On Sunday, January 17, 2021, I had the opportunity to interview Celeste Chung. Ms. Chung is a youth activist from Malaysia, also the founder of ‘Youth for the Future’. We talked about topics ranging from racism and prejudice towards Asians to how the gender gap in Malaysia is preventing young women from pursuing a career. Ms. Chung also gave some personal insights and tips which can be used by anyone!
Misthi: Welcome to the 21st century where women and people of color lead our society and take initiative to think no more than 200 years ago women had no rights is a mind-boggling idea or welcome to a new Society where women like Celeste Chung help our women strive for a better life and education through activism.
Misthi: Please introduce yourself.
Celeste: Hi everyone. My name is Celeste Chung and I am a 16-year-old youth activist currently residing in Malaysia, which is a small Southeast Asian country. It’s filled with lots of beautiful cultures, stories I am told, and amazing food. One of my favorite foods is Pisang Goreng, which is basically fried bananas topped with anything you want. I am currently majoring in BBS which stands for Biomedical Sciences but I am hoping to have a minor in political science too. My hobbies included cooking, dancing, yoga, and playing the nunchucks.
Misthi: For our readers, could you please describe what you do?
Celeste: Yeah, for sure! I am the Executive Director and Founder of my nonprofit organization called ‘Youth for the Future’ which is currently supporting 200 stateless kids at school and currently our main objective and our goal is to eradicate the gender gap in education because folks notice that in Malaysia there are lots of girls still out of school because of this. We have impacted more than 100 girls. Besides this, I am the founder and Vice President of ‘Better Tomorrow’ which is an international organization and now we have members from more than 10 different countries. Members from Malaysia, Madagascar, Kenya, India, and lots of different places. Which is crazy to even think about because we started off just talking about it as a Zoom call, randomly like ‘Oh my god let’s create something’ and it turned into this! And on top of that, I am the only Malaysian and the youngest rep for the international women work committee where we plan the largest Women’s Day event; last year we had over a million people joining our event via live stream or there in person. To end it off I founded my very own GirlUp chapter in Malaysia, it was also the first.
Misthi: What inspired you to take action?
Celeste: A lot of things actually inspired me! I would say it was a series of events but basically when I was 13, I was doing an internship and one of my colleagues asked me what I wanted to do in the future, and being my 13-year-old ambitious self, I said that I wanted to be prime minister of Malaysia. And straight-up the entire office started laughing at me and I was like “okay?”. Then he said back to me that maybe I should consider doing something because as a girl, I am too soft for politics or I am too soft to do anything related to it. So I was immediately so offended by it and I wanted to empower other women out there whether they want to be the prime minister or they want to be a scientist or whatever it is because we are capable of doing anything. So that’s why I wanted to show young girls in my community and what we realized is that it all came down to education and that education was really the key way of empowering the young girls in our community because, as I said before, a lot of young girls in my community have dropped out of school by the age of 11 and they are married off by the age of 12 or 13. It’s definitely very normal here and I don’t want it to be normal.
Misthi: What would you say is one of the pressing issues Asian women face today?
Celeste: There’s a lot that I could go on for hours and hours on this but I guess before I started my activism, I was doing lots of volunteering. Me and my family, we are really big on volunteering, it was like our ‘family thing’. I would connect and talk with lots of different people from lots of different places and again one thing that they all had in common was the difficulty of accessing education. I used to go to this stateless community where I distributed pads and tutored them in English and science. A lot of them were like this: one week I would meet this girl and the next week she would be gone because she would have been a mother already or something like that. It was really normal and I was shocked when I found out. Additionally, I think women’s voices were constantly being ignored and not even considered, in my country specifically. A clear example would be like during the Covid pandemic, our government said that women should stay at home, dress up nicely, and please your husband. So, they were targeting women and it angered a lot of us. I guess that came down to the lack of women representation in our government because we only have 13.9% of women [in the government] which is crazy to even think about because more than half of our population is female. So our country is pretty traditional. But those are probably the main factors.
Misthi: The current circumstances are unprecedented, while Covid-19 continues to ravage the world, how has it affected your foundation?
Celeste: It’s definitely had a lot of setbacks. We weren’t able to go ahead with a lot of events we planned. We were going to do a large summit last year, at the end of the year, where all of the youths of Malaysia would gather together and connect with one another. It was going to be a big thing and we had a lot of influential women coming. Basically, we had lots of things planned but because of COVID, we couldn’t go ahead with it. For the most part, the event was going to be supporting more stateless kids to school, so it was really sad that we had to cancel it. However, we did go virtual and it sort of worked in a way because we were able to connect with more people internationally. So, it has its pros and cons.
Misthi: How do you wish to work around these situations and continue your activism?
