Back to School Rush!

What’s usually the biggest headache parents face towards the start of a new school term? Finding the cash to buy new school uniforms, school shoes, bags, books and stationery. If you have more than two kids, the problem becomes a migraine indeed and if you’re a Single Parent, it’s enough to send you to the loony bin.

Realising this, Jumble Station got together with a couple of charitable souls from various churches, led by Damansara Utara Methodist Church’s Excel Community Services and several CGs, to assist Single Parents and their children cross this tough hurdle. The “Back to School” party was also organised to coincide with the festive Christmas season to bring greater cheer into their weary and tired lives.

Some 50 Single Parents and 130 children from Desa Mentari which is a stone throw from Sunway were able to participate in this event where they were royally treated to a sumptuous dinner replete with one humongous stuffed roasted turkey donated generously by Victoria Station and topped off with packets of Cheezels and Tiger biscuits from Kraft that had the little ones smiling from ear to ear. For many of them, these were rare treats indeed!

While the children were delighted to get a set of spanking new uniforms, school bag and stationery set, many of the single parents too were not forgotten and each went home with a goodie bag filled to the brim with grocery items that ranged from ‘beras’ to cookies, oil to flour among others.

Lucien a freelance photographer took some candid and picturesque shots of the fun filled event and the pictures themselves tell a very telling tale of how a thoughtful few, with lots of enthusiasm can bring tremendous joy to many of the less privileged, more importantly to the Single Parents who are generally overlooked during the ‘Back to School” rush. At least this time, they weren’t!

Interested in helping single parents in need – call us at 016-2202958

A-hunting JS went

Here's a fun way to raise some funds for charity - have a treasure hunt! Well Jumble station was given an opportunity to participate in a hunt with a difference - firstly it was organised by a church - DUMC - and it was the first time ever the church's community centric arm was doing this and secondly it was part of a programme designed to bring the Christmas joy to some single parents.

Some 20 single parents and their kids, making a total of 40 in all, turned up a day earlier for a day long carnival where games, carolling and just pure fun was the order of the day. First off they had to guess the weight of a large Christmas hamper, it showed if you go shopping often and someone said it weighed like a newborn baby. Never having had a kiddo, I could associate it more to the weight of a bag of rice - so I put the figure at 5.8kg, aw shucks, it turned out to be a bigger bag - 9.5kg! There was also the guess the number of stars os all those with a head for figures and an eye for the shiny stars went a-countin but come to think of it, I don't remember hearing what the final score was and who actually won it! There were other activities like the tangram, drawing competition etc

The next day was the treasure hunt and since it was organised by a church with the help of a professional hunt firm - Time-out Solutions - it's logical to think it might have some Bible related questions. Wrong - not a thing unless you wanna count the question where it said 'what was Jesus first words to Joseph? Ans - Oh Pappa!.. The rest of the time the questions were quite tough and one had to be really Sherlockian to get the right answer - it didn't help when we got lost somewhere in Bangsar and missed out on some Qs and didnt quite get our treasures that tepat---still overall it was an enjoyable afternoon and JS staff got the much needed break needed for the holiday season, enough to make this Christmas really memorable to say the least..lets hope we do better at the next JS paricpating hunt!