Datin Elya Lim Abdullah

Datin Elya Lim Abdullah has a Bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Monash University Australia. She and her late husband, Dato Adnan (founder and former president of OrphanCare) became orphan activists after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that left many children orphaned in Aceh, Indonesia. A business friend wanted to bring 15 orphans from Aceh to be adopted by Malaysian families but couldn’t because of nationality issues. Encouraged however by the response to the appeal for adoptive parents Datin Elya and Dato Adnan mobilised friends to ‘do something for Malaysian orphans’. This is how OrphanCare started.

Datin Elya heads the deinstitutionalisation project at OrphanCare.