NGOs Striving to Improve Lives
6 min read
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS (NGOS) in Penang have long served as the backbone of the community. Most, especially those dedicated to welfare and societal well...
October 2025
This October, Penang Monthly explores death rituals across Malaysia. From Muslim burials to Taoist and Hindu traditions, we reflect on how communities honour the departed with dignity.
Cohu’s VP Seeks to Revolutionise Penang’s Tech Future
4 min read
ONE MAN, one job, one company, one vision—this sums up Wai-Kong Chen’s career as an innovator of high-speed digital instrument design. Now, as Vice President of...
PDC: Sights Set On Further Growth For Penang
4 min read
PENANG HAS witnessed a remarkable economic transformation over the years, and at the heart of this evolution stands the Penang Development Corporation (PDC). Es...
The Story of Early Juru
9 min read
IN LATE APRIL 1845, James Richardson Logan, a Penang lawyer and ethnologist, visited Bukit Tengah and Juru. He noted that land bounded by the Prai and Juru rive...
Facing Mental Health Challenges in the Workplace
4 min read
DEPRESSION AMONG MALAYSIANS has been on the rise, with figures escalating from 1.8% in 2011 to 2.3% in 2020. Mental health expert and director of the Internatio...
Pawsitive Connections: Adopting Animal-Assisted Therapy in Malaysia
6 min read
OVER THE COURSE of history, our connection with animals has transformed in numerous ways, reflecting the varied cultural, social and economic settings of human...
NGOs in Penang: A Heritage of Passionate Caring
10 min read
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS (NGOS) are widely recognised as essential components of a thriving society and are often very intricately woven into a society’s...
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Women’s Centre for Change: Protecting and Supporting Victims of Gender-based Violence
4 min read
ACHIEVING SOCIAL CHANGE is impossible through government intervention alone. The scale of contemporary social problems demands the engagement of multiple stakeh...
Climate Change: Are We Alleviating or Accelerating the Crisis?
5 min read
An Open Letter by Cecil Rajendra.
Penang Institute as NGO: Growing Beyond Research and Advocacy
3 min read
THE THEME FOR June 2024 is non-government organisations—NGOs. This allows for the publisher of this monthly, i.e. Penang Institute itself, to do some soul-searc...
Sounds and Silence: Experimental Music Permeates Penang Spaces
8 min read
Photos by Shankar Laxminarayan and courtesy of Kamal Sabran.
Warships Sunk off Penang in World War I
7 min read
THROUGHOUT WORLD WAR I, Penang was indispensable to British war eforts as a hub supplying men, commodities and funds. Apart from being an important communicatio...
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