Jumble Station meets Daybreak

Jumble Station recently took a trip up north in Ipoh to meet with Daybreak an organisation that helps disabled adults and youngsters to master news skills. The purpose was to see how Jumble Station could get its single parents to earn extra cash while working from the comfort of their own home.

So there we were, single mum Suhaibah, single dad, Adrian, tailor Melini and yours truly headed northwards in a little Kelisa at 9am and arrived at the tin mining town around 12 noon. Once there we were met by Daybreak staff Danielle, Yoong and Ruth who took us off to a hearty mamak lunch and where we first made the acquaintance of Daybreak founder Datuk Sandra.

Datuk Sandra pioneered Daybreak through its many challenging years, 18 in all and was very keen to collaborate with other NGOs on mutually beneficial deals that would enable both parties to leverage on each other’s resources and skills. For former fashion designer Adrian it was easy as pie for him to teach the handicapped workers the art of beading but getting a few of them to really follow his beading pattern was tougher. What’s interesting to note is that there are many handicapped folks who are sewing from home for Daybreak and coming into the headquarters only when the need for additional training is needed or when visitors drop by to have a visit.

Meanwhile, Melini and Sue were taught the simple art of stitching an outline of a pattern thereby allowing for the pattern concerned to have a raised surface to closely resemble the quilting process. This was so easy to do that the duo mastered it pretty fast and expressed an interest in teaching others once they get back to Jumble Station.

Datuk Sandra then said that Daybreak would be happy to take any and all stitched pattern quilting that our single mothers could deliver but Adrian shared his view that it might be better for the single parents to learn to sew something more creative and thereafter sell them for a higher price. This proposal was accepted with alacrity by Datuk Sandra and the work done by JS single parents will be paid according to the grade of work achieved, with A being the highest and C, the most mediocre.

Before heading back to Kuala Lumpur we stopped by to have a delicious dinner – chicken with bean sprouts and topped that off by buying two boxes of chicken cooked in salt, yummy! Our stomachs filled to the brim, our next task was to identify the single parents capable and creative enough to participate with JS in this beading and quilted project. Meantime, we shall wait and see who among the many single parents on our list, will show the most interest.

One may be a single father through biological means or through circumstances. Take Adrian Ong for instance. A well known fashion designer among the Malay fashionista crowd once, he became an unintentional single father when the couple who rented a room in his flat at Angsana left behind their eldest child in his care when they chose to go back to their kampong in Terengganu with their second newborn daughter who was sickly.

Adrian personally took care of the eldest Nisha and the two bonded as a family until she was 7 years old and ready for school in 2008. Her parents came back and took her back with them so that she could help take care of her two other younger siblings. Adrian who had never officially adopted Nisha was shattered by the separation and as a result could not focus on his fashion design work. He lost his job, had his car taken away, was threatened with eviction by his landlord for failure to pay rent, had not eaten for 3 days and tried to commit suicide twice. He was a broken and beaten man when he came to Jumble Station.

Today he helps to manage Jumble Station’s outlets, drives a van to collect items and gets to see his little “princess” every school holiday. He is happy except for one thing – Nisha had been complaining of pains in her head and an X-ray check showed that she had fluid in her brain that could be life threatening if she didn’t take care.

Adrian sought Dr Jong’s help to learn more about Nisha’s condition and was told that at 10 years old, she was still too young to undergo the operation needed to relieve the pressure on her brain. Dr Jong informed a shattered Adrian that once Nisha is 12 years old she would need to undergo an operation where a shunt would be inserted to drain the fluid from her brain. There is of course the possibility that the fluid might dry up and simply go away and that would be great for the single father and his little princess. But for now, Nisha has to build up her immune system and ensure she never collapses because then it could be very dangerous. If she collapses, that could lead to blindness and brain damage!

Adrian does not have the means to pay for this much needed operation but he now has two years to build up his savings to do just that. This is what is now galvanising him to work hard at building on his fledgling Frontier business so that when the time comes for the operation, he will have the means to give his beloved Nisha a new lease of life. Now he realises how with a little help from JS supporters who join Frontierfrenzz (http://www.frontierfrenzz.blogspot.com/) and are keen to stay healthy, he can generate the extra income to help give Nisha a healthier future.

Healthy start to the Year of the Tigerrrr!

Chap Goh Mei celebrations are over and we at Jumble Station decided to start the Year of the Tiger in a grrraphically different way – we opted to go more healthily forward. Today’s incident of a 21 year old asthmatic girl lying comatose in hospital drives home the message that one should never take one’s life or health for granted.

