Alicia Teoh

Alicia Teoh is an environmentalist with a soft spot for the Shah Alam forest, believed to house a myriad of endangered species including the Malaysian tapir, Malayan tapir, White handed gibbon and Sunda Slow loris. Fighting the threat of commercialisation, Teoh founded the Shah Alam Community Forest Society (SACF) in 2016 to raise awareness as well as funds to safeguard this local gem.

To ignite the same love for nature in others and attract Malaysians to her cause, Teoh intended for SACF to become a recreational forest trail where thousands of people visit every month to exercise, conduct environmental research or simply take in its biodiverse beauty. Through community guided hikes, citizen science programs and media campaigns, SACF Society also actively lobbies the government to protect this forest and other urban forests in Malaysia. All these efforts combined have since crowd-funded over RM63,000. With a legal case currently underway, Teoh and her team remain at work to push for SACF’s preservation.

To make an impact, we do not need to be trained or qualified. We just need to know what we care about and start doing something about it. This journey has been tough for me, but it is absolutely worth it and I’m happy to be able to contribute towards building the country that I love.