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!

Golfing for charity

Some people play golf to get business, some do it to get away from business. Then there’s the few that make it their business to play golf and help the disadvantaged at the same time. One of our regular volunteers Joyce is a great communicator of JS needs and she connected us to one of her many business networks just so more people could learn about the plight of single parents and do something really meaningful in the process.

Thanks to her gentle nudging, the Selangor & Federal Territory Machinery Merchants Association (SAFMA) took time off from their hectic corporate schedules to play a bit of golf but they did this with a singular purpose – to help raise funds for charity and this time around Jumble Station was among the many organizations that benefited from their heartfelt compassion.

Co-founder Lim Lian See, Joyce and I were invited to attend SAFMA’s 20th anniversary held at the HGH Convention Centre at Jalan Sentul. There we were treated to a sumptuous Chinese ‘makan’ fit for a king and where we were entertained by highly energetic Chinese, Thai and multi-ethnic dancing! The event culminated in a cheque presentation and Jumble Station was given a RM6,000 cheque for Single Parents which came in real handy when we decided to co-host a ‘Back-to-school’ party for the kids of single parents. More on that soon…

A family Outing..with a singular difference!

Family outings are usually tough things to plan. Try that with a dozen families or so and it can be a logistical nightmare. Still that didn’t stop four friends from doing it and doing it each time for single parents for the last three years.

Michael Moey, Dolly Chan, Mary Verguese and Tan Gaik Khim were buddies from USM ( Class of 1976) and this fab four were given a lump sum of money for charity way back in 2006 by A-da Solutions (M) Sdn Bhd plus various individual well-wishers. The four wanted to give single parents some quality time with their children. “During this time, they get to fellowship with other single mothers and participate in the many fun activities eg visits to tea estate, strawberry farm, vegetable farm etc,” Khim says.

This year, they did the same with some 12 families, all single parents recommended by Jumble Station, a community outreach initiative to assist Single Parents in need. We chose single parents who really needed a break or could do with a little pampering for a change. There was Mary Dass, the Mother Theresa of Desa Mentari near Sunway. She has a 20 year old daughter and every one in need at Desa Mentari goes to her for help.

There was Amethy with her two children, there was Krishnan a single father of 5 kids, there was Alice and her two kids, Meng Hong from Kajang with her two daughters, Lonvy from Sungai Buloh with her eight year old son Shaun, there was Anna and Alice, a grandmother of 5 kids that she's caring for and a couple of others as well. Yours truly went along as well to see first hand what it was like and to photograph the families on holiday at cool, CheFoo Centre at Cameron Highlands!


Both parents and kids enjoyed themselves visiting Strawberry and vegetable farms, vegetable market, pasar malam, pasar pagi and touring the Boh Tea plantation. Meals were a hefty affair, nasi lemak in the mornings to biscuits and cookies for tea and dinner saw loads of Cameron vegetables, seafood and meat aplenty, whatever hunger were easily appeased. Lunch too at Tanah Rata was a special treat thanks to the generousity of the Kiwanis of Puchong and Cheras which had graciously agreed to sponsor the meal for our hungry troupe and we all tucked into the seafood cum meat platter voraciously.


What made the trip memorable to many was the thoughtful gesture on the part of the fab four to have the photographs of each single parent and their kids taken after which it was promptly developed and printed. Each family then were given manila cards and ribbons and told to decorate their own photo albums the best way they could. The most creative were awarded prizes but for many of the families, the photographs will be a lasting momento of their precious time together and the precious gift of good times together by an unknown donor who knew how to give the gift of giving in a more meaningful way.

The only sad part of this story? There will not be a 4th outing because the lump sum given by the mysterious donor is finished. The single parents don’t know this, Jumble Station hopes that somewhere out there, someone will step forward to continue this uniquely beautiful gesture of giving and get the fab four to continue organizing more of such trips for the down and out of society. If you have the cash but don’t have the time, then give us a call 016-2202958 (Anne) and we’ll connect you to one of the fab four so that the lives of more single families can be touched for years to come .

Setting Up a soup kitchen in Lembah Subang

What do you do when kids go hungry and they have no one to turn to? Jumble Station came across some children of single parents who for some reason or another cannot feed their children two to three square meals a day.

