Yesterday, a group of board members and staff from the non-profit for which I work made a day trip to the Klang Valley. We were in the city to visit Dignity for Children, a Christian NGO that provides quality education to those in need, especially refugee and migrant children. By the end of the tour of Dignity's work, we were all impressed and inspired.

When I signed up for this visit, I had no knowledge of Dignity, and so expected to see a tuition center-like school, not dissimilar to other one-man shows I've seen. But then I walked into a dynamic organization that has 90 staff members who manages and educates approximately 1,000 students ranging from pre-school to IGCSE! Dignity is the epitome of a well-established social work.

One certainly wonders how Dignity manages such huge-scale operations without falling apart. During my visit, I was struck by two things. The first is the systemic organization of the operations side. They have properly divided departments like administration, education coordination, finance & accounting, HR & volunteer support, IT, and one entirely focused on fundraising (Dignity runs on a RM5 million annual budget). I'm too familiar with non-profits who are painfully shorthanded, where the few workers have their hands in a hundred and one things.

The Dignity team is committed to the method of educating as well. They customize the materials at hand into a unique blend of Malaysian syllabus and Montessori pedagogy up to lower secondary. There are more structured IGCSE prep classes for the upper forms. One can see that they commit to developing quality education that should not be withheld from anyone, especially the poor.

The second impression is the working environment. One can feel passion pulsating throughout the school. Joy is so evident on the countenance of all. And they were very welcoming, especially the young students who were too eager to shake our hands. The students were polite and well behaved, too, which is no small feat for a school of a thousand.

When it comes to education, Dignity wants to give the best. When it comes to operations, Dignity hopes to manage the best. When it comes to teachers and volunteers, Dignity provides free training to anyone with the right heart. They try their best to look after the welfare of all. And the reason why they are so purposeful in every aspect, is that they value the person more than the structure, or schedule, or praise.

It's not about the size and embellishments that impresses. Far be it that we should be taken up by the hopes of overnight sensations. Dignity took some 15 years to end up here, and still they are growing. A teacher confessed to us that her stint has been a learning journey: you don't get it right every day. But every day you press on to give.

At the end of our trip, our guide Petrina, who spearheaded this outreach alongside her husband Ps. Elisha Satvinder, made sure to close with prayer. And I know, somehow, that this is a very prayerful organization. A striking difference from its humble start as tuition classes, Dignity has flourished to what it is today because of the realness of God.