Combined this fear and the fact that single parents must find ways to make additional money to make ends meet at least without them having to leave their kids at home alone while they juggle their many responsibilities. After much cudgelling of the minds, we decided to try taking the multi-level marketing route to assist the single parents in earning what may someday be a passive income.

But which to pick – Herbal Life? Amway??…The list is endless but all of them appears to have products that are priced on the higher end and have been around for so long there is networking inertia and over-saturation. Then we came across one that is ideally suited for our target customer base – the middle to lower class buyers – where the affordability factor is an attractive carrot and the wide range of cutting edged, nanotechnological advanced health supplements is readily available.

The company – Frontier International - headed by Dr SJ Jong has been around since 2004 yet is a relatively rare and quite a find indeed. The company is now targeting the bumiputera market and the founders of JS felt that we could collaborate to achieve two aims – help single parents be more entrepreneurial and to increase their potential to make additional money.

Calling ourselves Frontierfrenzz, we now have single parents to start a ‘family tree’ with them at the top and all others below them as their downlines. Now when the down lines start buying their nutritional supplements from Frontier International, their uplines the single parent, will be able to enjoy the bonus which will be accumulated and translated into cash or a cash voucher for future purchases.

Frontierfrenzz is spearheaded by single mum June Chan a mother of two and yours truly, the co-founder of Parents Without Partners/Jumble Station which is an NGO that focused on assisting single parents in need. Single parents who are participating in this family tree include Adrian Ong, single father and van driver, single mums Sue, Doris, Julie Tan and Panjalai’s kids Kumanan and his sister Sujatha. We hope to recruit and train more so that they too can catch the vision of building their own little business in health and nutrition while helping others to stay healthy.

Since registration to be a distributor for Frontier is still free, it makes sense for the single parents to try and recruit as many new members who are willing to fork out sums to ensure a longer, safer life ahead. The icing on the cake will be if these single parents earn enough someday to go for incentive holidays both regionally and internationally and even perhaps win themselves a car or who knows, even a house!

Is this achievable, for sure especially since the products from Frontier International’s stable are already proven successes despite being low keyed, they are also a varied and ever expanding range that covers every conceivable health issue or woe. Some like Adrian are gung ho about accepting this new challenge others like Sue, Doris and Panajalai’s kids are still trying to feel their footing in the network marketing arena. The going will get a little easier if the targeted customers are willing to abandon buying from their usual outlets and ordering instead from our single parents/ This way, they help to take care of the growing financial needs of poor single parents while taking care of their own health in the most affordable manner. If you don’t have much money to give to the needy, this is the smarter way to do assist those in need hence our slogan “enrich single parents while enriching yourself.”

Of course active promotion is necessary. We were given our first chance to jointly promote JS and Frontierfrenzz during the MPSJ Chinese new year gathering hosted by Subang Adun YB Hannah Yeoh recently.

Another vitamin manufacturer Hovid has also given us some vitamin supplements that single parents can sell outright and pocket the difference. This route is another practical way of helping single parents willing to conduct promotions at the various outdoor mall while determinedly building up their own Frontier Family Tree to great success! We can only give this our best shot and isn't this far better than doing nothing and still expecting welfare?

For those who want to know more about Frontier International check out http://www.frontier2u.my/ or our blog http://www.frontierfrenzz@blogspot.com/ or want to work collaboratively with us as a team call/SMS Mary Anne Tan 0162202958 or email us at frontierfrenz@gmail.com today!.

Nestle chips in to help single parents

For many of us who grew up poor, to be able to drink at least one cup of Milo then was ‘luxury’ indeed. Today, Milo is no longer a luxury but at times, about the only thing that poor children can have to fill their hungry bellies. Which is why when Parents Without Partners & Jumble Station sends groceries to the poorer Single Parents, we always include a tin or a packet of Milo along with other basic necessities such as Maggie mee, milk powder, cooking oil and beras.

More recently, PWP wrote in to Nestle, the giant manufacturer of such popular food staples asking to be included in its food for charity programme so that our food bill cost would be reduced while still being able to feed the needs out there.
Nestle very kindly and helpfully agreed to our request and late in January we were invited up to Nestle office at Damansara to collect our 10 goodie bags of Nestle products, comprising Maggie mee noodles, Nespray milk powder, Milo and Nestum. The goodie bags were promptly given out to needy single parents at Angsana Flats, USJ1 including single mums Panjalai, Suhaibah, Irene Thung, Mariammah, Mila, Siti Arfah, Venie, Letchmy and single fathers Adrian and Hasrun.

