A Great Christmas Gift!

With the year drawing to a close and Christmas season is still lingering around, what would be the best gift you can possibly give someone especially to those orphaned children? A toy car? A toy doll? Beautiful clothes? Money? To me and I think all of you would agree is LOVE.

The good works of the people at Sunbeams Home have truly been blessed as they continue to work to give 'parental' LOVE to the orphaned children under their care in Taman Mawar, Cheras. We at APOH can only help them from a far by raising funds for them. Our 'A Piece Of Hope Chapter 4 Mt Kinabalu Charity Trek' about 5 1/2 months ago to date have raised an awesome...

This is a figure that we can hardly imagine when we first started. A big figure because we believed that YOU who gave have a BIG heart for these underprivileged children. Indeed this is a great Christmas gift for them.

We hope that as APOH continue to help the next children NGO in 2011, YOU can participate again in donating your resources. You can always rest assure that your contribution is genuinely directed to the NGO.

Thank you and Happy New Year to all!

A Whopping Figure!

With A Piece Of Hope Chapter 4 Mt Kinabalu trek completed for almost a month now, the collection for donation has not. The 7th record this year will be surpassed in leaps and bounds. In the last sms I received from Alvin Tan of Sunbeams Home, the money in their bank now stands at a whopping:

The RM150k mark has been overwhelmed thanks to all donors and efforts of A Piece Of Hope (APOH) trekkers. As we speak efforts are still on-going to secure more donations. This will probably go on until the end of September or October 2010.

The APOH committee has set the date for next year's trek from 9th - 13th July 2011. Booking for a place in next year's trek is NOW OPEN. In order to secure a place, you have to book your flight ticket first then inform Jimmy Lim about it and he will book a place for you.

Next year's NGO have not been selected yet but we welcome suggestions on it. Two of the criterias for minimal selection are

1. Must be an NGO related to children.

2. Must have tax-exempt from the government of Malaysia.

You can email me the suggestion at: apieceofhope@gmail.com

A year filled with many ‘first records’

A Piece Of Hope Chapter 4 Mt Kinabalu Charity Trek has been completed. It was a trek that saw many ‘first record’ created.

On the books, we had 140 trekkers (1st record) this year surpassing any other year. With so many trekkers from so many different places, we also had many challenges in organizing such a large group. Thanks to the tireless organization efforts of Jimmy Lim and his team, this year’s trek went on smoothly without any untoward incidences. There were a total of 4 buses (2nd record) used in transporting the trekkers from Kota Kinabalu to Kinabalu Park.


The trek up Mt Kinabalu had to be broken into 2 days, one going up on 18th July consisting of 100 trekkers and the other on 19th July consisting of 40 trekkers from the Hash Hound Harrier group. From the onset, the organizing committee tried their best to keep the trekkers together but to no avail as the park management could not give the 140 beds at Laban Rata. Nevertheless, the spirit of the trekkers were high. So it was the first that A Piece Of Hope trek had to be done in the span of two days (3rd record).

A Piece Of Hope trek in previous years had children trekkers but not as many as this year. There were a total of 5 children (4th record) below the age of 12 years old who took part. Most came from the Pang family who had 3 children, one of them had a hole in the heart.

One of the first to arrive at the peak of Mt Kinabalu is Mok Jee Sang. Here is an excerpt from his climb to the peak, “We started the trek to the summit at about 2.30am. I was given the task of carrying the Sunbeams banner to the summit by some smart fellow. I was asked to come back with some photographs taken with the banner at the Low’s Peak. Guess that was the motivation for me to hit the summit. A failed mission will not be too pleasing. We were stopped by the ranger at the Sayat Sayat check point as our guide has not arrived and he just made us wait in the chilling weather (about 4 deg. Celsius) for about 15 minutes or so and finally he allowed us in. This last 1.5km trek up to the summit was quite demanding not so much on the stamina but due to the thin air at that altitude. We somehow managed to reach the summit with the photographs taken and so mission accomplished”.

With this year’s exceptionally good weather at the peak, many made it to the peak for the sunrise before 6am. At last count, 102 trekkers (5th record) out of 140 trekkers made it to the peak. The rest had either tried but went only half way in the night climb due to Air Mass Sickness or just rested at Laban Rata after a tiring day’s trek. There were several trekkers whom on the way down from the peak or Laban Rata took on leg injuries. They had to virtually ‘limp’ their way down and some had to be ‘portered’ down. So the latest arrival time at base camp was at 9pm! (6th record).

One of the greatest story have to be this. Lisa while resting during the trek, mentioned about A Piece Of Hope charity trek to a British couple. To her surprise, the couple after hearing the noble cause pass her some cash for donation. This goes to show that there are many charitable people, even in the most of unlikely situations.

To cap off a year of many ‘first records’, the total collection for A Piece Of Hope Chapter 4 Mt Kinabalu Trek has reached the RM130,000 mark as informed by Alvin Tan of Sunbeams Home. With some other cheques not sent to Sunbeams Home yet, the figure could easily surpass RM135,000 (7th record), the highest of all the 4 years.


