MAXIS MENUJU GEMILANG PROGRAMME 2026
Some days you go home knowing exactly why the work matters. The handover for the Maxis Menuju Gemilang Programme 2026 was one of those.
Two hundred laptops. Two hundred Form 4 students from B40 families. One very good day.
How this started
Maxis came to us with a simple brief: put devices in the hands of students who need them, and make sure it lands properly.
That last part is the bit people underestimate. Buying 200 laptops is a procurement exercise. Getting 200 laptops to the right 200 students, configured, supported, and genuinely used, is something else entirely. That is the part we care about, and it is why the partnership made sense to us from the first conversation.
Why Form 4 matters
Form 4 is the year things get serious.
It is the start of the two year climb to SPM. Notes move online. Teachers share material through WhatsApp groups and Google Classroom. Past year papers, revision videos, group assignments, all of it quietly assumes there is a screen waiting at home.
For a lot of students, that screen is a shared phone. Sometimes it is a sibling's phone. Sometimes it is whatever they can borrow, whenever they can borrow it.
That is not a study setup. That is a workaround.
Giving a student their own laptop at the start of Form 4, rather than halfway through Form 5, means they get two full years with it. That timing was deliberate.
Wen Wei joined us
Our brand ambassador Yap Wen Wei, Miss International Malaysia 2026, came along for the handover.
She did not just show up for the photos. She spent the day with the students, asking what they were studying and what they wanted to do after school.
Having someone at that level stand up for digital equity says something to a sixteen year old that we cannot say ourselves. Someone is paying attention. Someone outside your school, outside your kampung, thinks your future is worth showing up for.
The honest version
A laptop does not fix everything.
It does not fix an overcrowded classroom, or a home with no quiet corner, or a family under financial pressure. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
What it does is remove one obstacle that had nothing to do with the student's ability or how hard they were willing to work. It means when a teacher assigns online work, they can do it. When they get curious about something at ten at night, they can look it up. When SPM season arrives, they are not queuing for a turn on someone else's phone.
That is a fair starting point. Most of these students have never had one.
Thank you, Maxis
To the team at Maxis, thank you for trusting us with this, and for building a programme that puts students first rather than logos first.
And to the two hundred of you who walked out with a laptop that day: go use it. Break it in. Fill it up. We will be checking on how you are doing.
Want to support the next 200?
Sambong Future Foundation works with companies, foundations and individuals to place technology in the hands of students who need it most. If your organisation is planning a CSR initiative around education or digital inclusion, we would like to hear from you.