This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 4, 2018 - June 10, 2018

A new government is in place after more than six decades but the work goes on for organisations such as Tindak Malaysia and Invoke Malaysia, which played a significant role in bringing about change.

Despite their roots in electoral reform and politics, both have social and economic aspirations to aid the poor and marginalised.

Dealing with rural poverty is on Tindak’s agenda, says its founder P Y Wong. “Economics can’t be separated from politics,” he observed, adding that his hope is for the younger generation to be encouraged to get on board with Tindak’s ideas and to take them forward. “Human greed doesn’t end, and freedom isn’t free.”

Rafizi Ramli is also not quite ready to wind up Invoke as he wants to continue to provide employment for the 100-odd employees in 17 field offices throughout the country.

Already, Invoke is looking ahead to other projects where it can harness grassroots volunteerism.

“We intend to explore and branch out to other voluntary work, where there are social or economic needs,” he said, pointing to free tuition classes for lower-income students and micro-credit or small business schemes as examples.

“The method or methodology of grassroots volunteerism can be turned to other means as well,” he said, because by empowering the masses, they need not rely so much on government aid. “Invoke has a lot of potential to do that.”

He reckoned the organisation has 8,000 to 10,000 “committed volunteers” and the idea is to channel the volunteerism into areas of need. Other Malaysians not interested in politics might also be more inclined to help out.

But Invoke does not intend to be entirely altruistic.

Having put RM1 million into the set-up, 40-year-old Rafizi is understandably also keen to monetise the set-up to help pay wages.

He indicated that the technology deployed in macro-targeting, data mining, analytics and digital application can be leveraged not solely for politics, social, or economic matters, but also commercial purposes.

According to the self-confessed geek, Invoke has created its own apps and software, which, combined with its expertise in big data and analytics, could engineer “powerful tools” or solutions that can be commercialised.

He revealed there are parallel projects ongoing and that Invoke anticipates selling its solutions as early as August.

“Once we have the big data, it will help us determine the messaging. Our Facebook digital broadcast has a large reach ... and it’s the same set of skills.”

Incidentally, he has also talked about Invoke joining the ranks of big data companies in Asia that research and predict elections, and offering its services to Thailand and Singapore.

While Invoke was spot on in predicting PH’s victory in GE14, its forecast of Islamist party PAS’ performance was nowhere near. PAS managed to snare 18 parliamentary seats while Invoke projected it would secure none.

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