Finally, a word of million thanks to all of YOU who have helped to collect donations and donated in some way or the other.

Statistics:
18 July – 97 trekkers (14 Timpohan and 83 Mesilau); 25 didn’t make it to peak
19 July – 39 trekkers (9 Timpohan and 30 Mesilau); 8 didn’t make it to peak

Go for Goal... Lets start collecting donation for Yayasan Sunbeams Home

Apart from just conquering Mt. Kinabalu for our self-achievement, this year again we are able to share our achievement with the less fortunate. Our target this year of RM100,000 should be much easier than last year due to our sheer size of 140 climbers. As the malay saying goes, ‘sedikit sedikit menjadi bukit’. This is not the compounding interest notion but is the power of collective effort.

Maybe for some of us collecting donation is harder to do than climbing Mt. Kinabalu, just for the sake of the unfortunate children of Sunbeams (YSH), we must conquer this ‘mountain’. It is a ‘mountain’ that needs no physical strength but only the will of our human mind. So lets set our goal to conquer both mountains. After having done these, we can say to ourselves that we have indeed made a BIG difference in someone else’s life.

With only time as a factor to us, we must utilise it wisely for maximum impact. No matter how much we can collect, may it be RM10 or RM10,000, we have at the least did something meaningful through this Mt. Kinabalu climb. Just think of it, we have so many friends, colleagues and relatives that we can ask for donation. The technology of the internet has made us to be in constant contact with one another through applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, etc. Use it and use it wisely and meaningfully this time.

An email detailing how the donation collection is to be done was sent out recently. In it a covering letter from YSH and donation forms were attached as pictured below. If for any reason some of you did not receive these, please inform Jimmy or myself (apieceofhope@gmail.com) and we will gladly email you again. Or if not, you can download it by clicking the picture below.

Look out in the newspapers for the write up of our charity climb some time early June. Happy Soliciting Donation!

Recce visit to Yayasan Sunbeams Home on 21st March 2010 @ 3pm

It was a cloudy Sunday afternoon. The ‘A Piece Of Hope’ (APOH) committee comprising of Jimmy, Wendy, Engu, Foo Weng, Samantha Lee and Ted, conducted a recce visit to this year’s benefiary home. The committee brought along some goodies for the children such as KFC and cup cakes (specially baked by Samantha Lee).

Located in Taman Mawar, Cheras, Sunbeams have been established since 1995 by Mr. Alvin Tan and his wife Lucy. What started as a noble act turned into today’s Sunbeams Home that shelters 80 children from various races whom are abandoned, abused or neglected. At the time of our visit, all of the children were out so we did not meet them in person. All the children are housed in 2 terrace houses, one of which is a corner house where main activities are done.

Mr. Alvin mentioned that the children comes from all walks of life except Muslim children where they must be placed in a Muslim home (provided by law). He continued to tell us that they are also looking for a bigger place to house the children. He was asked whether the neighbours welcome their presence in the community, he quickly said that the neighbours are very supportive of the home. Ted mentioned that it was not so at the Persatuan Kanak-Kanak Cacat Taman Megah, a home in which APOH helped 2 years back. They are indeed fortunate with such good neighbours.

As the conversation progress into the immediate needs of the home, Mr. Alvin said that they have plenty of food especially rice in which they sometimes sell to others. Help in the form of money is their main concern every time. Jimmy then said that APOH is the right vehicle to raise such funds as it has been doing so for the past 3 years.

The visit to Yayasan Sunbeams Home ended with an agreement that APOH will help to raise RM100,000 through its Mt. Kinabalu climb happening in July 2010.

Final Tally for A Piece Of Hope (APOH) 2009 and Brief Information for APOH 2010

How time flies... It has been a good 7 months since APOH 2009 concluded its climb up Mt. Kinabalu in July 2009. The climb was for Persatuan Kanak-Kanak Istimewa Kajang (PKIK). Our target to raise RM100,000 for them was indeed a tall order given the global economic situation that has affected not only businesses but the 'local man on the street' as well.

We are proud to announce that at the end of January 2010, the fund raised for PKIK has surpassed our target. The final tally stood at RM113,204. Although it took a long time to reach this figure, it was indeed well worth the wait.

A very big THANK YOU once again to all our generous donors whom have contributed to this fund.

Now... Its time for APOH 2010. As the committee is gearing up for yet another climb up Mt. Kinabalu, preparations are also underway for the charity part. Up until today there are 3 NGOs that are on the selection list as the beneficiary of our climb. The committee members will be finalising the selection hopefully by mid-March. This year's APOH 2010 have already gotten overwhelming response so far. As many as 140 would be climbers or APOHers have already signed up with some even bought their flight tickets.

APOH 2010 will run from 18 - 19 July. More information to come...