Celeste: Going virtual is the only option right now, however, being virtual does open up many opportunities to connect with so many activists and leaders from all parts of the world which I wouldn’t have done if the pandemic had not started. Everything I was doing was really related to inside my community, and when the pandemic started I explored outside and I opened my eyes because I love to hear stories from different people. Just hearing stories from people all over the world and how it's so different from mine is really interesting. Last month I was able to talk to Indonesian activists and it was a live stream in front of 700 people so it was definitely a new experience for me. However, I would say the Covid situation isn’t that bad compared to a country like the US, so we are able to do a few volunteering and distribution projects.
Misthi: What are your thoughts on racism and prejudice against the Asian communities?
Celeste: It’s so sad that we even have to talk about this today. For me, I have actually never experienced it for myself, I think it’s because of where I live, but I do have friends who have told me its actually a really scary experience. My friends are currently living in the UK, where they are studying, and they are always telling me how racism was so normal there. You are not even surprised by it. Even if you walk out, you could get called out for the “Chinese Virus” or stuff like that. Because of this, my friends were telling me how they were scared to leave their house. It is absolutely disgusting and sometimes racism happens on a daily basis that we don’t even realize. Even in my school, one of the guys spit on my friend just because she was Indian. She wasn’t going to report or do anything but thankfully we reported it at the end. It’s just so disgusting and sometimes people might think racist jokes are funny, but they are not funny at all.
Misthi: If you could, How would you wish to combat these circumstances?
Celsete: With the example I just gave now, my friend, at first, wasn’t going to report it because she thought that her voice wasn’t valid enough and that it wasn’t enough to actually bring change so we have to convince her for a really long time. Supporting your friends and letting them know that you are there to help them and this is something that is wrong. It’s not something that can be taken lightly because it is not. Calling out racist jokes and statements because they are not funny, as mentioned. Adopting an intersectional approach to your life, knowing that you’re not the only person in your life and there are other people too.
Misthi: Any major projects coming up?
Celeste: Yeah! We are hoping this will go on and Covid won’t put a stop to it, but basically, my team and I are hosting a big hackathon to teach young underprivileged girls how to code, how to construct a business plan, and how to public speak, so this is very exciting and we hope that we can encourage young girls from different backgrounds and income statuses that whatever you are doing, STEM is an option. In Malaysia, a really small number of girls are in the STEM field. A lot of us are encouraged to go into planned motherhood or be a doctor or lawyer, those are the main options for Asian parents. But this ties in with education because even if a child is able to access education, he/she might choose to drop out and work for the parents instead. What we want is to break the cycle of dropping out and actually mobilizing them and empowering them with resources via inspiration from our summit so that they feel like they can accomplish anything too.
Misthi: How do you balance your social life, family life, school life, and activism life?
Celeste: I’m going to be completely honest, I sometimes don’t. It’s such a hard thing and sometimes I don’t at all. Sometimes, to my family, I am like “Don’t talk to me, I’m really tired” but at times they are always lifting me up so that really helps a lot. Having a good support system from friends and family, and I know not everyone has that but just finding your circle and your circle has to be someone you absolutely trust and someone who brings you joy and doesn't add on stress to it, because that is really important! Oh, also your phone usage! I never realized this but the amount of time I used to spend on my phone was like 6 hours the last time I looked. So, I had to put a limit on all my apps so I am trying to spend at least less than an hour on my phone every single day. It does make such a big impact, you get so many more things done. Lastly, having the morning to myself, not doing anything school-related or activism related, just focusing on myself and pampering myself, meditating for 2-3 minutes, that’s enough.
Misthi: What are some long term goals for you?
Celeste: I definitely want to expand my organization more and alongside this, I hope that ‘A Better Tomorrow’ would have more chapters in countries. Me and my team also hope that we will be able to finally get the girls in Malaysia and our community a voice as we have been ignored for way too long. I hope I will be able to inspire young girls and youth to take action and generally chase after what they want because it is hard with so many people telling you that you can’t do something. I have experienced that and it was so painful and it was torture so I just want other girls to feel inspired and know that they can make a big difference. 2 months ago, I did a one-to-one advocating workshop and one of the girls was so inspired, she created her own nonprofit organization and that feeling was just, wow. I’m not perfect, I strive for progression but my long term plan is to inspire more girls.
Misthi: Finally, to all the girls out there, if you could give a piece of advice, what would it be?
Celeste: Never be afraid of the outcome, just go for it. I was so scared when I started public speaking when I was invited to a conference in China and it was the first time I had to publicly speak in front of 200 people, and I tripped! It was so embarrassing and I still can’t get over it. But know that it is a learning process and you’re not perfect from the start and you will never be. You will make mistakes but those mistakes will help you grow as a person and make you better and an even stronger character. Also, I always say this but find you ‘why’. Your ‘why’ should be something that motivates you when you’re tired, you’re burnt out because even then, your ‘why’ will constantly push you. It serves as a reminder why you’re doing this in the first place and why you should continue fighting for it even though you are broken down. It is really important to find your ‘why’. Find something you are really passionate about and do something you’re really passionate about, don’t do it for the sake of college applications, but do something you have this burning fire inside of you for.
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