MELISSA TANYA GOMES

Although Melissa Tanya Gomes longed to contribute to marginalised communities, the co-founder of Edvolution Enterprise didn’t act on her desire until she heard a radio advertisement by Teach for Malaysia, summoning young Malaysians to solve education inequity plaguing the country.

“It triggered the real passion in me that was buried because of societal views of social work,” says Melissa. “My passion for education grew when I taught in a high-need national school, largely because of my students and their families.” Holding on to the adage “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few,” Melissa made a pledge to fight for this group of the community through education using the knowledge and experience she gained as a consultant. During her placement, she discerned that there was a lack of empowerment given to educators to drive change in the classroom, as well as the lack of a coherent support system between state, districts and schools to support teachers and school leaders.

Established in 2017, Edvolution Enterprise was founded on the premise to build competent education leaders across all levels of the education system. Through its flagship programme Teacher Empowerment for School Transformation, they have effectively reduced teacher absenteeism and raised students’ emotional learning. The programme was shortlisted as one of the top 150 innovations in education by HundrEd Global. “One of the things I hope to achieve is a greater championship for the work on the ground through stronger advocacy and effective collaboration amongst like-minded organisations to drive good leadership in the state, district and schools,” she says.

Shoes by Dior