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Friday, 15 January 2010

Upcoming Events

Chinese New Year Charity Dinner

Event: Chinese New Year Charity Dinner
Date:   Saturday 23 January 2010
Time:   1500 Hrs
Venue: IMH Multi-Purpose Hall

Extremely limited seats!! Bro. Jerry has kindly sponsored a table of 10 seats for the youths to attend. Thus far 2 have already been taken. Please contact me if you wish to attend! :)
* More details below.

RUN FOR MY LUNCH!

           Event:    3 / 6 KM Charity Run
           Date:     Sunday, 31 January 2010
           Time:     0730 Hrs
           Venue:   East Coast Park!

Racepack collection on the 23rd and 24th of JAN! Don't forget! :)

A.Ten.Tion!

   Event:    10 Hour Community Service Marathon
   Date:      Saturday, 13 March 2010
   Time:     Morning-ish
   Venue:   TBC - Voluntary Organizations

Finer details are sketchy. However this project seems interesting for us to participate in. I require a general consensus as to who is keen!
*More details about the event below

Chinese New Year Charity Dinner

Firefly Mission (FFM) and Wat Ananda Youth (WAY) are very honoured to be selected by two local companies (renovation and interior design) to organize their first charity dinner, Heart Hatters CNY Charity Dinner on Saturday 23 January 2020. Collective Design Pte Ltd and Mudian Pte Ltd are working with us to light up the world for 200 residents of three of our chosen charities - Institute of Mental Health (IMH), Metta Home and the Moral Home.

Firefly Mission /WAY will be using this opportunity to concurrently raise funds for the Cyclone Nargis project. Funds raised through our (FFM and WAY) ticket sales will go to the Cyclone Nargis funds. We will also be showcasing our activities and achievements during the event to raise awareness, and hopefully to tug a few heart strings and purse strings as well.

In Brother Chan's latest report he shared about the sad plight of many more people in the far flung villages of the Irrawaddy delta and the many more appeals for help that he (FFM) has received. This pitiful situation was also reported in the Straits Times (27 Nov 2009) article, "Cyclone Nargis relief falls short" which said:.

One and a half years after Cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 people and displaced 3 million in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta. The United Nations Economic and Social Commision for Asia and the Pacific delivered a sober reminder that much more [help] is needed and warned the future of the rice bowl region remains in a balance.

Today, hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims are still scrambling to make a living after losing earning members of their families. About 200,000 still live in makeshift shelters and while these have made it through two monsoon seasons, they will not last much longer. Enormous needs remain. Priority sectors identified for swift action are shelter, livelihood, water and sanitation, education and health.

Feel a lump in your throat ? Some of you undoubtedly feel tears welling in your eyes; we are all still swept by a deep sense of compassion for the people of Myanmar. Their cry for help is not always audible and sadly also not often heeded.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck in May2008, Firefly Mission has, thanks to all your generous donations, encouragement, support and tireless effort, already achieved a long list of successes--- rebuilding, rehabilitating and restoring the lives of thousands of Myanmese people. BUT as you can see, there are many, many more people who need help.
While it is impossible for us to help everyone, let's work together to help a few hundred thousand more !! Let's further extend our reach, to touch more lives ! We need your strong support in order to succeed.
We are selling tickets to the dinner at a special price. This is aimed at encouraging wider participation by our volunteers, supporters, family and friends to partake in this exceedingly meaningful opportunity to light up the world of our Myanmar brothers and sisters.
Dinner tickets for FFM and WAY family members, supporters, family and friends are priced at $68 per head for a delicious and sumptuous 9-course meal. You may choose to have either Non-Vegetarian or Vegetarian Dinner. An outline of the Program follows:

4:00pm - 5:00pm: Entertaining and Heartwarming Performances by staff of our corporate sponsors and residents of the Homes.

The God of Fortune will also be there to distribute wealth (Ang Pows) and good fortune (oranges).

5:00pm - 6:00pm:   Dinner served to the Residents of the Homes

6.30pm - 9:00pm: Dinner for everyone else (corporate sponsor and their clients, FFM members, family and supporters)

Firefly Mission aims to help a few hundred thousand more people in Myanmar to rebuild their lives. With your support and effort, we all can make a difference. Please share our vision and our passion with your family and friends. Encourage them to join us for the delicious meal, where they will at the same time be contributing to light up the world.

Community Service Marathon!

2010 will be an exciting year for YEP as it marks YEP's 10th year Anniversary - since it was first launched in February 2000 to encourage our Singaporean youth to travel to the neighbouring region to serve and learn. And to mark this key milestone for YEP, NYC will be holding a celebratory event titled
YEP A.ten.tion!, to celebrate its achievements in promoting youth volunteerism in Singapore over the past ten years.
A main feature of
YEP A.ten.tion! will be a 10-hour Local Community Service Marathon.
The first ever service marathon to be held in Singapore, its key objective is to bring together as many local youth as possible to be part of this mass movement that will inspire them to ‘walk their talk’ and start volunteering locally!

The Service Marathon is scheduled to take place on
13 March 2010 (Saturday), followed by a celebratory cum reunion closing event held in the evening at *SCAPE Youth Park to celebrate YEP's 10th year birthday.

Friday, 08 January 2010

My Vietnam trip... (part 2)

A recount by BFY Medic: Sim Jia Xian
~SRGCE Lao Cai, Vietnam~ Memories Unerased: Chapter 2 - An air of heaviness
We reached Hanoi, Vietnam. From there, we had to take a train ride to Lao Cai, before starting our Fansipan climb. But before all that, we had to visit the Friendship Village there. Along the way there were a lot of things to see, and I witnessed the stark contrast of Vietnam and Singapore.

