Community Development
An Island at Sea, Holding Its Own
On a remote island in Semporna, a stateless community is building its own systems—across health, education, and livelihoods.
On Omadal, off the coast of Semporna, a community builds healthcare, livelihoods and learning from within.
“I did not grow up on Omadal,” says Shima, a soft-spoken but unmistakably bright 20-year-old. “But since childhood, I frequently visited and became familiar with the community here.”
Omadal is a Sabahan island, situated off the eastern coast of Borneo, about an hour by boat from Semporna. The island is small; one could walk around much of its shoreline in under two hours at an easy pace.
Here, Shima works as a Community Health Helper at the island’s only community health centre.
Each weekday afternoon, she tends to everyone who comes seeking treatment, from children with fevers and rashes to fishermen injured in boat accidents.
When a condition exceeds her first-aid training, she consults a doctor by phone; when necessary, patients are referred to the hospital on the mainland.
Shima is neither a doctor nor a nurse, and the health centre falls short of what would officially qualify as a clinic. Yet, it provides the basic care people need—and is part of a broader shift for a community long considered peripheral.
Having had her education cut short due to personal circumstances, Shima now hopes the children she teaches can continue theirs.
Bringing care to the island
Omadal is primarily home to the Bajau Laut, often called sea nomads.
“There’s a lot of disputes regarding where they came from, but a lot of them have been staying here for a couple of generations,” says Dr Shridev Nair Thamotheran, Project Manager at the Malaysia Society for Harm Reduction (MSHR).
“Some of them do live nomadically. There are people here with Malaysian citizenship, but the larger population is stateless.
Dr Dev came to Omadal in 2022. His mission was to set up a community-based development project that would bring health and livelihood support to the island’s marginalised and stateless residents.
Part of this effort is the community health centre, which provides basic healthcare access while also introducing health education to the community.
“Previously, there never used to be any sort of healthcare or medical services here. Even a small cut or something like a common cold can lead to loss of life,” he says.
A close-up view of stilt houses along the shoreline of Omadal Island, reflecting the realities of daily life within the coastal community.
Years of limited exposure to formal healthcare have also fostered a deep mistrust of modern medicine within the community.
“When we first started coming here, people would run away,” he recalls. “Our boat would arrive, and some would literally jump into the sea.”
It became clear to Dr Dev early on that healthcare, however well-intentioned, cannot be introduced through imposition. It should be understood and accepted.
Hence, central to that approach is the training of local community members, like Shima, to serve as first-aid responders and health advocates within their own community.
Medical advice delivered by a familiar face carries different weight than instructions from a visiting professional; it softens apprehension and lends assurance to unfamiliar practices.
“Now the community trusts modern medicine a lot more,” Dr Dev says, adding, with a laugh, that the residents are very happy to see him these days.
But the work is far from over.
Stilt houses line the shoreline in Omadal.
The escape
Omadal is a beautiful island.
As one approaches from afar, the sea shifts from deep blue to clear turquoise. Wooden houses begin to appear. Some are built on stilts over shallow water; others are clustered just inland.
Closer to shore, another reality comes into view.
Empty glue tubes and crumpled plastic bags lie scattered in the sand beneath the stilt houses.
On the narrow wooden bridges above, children, some barely three years old, huddle in small groups, passing plastic bags filled with cheap glue between them, pressing the openings to their noses and breathing in.
Poverty has driven many Bajau Laut children to turn to glue-sniffing as a coping mechanism.
“They do it to suppress hunger because there is not enough food at home,” Shima explains, recognising the struggles.
Shima, 20, plays multiple roles in the Omadal community. Here, she teaches a Year Two class at ISKUL, a community-led school for Bajau Laut children.
Most families earn their living from the sea, fishing or collecting shellfish, then selling their catch to intermediaries who control transport to mainland markets. But those without documentation have little leverage to negotiate fair prices.
“Sometimes, an entire family goes out together to collect more catch, hoping to earn more than ten ringgit a day,” she adds.
The margin for survival is thin. And with little to look forward to, some children turn to escape.
As an immediate measure for children who have fallen into substance addiction, a Safe Space Centre has been set up to offer psychoeducation and therapeutic activities to help them understand and overcome the harm of what they are caught in.
The deeper work, however, lies in addressing the conditions that push children towards substance abuse in the first place.
Renewed hopes and dreams
“Improving healthcare access, or quality of life more broadly, cannot happen without improving the economic situation. Without a stable source of income, it simply is not sustainable,” says Dr Dev.
The aim, then, was to introduce an alternative source of livelihood. One that is less exposed to the volatility of daily fishing and the integrity of the intermediaries.
Seaweed cultivation emerged as a practical possibility.
Omadal sits within the Coral Triangle, a region known for its dense coral reefs and marine biodiversity. The surrounding waters are clear and shallow, with sandy-coral seabeds and salinity levels well suited to seaweed growth.
Moreover, seaweed is not an unfamiliar crop to the island community.
They had previously tried to cultivate it. But their attempts were met with a series of setbacks.
