The children…

Done with my back-to-school shopping, I had to update the sponsorship account and prepare the individual statements for all the sponsored children. After that I needed to send the statements to the various sponsors so I could ask them to remit, if they agree to, the sponsorship amount for 2012. However, there were a few sponsors who didn’t bother to wait for me to send the statements, they simply banked in the amount into our bank account.

With 4 of the 32 sponsored children completing their SPM/SPVM in 2011, there should be 28 left to continue under the sponsorship programme. Another one, a 14 year old HIV+ girl, orphaned since baby and had been staying with her maternal grandma all the while, had ran off to stay with her paternal grandparents. So we have to discontinue sponsorship for her as we are not in touch with her paternal grandparents. That leaves 27.

Azman, Sofie’s son decided to stop schooling after his PMR so he could work, but seeing that his interest lies in cooking, I managed to coax him to join a culinary school. So he’s out of the sponsorship programme as well, leaving 26.

The 26 almost became 25 as I was not able to get in touch with an Orang Asli client of mine. My calls didn’t get through, and my text messages were never replied either. Visit her at home? I’d need a 4WD to be able to reach her house.

However, during my clinic duty today, as I was about to go over to the doctor’s room, I heard someone shouting, “Kak Ros! Kak Ros!” Definitely not calling me, or so I thought, but I turned anyway to see who it was because the lady’s voice sounded so familiar. Indeed it was. The lady who was calling for Kak Ros was Wan, the Orang Asli lady whose son is under our sponsorship programme. And the person she called Kak Ros was…. ME!!! Erk? I certainly wasn’t aware of any attempts to change my name to Kak Ros…

“Akak! Lama tak cakap dengan akak, rindu! Nombor saya dah tukar kak! Nah Kak Ros ambil nombor baru saya.”

“Nama akak bukan Ros lah, nama akak Afizah.”

“Oh ye ke? Hihihihi…”

She had never called me by name before, usually she just calls me akak. Probably all the while she thought my name was Ros although I can’t for the life of me figure out where she got that name from. Like someone mentioned on my FB wall, maybe she had been watching too much of Upin & Ipin (there’s a garang Kak Ros in that story). Wan’s son got 4B and 1C for his recent UPSR and will be going to a secondary school for Orang Asli children.

Other than the sponsored children, many other children of our clients are covered under our Children Education Fund (CEF). For CEF, we only cover for their back-to-school expenses and if needed, their monthly bus fares. We don’t cover for pocket money and tuition. Thank goodness we managed to get more funds for CEF this year, since many more children from poor families needed schooling help.

While I’m done with the children’s back-to-school shopping, my next task now is to list down the children needing bus fares, and also the sponsored children’s monthly pocket money and other expenses. It will be much easier if the money is transferred via monthly standing instructions to the various clients’ bank accounts so that I don’t have to worry about doing it manually every month. That way, I don’t have to worry about being late either.

Once I settle all these, I should be able to go back to my normal routine…