coordinator (Bi1M).
Now as the Director of Academy of Innovation, he is known for his second chance program. This program helps teenagers aged 17 to 27 who are less fortunate and unsuccessful in the first stage. He ensures that these teenagers get the opportunity to improve themselves and succeed in their lives.
Hamdan’s passion is fighting for education and identity for the Orang Asli community because he believes Education is a weapon of success. His goal is to provide them with equal opportunity of Education, bring them out of the troubles and help them to achieve success.
Ho Kee Keong is a Chartered Accountant registered with Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and Fellow member of professional accountancy body, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). After spending many years working in the Finance and Accounting field with local and multinational corporations, he decided to do something meaningful. Kee Keong is glad to be part of SOLS247. He believes everyone has a role to play in serving the underprivileged communities, be it involve directly in the front line or contributing indirectly at back office.
An Educator that emphasizes on lesson delivery with tailored character building because everyone can teach a topic, but making it personal and an experience is what any participants deserved.
Since 2012, Fazhar has garnered teaching experience from a variety of platforms – from secondary school exam prep classes, home tutoring, motivation camps to government and corporate companies teaching Cambridge English Foundation, soft skills and personal development courses.
Those who he impacted are school students, underprivileged communities, homeless people, government officials as well as corporate executives and managers of age 7 to 65 years old
Underprivileged or not, every individual deserves to learn and be involved in their personal change. With hiccups in resources, mindset and attitude – equality in education is a Rubik’s cube waiting to be solved.
Through SOLS 24/7, Fazhar scales his mission of equality of education through training local and international individuals to be educators alongside collaborating with team members to design, pilot and revamp courses relevant to both global and local audiences with culture being its core.
Anyone can teach on how to be confident, but our team can do it in an insightfully exciting and inspiring way.
Siti Khadijah Korai or known better in the office as Khaty is SOLS 24/7’s Scholar Development Program Executive who was born in Federal Territory of Labuan is someone who is never tired of going around and fixing people who keep saying Labuan, Sabah to change their sentence to Federal Territory of Labuan.
It is always been her dream since she was a kid to travel and leave her footprint all around the world and her passion towards travelling is the main trigger of the reason why is she applying to be part of the Change Makers program in April 2014. In the name of work she has been travelling outside KL to Kedah, Perlis, Perak, Melaka, Penang, Terengganu, and like a dream come true, she was given an opportunity to travel out of the country and flew all the way to Europe, Portugal for Erasmus+ program to share what is SOLS 24/7about with other NGOs from Europe.
When it comes to work, multitasking is her best friends. Other than sitting behind her desk and cracking her head to think about her 53 scholars, she is in charge of doing Bahasa Melayu translation for SOLS Education department which include the content that you can find the book and the SOLS Edu app. Beside training her scholars in the evening, she is also coming in and out from the office and teach English for Secondary and Primary school in Kuala Lumpur area. She is Google for Education Certified Trainer since 2015 and as a main SOLS’ Google trainer, she trained over 1,000 of teachers around Malaysia every single year.
During her free time, she enjoys running with her ex-uni athletic club’s members, singing with her dorm mates, dancing with her Sabahan buddy, reading horror novels, eating chocolate, travelling with her family, watching Korean drama and playing Mobile Legends on her phone.
Kudzai Charlton (K.C) is an experienced Learning and Development specialist with a demonstrated history of 5 years working in the telecommunications industry.
Graduated with a BA. Hons in Marketing, he found his passion for educational training and English empowerment within Malaysia. He specialises in corporate training, soft skills facilitation and early childhood and adults learning.
K.C is always curious about finding new ways to deliver information and to make the world a better place for everyone.
The thought of giving back to society and helping others has always been a nagging voice at the back of her head. The opportunity to do so slipped by when she was in her schooling days as well as in university. Now a graduate with a degree in Islamic Finance from International Islamic University Malaysia, she is both proud and thankful to have found a place where the main goal and purpose of its existence is to help others.
Abhiraamee is an English Literature graduate from the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Her venture into the world of copywriting and content marketing began when she developed a passion for turning real-life stories into eye-opening experiences. Having worked with underprivileged communities in the education sector previously, she joined SOLS 24/7 to create real impact through powerful, transformative storytelling.
In her element, she can be mostly found curled up with a book or charting her next travel adventure.
Aminuddin is not your local home-boy as he is from Brunei Darussalam. However, he did his degree in Malaysia where he studied Media Marketing in Asia Pacific Univerity. He started his journey as an Intern back in March 2020, as a Digital Marketing Intern and currently working full-time as a Digital & Technology Executive for SOLS Edu Pro (The Social Enterprises) at SOLS 24/7.
He first came to SOLS 24/7 with a bit of mixed experiences where he worked as a graphic designer in one of the top advertising companies (Leo Burnett), as a photographer for Brunei High Commissioner, as assistant procurement executive in Brunei Semi-Government Organization, and even as Barista for Gloria Jeans Coffee. With the rojak experiences, he could master the adaptability skills easily when encountering different environments.
Aminuddin is always driven towards challenges and open to criticism that motivates him to get out of his comfort zone. If Aminuddin were to describe in one word, the perfect word for him would be Resilience. He has what it takes to grow along the journey in achieving SOLS 24/7 mission and vision.