Thank you donors!

For the past month or so, many of my friends have been very generous with their donations for the families I'm dealing with in my voluntary work with Buddies. The funds under Buddies are rather limited, so the financial assistance under Buddies are mainly restricted to children's education (only for school-going children of our poor clients) and clients' welfare (approval given by discretion of the Board on a case to case basis).

Whenever any of my clients and/or their families need any additional help, I usually resort to outside sources. Like for example, remember the girl who was raped at 15 and stopped schooling after her PMR? The girl was previously under our Education Sponsorship Program, but she no longer qualified after she stopped going to school and went to a culinary college instead. But given her situation, her sponsor agreed to still help her out directly through me, not only for her further studies, but also additional expenses for her baby's needs. And when, against all odds, she scored excellent results in her SPM despite having to study on her own as a private candidate, quite a few joined in to share a reward for her as acknowledgment & encouragement. (I bought her a laptop for her to use for further studies.)

Likewise, when many of the other children, upon completion of their SPM, further their studies at higher learning institutions or vocational colleges, since expenses are no longer covered by the Buddies Children Education Fund or Sponsorship Program, many of my friends had been more than willing to help out, particularly for whatever amount needed during the initial registration.

Sometimes, there were clients who wanted to start small businesses as their source of income, but their main problem had always been the money required as initial capital, which they didn't have. Again, I usually resort to my friends (mainly via FB) for help (after my own assessment of the clients of course, I don't simply help them out without any kind of assessments). Today, for example, I went to send a brand new sewing machine (money from donors) to a client who badly needed it to continue sewing curtains as her source of income. All these while, she had been using an old mechanical sewing machine which she inherited from her late mother.

Knowing that my dealings with needy clients are always on-going, some friends donate from time to time without me having to ask for it. I usually use their donations for any immediate needs of the poor families I come across.

Oh, I must also specifically mention that I even have blog readers who had never even met me before, who had been donating without questions asked.

I don't even have to prepare pages and pages of reports to be given to these donors. For donors among my FB friends, they get their reports from my FB updates. For donors among blog readers, they get their reports from my blog postings (which makes me feel a bit guilty because I no longer update my blog as often as I used to, sorry!).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all you donors out there for making my voluntary work easier. I'm so lucky to somehow be connected to so many generous people.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!