These 10 recipients will be the first of many more from Desa Mentari, Lembah Subang, Shah Alam and other areas in the Klang Valley who will be receiving Nestle’s largesse to make live a little easier for them. Kudos to Nestle for responding to such needs and it is hoped that more corporate organisations will step up to assist likewise even as they learn to balance their need to meet the bottom line while making a difference to society.

Livewire team decends on Jumble Station

Jumble Station fairly crackled with electricity as a team of photographers came to film the topic closest to our heart – helping a single parent. The crew of six from Livewire who were attending a Charge-Up conference were visiting JS for the first time and were fairly bristling with excitement.

The conference was a creative event designed to train a new generation of multimedia work crew capable of handling all things related to photography, videography, sound equipment, movie making etc. So the youngsters from as far as Miri and Ipoh came all prepared with a script to photograph the making and helping of a single parent at JS.

Our two helpers Adrian and Meksue were roped in to act as a couple while Mala’s two daughters Nur Ain and Nur Fazlin became their kids. The plot was about a couple who were originally happy but the hubby’s gambling habit tore the façade of happiness apart. They quarrel violently and the wife is pushed out of the house with her clothes thrown out as well. She goes out in tears with her two kids and they sleep in the corridors where JS staff (yours truly) finds them and rescues them. Lian See, JS co-founder then proceeds to interview and takes them under JS care. Simple right? But boy the photography took several hours and Kumeran was kind enough to allow us the use of his flat where the posing and the ‘acting’ could be carried out realistically and more importantly where the shots could be captured creatively. Shooting out in the corridor for the sake of artistic creativity and a touch of realism wasn't easy either - the smell and poor condition made it an appalling place to be at but that's the reality of some single mums who get kicked out of their matrimonial home and end up in the street so to speak. Helping single parents like these from the depths of despair to reach a comfortable state of confidence is exacty what JS aims to do... giving single parents the helping hand to rediscover themselves after a painful setback..Now we’re waiting for the final edited version from the Livewire pros to see how the project panned out!

Secure start to a new school term

Some 100 children of poor single parents were blessed this time around with brand new school bags and uniforms not to mention some stationery as well. This was made possible with the help of some individuals and groups more precisely Secure Parking, the parking behemoth and Sharm's students from the Kevala Wholistic Yoga group.

Secure Parking very generously agreed to finance the purchase of 100 school bags costing around RM59.90 each and some stationary as well as school socks while The Yoga kakis pooled their funds to help with the purchase of new uniforms and long pants. Parents without Partners Bhd’s president Lim Lian See had a tough time buying the school uniforms, pants and shirts from Mydin while sorting out who gets what sizes was another major challenge.

Still the smiles on the kids’ faces as they slipped the new bags onto their small shoulders was a joy to behold and many would have rushed and crowded into Venie’s small flat at Lembah Subang if we had not put them into batches and given them a specific time to collect their “Back 2 School” items.

At Angsana, Subang Mewah, USJ1 a low keyed Christmas celebration was organised to coincide with the Back2School programme where single parents from Puchong, Angsana and Klang were invited to attend. The event drew an enthusiastic response from the single parents who could make it and the highlight was to have tiny tots walking off delightedly with a bag that appeared somewhat bigger than their physique. So to all our sponsors, well wishers and collaborators, a Very Big Thank You for securing such a lovely start to a new school term.

Christmas with the YWCA PJ

Christmas is coming...the goose is getting fat, please put a ringgit in the old lady's hat, if you haven't got a ringgit, 50sen will do, if you haven't got that too, then God Bless U!

Christmas came a little early for our single parents kids this year with the YWCA of Section 20 PJ hosting a party for 30 of our little ones. The Genesis United (Gen2) Cell Group members were on hand to sing some Christmas carols to inject the lively Christmas spirit followed soon after by a clown performance.

The clown who doubled up as a magician caught the rapt attention of the little ones with his slick sleight of hand tricks from turning a straight magic wand into a lifeless piece of stick to the release of a pigeon after first dousing the pan with a ring of fire! Probably the most captivating act was that of delivering a cute little bunny from his seemingly empty bag and it had all the kids clamouring to pat the little bunny!

President Kemmy (pix) and her team did a superb job with the goodie bags, the food and the spirit of camaraderie that pervaded the YWCA house where the party was held. For sure the kids had a terrific time and for many it was their first ever introduction to what joys Christmas can bring and what it means to many of us, the more privileged ones.

And lest we forget.....A Very BLESSED CHRISTMAS to everyone from us folks at JUMBLE STATION.