Seedlings grew increasingly expensive. Periodic outbreaks wiped out the harvest. Increased rainfall and changing weather patterns altered water conditions, making the crop more vulnerable and the traditional methods of farming harder to sustain.
“What we want to do is establish a seaweed farm that is more sustainable and uses better techniques. We are working with experts from UPM, who are helping us refine the methods so the farm can be sustainable,” Dr Dev adds.
“One of the things we are helping them with is mapping the seasons and understanding how they are changing. We have also installed fencing, which was not used in the old farms,” says Dr Nur Leena Wong, an aquaculture scientist from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).
“With stronger storms now, seaweed can break easily and float away, so the fence helps protect the farm and reduce losses,” she explains.
But growing the seaweed is only half the work. What ultimately determines whether the farms endure is how the harvest moves beyond the water.
“Malaysia is the third-largest producer of seaweed in the world, after Indonesia and the Philippines,” she says. “But the international price fluctuates, and competition is very strong.”
Rather than relying solely on the traditional model of selling dried seaweed into the global commodity market, Dr Leena’s colleagues at the university are working with the community to explore opportunities closer to home.
Semporna receives a steady stream of tourists drawn to its islands and reefs. The team sees potential in developing local products, something that can be prepared, packaged and sold directly to visitors.
The shift toward local markets has also expanded how the work unfolds beyond the farm. Harvesting is only the beginning. Drying, packaging and selling the seaweed have created new roles within the community, many of which women have taken on with visible enthusiasm.
“They are already exploring different ways to sell it themselves, even through platforms like TikTok. They are the ones telling me where it could be sold and how it could reach different markets,” Dr Leena recounts.
Across the village, residents have begun to see the farm as something economically viable again.
“They are beginning to give us feedback on what they want to do next, what kinds of products they could produce. When they look at social media, they are constantly picking up new ideas,” she says. “That shift in mindset is one of the biggest changes we have seen.”
This shift is the most encouraging. It reflects a resilience Dr Dev has come to recognise on the island. When opportunity appears, the community moves quickly to make the most of it.
“The community is beginning to give us feedback on what they want to do next, what kinds of products they could produce. They are constantly coming up with new ideas. This shift in mindset is one of the biggest changes we have seen.”
Dr Nur Leena Wong
Aquaculture Scientist, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
Close-up of seaweed growing along cultivation lines in Omadal’s shallow coastal waters.
Dr Nur Leena Wong (right) of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and her team support residents with improved farming techniques and knowledge of changing climate patterns and seasons.
Renewed hopes and dreams
“Omadal is not an unfamiliar territory to us, as this is not the first time Yayasan Hasanah has supported programmes here,” says Dilla, Senior Manager of Yayasan Hasanah’s Community Development Pillar.
Yayasan Hasanah’s involvement in Omadal, supported by the Ministry of Finance, predates the MSHR project. It began in 2020 through the ISKUL programme, a community-led school providing basic education for Bajau Laut children. The school focuses on literacy, numeracy, and essential areas such as nutrition and hygiene.
“What we are doing now is part of the Community-Based Approach model that anchors our work in Community Development,” Dilla explains.
Rather than relying on outside support alone, the approach focuses on building capacity from within the community itself. By design, it is multifaceted, thus requiring multidimensional solutions requiring long-term commitment and a careful understanding of issues on the ground that rarely present themselves from a single angle.
Therefore, beyond health, education and seaweed cultivation, the Foundation—through the Hasanah Special Grant—supports a range of ongoing efforts with ISKUL, including maternal health, identity documentation applications, and the continuation of the Community Health Helper initiative, as well as a filmmaking programme in collaboration with Fat Bidin, founded by Malaysian journalist and filmmaker Zan Azlee.
Fifteen young islanders were selected to participate in the programme, learning the craft of storytelling: how to build a narrative, frame a scene, record footage and piece it together in the edit.
Beyond technical skills, the programme opens up new possibilities, a glimpse of what else might be possible, and the means to tell their own stories, in their own way and in their own voice.
Among those voices is Shima’s.
“It feels painful to feel unseen and unrecognised,” Shima says. “Through filmmaking, I learned to see my community from a new perspective. I realised the importance of telling their stories so that others can better understand the reality of life here.”
Shima studied formally only until Standard Six, her schooling cut short by family circumstances that made secondary education impossible.
Yet it did not stop her from pursuing a meaningful life for herself and her community.
Today, alongside her work as a Community Health Helper, she teaches Year 2 classes at ISKUL every weekday morning, determined to keep hopes and dreams alive for the children of Omadal.
Shima is one of 15 youths in Omadal selected for a filmmaking programme created in collaboration with Fat Bidin, a Malaysian media and production company.
At 20, Shima has already shown herself to be remarkably versatile, moving from one role to another as the island demands.
“If we want to see how the Community-Based Approach works in practice, Shima is one of the best examples amongst the participants in our programmes in Omadal,” says Dilla.
It is empowerment in its truest sense when the community itself begins to take the lead in shaping its own future.
Shima understands that change will not come overnight. But it will come, through steady effort and the small gains made along the way.
Omadal children are provided with psychoeducation and therapeutic activities to help them understand and avoid the harms of substance addiction.