I mean, just look at this. Building differences, and motorcycles all over.
A couple of pictures here and there, but that would be missing the point of this blog entry, wouldn't it? Here's what I could dig out of the photos I have with me, so this is Friendship Village. This picture below is the best I could take outta that place... Wished I had taken pictures of those kids affected by Agent Orange, then I could've made that difference by waking you guys up to the horrors of war and making you understand the value of peace, by which this place got its name.

Friendship Village. Symbol of peace after the scars of war.

Ah, here it is, one of the rare pictures with people on it.
Kids who would have deserved a better life if not for Agent Orange. Courtesy of Barry Choo, one of our Lao Cai expedition team mates.
Take my word for it. Dioxins are not to be fooled around with it. The kids down there affected by Agent Orange are born with deformities, some become mentally challenged, others become physically disabled. These people live down here, to learn a trade that can help them survive out there in Vietnam on their own. Depending on the seriousness of their condition, some can get out to make a living for themselves after a year at best, sometimes a decade to do so, and sometimes they can simply spend their lives here, doing the same thing over and over again like a robot. Yet they can take joy in what they are doing, so why shouldn't we do so, instead of complaining about bad school grades, school bullying, having trouble understanding school authority, and the like?

Actually, their architecture isn't that bad after all. Funded by several
nations, it seems to be better than the rest of the surrounding buildings.
Joy in their work brings beautiful yields. These flowers are made of crepe paper.
Another beauty of children.

Well, these children shouldn't have been like that in the first place, and honestly, while interacting with the kids, I never felt so helpless in my entire life before. Not knowing Vietnamese is the big barrier which all of us had to break via body language, and I interacted with a Vietnamese boy whom, I was told, was "untalkable", meaning that he can't really articulate his words properly, which I learned later. Hmm, how then do I put my ideas across to this kid then?

It may seem weird, but this entire time, I was thinking about fishing. Patience, just like fishing. I made it through with that thought in my mind, and the kid was finally responding. Yes!

This trip made me realise how there's only so much that one person alone can do. Imagine if you had to take care of all that bunch of kids with this condition. It is not an easy task, and I salute these teachers who have to double up as caretakers. Kudos to you!

The idea of peace, fantastic. Friendship Village - a bittersweet peace that the Vietnamese have. Appreciate it, guys: it's valuable and precious.

Thursday, 07 January 2010

My vietnam trip... (Part 1)

Hi everyone!
Although this post isn't anything about any updates on BFY activities, i just hope that i can share my trip to vietnam with you guys cos' i think that's it a really enriching experience and i should share this with everyone else too!
So... here goes. Any comments about my story or complaints against doing this kind of thing on this weblog please comment in the tagboard thanks!
Metta,
Jia Xian
-----------------------------------------------------------
A recount by BFY Medic: Sim Jia Xian
~SRGCE Lao Cai, Vietnam~ Memories Unerased: Chapter 1 - Virgin Flight
Day 1, Changi Airport, 7 Dec 2009, 8.00am
It didn't take us long enough to reach the airport. It was a morning rush - I forgot my MP3 player that I left to charge the night before, so I thought "Shucks!" No more airplane enjoyment.

We reached the airport, where I kept telling myself, the old me is going to die in Vietnam, and the new me being born within me when I get back to Singapore. It should, it will, and it must show.

To be honest, I was both ready to die both physically and mentally when I sat on the plane. I mean, shit happens all the time. No more problems plaguing me anymore, no more pressure to study study study, no more homework, no more negativities of life anymore...

But what the hell, that only happens if I die. There's a whole lot more things to do in life, and I wasn't about to kick my own bucket just like that before I start. There's no way anyone's gonna convince me to die just like that willingly, wasting 18 years of my life down the drain by some misadventure or some sort. Everyone has to face all these problems anyway, and the cowardly way to deal with it is to die, commit suicide, end your life, etc. I ain't about to do just that - it's just such a friggin' waste.

Enough about all that morbid thought, I'll come back to that later. There's a whole lot of things left for me to learn about Vietnam. The question of being the tourist or traveler. The question of the meaning of life. The question of which one reigns supreme - the mind or the physical ability?

You get the idea - there's just lots of questions which would have been left unanswered if I didn't go down that trip to Vietnam. I had to answer all these questions myself - or leave myself hanging in the air without a clue why I chose to go to Vietnam, defeating its purpose of self-discovery.

Now, back to the main story. I reached the airport at just over 7.30am with my parents. Just nice for me to do a group check in with my fellow mates.

It was my first flight alone without any parental supervision whatsoever. The trip challenged everything that I thought was going to be my life philosophy from then on.

That aside, I had to leave my beloved parents who had always been the major breadwinners of the family, my elder sister and younger twin sisters who have yet to mature and think of the things around them. I can't die there - I've got a family to protect, a family to teach, and a family to bring pride to. I have to survive that, come what may.

And boy, I treasure family time a lot. At that same, familiar McDonald's at Terminal 2, I told my mom about the stuff that I'd be facing - lots of villager lifestyle, no Internet, not even a call back home at worst. I told my parents to take care while I was away. I made that promise to them - I had to come back, dead or alive.

With them leaving the airport before I went inside the departure hall, undeniably I was quite sad. There must be a purpose to this, I thought, as I went in alone anyway.

No, I wasn't alone. I was with my friends, whom I would start calling brothers and sisters after the entire trip with all its experiences through thick and thin.

Monday, 04 January 2010

Hello 2010

Hey leaders!

Tired of countless emails from bf office, mentors and fellow leaders flooding your inbox?

Well I've revived this site to create a central information hub where you guys can check daily for updates. Quick discussions among ourselves can be done also through the use of a tagboard.

I'm not sure how effective this will be and some of you probably by now have your thoughts and comments, which you should feel free to leave behind! but for now lets just try to work this since we already have an account here :)

Metta,
YW