One single mother locks her children in the house while she goes out to work and the kids will beg for food from which ever neighbour happens to be passing outside their grilled flat. Another single mother, Sumathi Renganathan is undergoing deep depression after being abandoned by her ‘man’. She was living in an abandoned flat meant for demolition where there was no electricity and no nearby neighbours at all. She can’t function normally and chooses to feed her two daughters with cold and days old food because “she doesn’t want her cooking gas to run out!”

These and many others do exist in the very heart of Selangor at Lembah Subang just a mile or so from the old airport at Subang and minutes from the PAWS animal shelter office. For Sumathi, Jumble Station had took her to University Hospital for medical and psychiatric evaluation and then housed her two daughters, Kavi Shalini 4 years and Santhia 2years in a flat that we rented for RM130 a month. It’s a government flat and talk has it that the rental will be raised but that’s another matter.

The flat will be our own Lembah Subang Soup Kitchen and Vennie, a single mother who has since retired will be responsible for the cooking and feeding of hungry children and families thereby ensuring that poor families have at least one good meal a day!

Aside from paying for the rental of the flat, Jumble Station was also able to assist with the set up of the kitchen by sending over an oven cooker, a gas stove, cutlery, plates and other kitchen utensils, a ceiling fan among others which had bee given by other donors.
We are also committed to bringing in groceries and ingredients that will be needed by the cooks to ensure the cooking pots are steaming healthy meals each day for those in need.

It’s a small start but Jumble Station hopes that this soup kitchen will be a place where single parents can also meet up to network and encourage each other while learning new skills from time to time. Sumathi has since been discharged from hospital and is now happily staying at the Stepping Stones Home in Subang where she will have her medical situation monitored and her two little girls cared for daily.

Meanwhile, with the soup kitchen we believe this is yet one more practical way to ease the plight of single parents within the Lembah Subang area and one where other more well off people can step up to assist as well by donating goods or food directly to the families concerned. Those interested can igve a buzz/sms Anne at 016-2202958.

Meet Jumble Station 2!

Exactly one year after Jumble Station1 was born, Jumble Station 2 is now a reality. It is located at RS-G-1 Plaza Sri Muda just a stone's throw from the old wet market. Some 8 months ago, we were considering this location but we opted not to take a spot because then we felt it was a little too soon for Jumble Station to branch out after the failed experiment at Desa Mentari (JS Junior) where we could not find a single mother that was willing to assist us in managing the place efficiently.

Back then too we felt that the Sri Muda location was a little too quiet for our liking and it would be hard to attract people to the shop. Our gut instinct proved right, we saw a few of the early entrants pulling outjust as we were about to move in because they could not stomach the long wait for the place to come alive.

Now however, the environment has totally changed, now the likes of Mydin and other Pasarraya mini-marts have taken residence on the outer fringes of the marketplace and more folks are thronging there. Inside the spanking new market there were still many shops waiting to be rented out.

The wet market was touted to have been demolished and replaced by this new market but three years down the road, the recalcitrant sellers have refused to budge from the old and take up their rightful place in the new market. Hence many shoplots were going for a very reasonable rental indeed. This time we managed to rent a corner lot which used to be a barber shop which came complete with glass walls enabling curious passersby to see right through the shop itself.

On September 19, 2008, we opened the shop for business and Adrian, a single father worked hard at drawing in the buyers but cajoling and persuasion, with a little help from some flyers as well. The purpose of this shop is to enable JS to reach out to yet another poor community - the Shah Alam neighbourhood where exists a large low income and poor community comrpising bumis, Indians and migrant groups.

We hope that this new outlet will prove to be a blessing to these folks as much as JS1 has been to the folks at Angsana USJ1. With more people willing to give their unwanted household items to JS to help Single Parents, JS1 will be filled to overflowing unless we find another outlet and with the obvious slowdown in the economy, resulting in reduced sales, it makes better sense to find another outlet so that the funds for Single Parents will remain sustainable even as the number of Single Parents discovering JS role is increasing.

So far the indication for JS2 looks promising, customers, locals and migrants are finding our products way cheaper than Bundle or our outside rivals but we're still keenly working hard to make this new outlet as much as success as JS1. Our next move is to identify a single mum who is trustworthy and committed enough to look after the shop on a daily basis and on a small allowance to boot!

The old timers there all warned us that it would be tough to succeed there. In fact our new neighbour a Malay herbal shop is already finding it extremely hard to get business and plans to call it quits in a month or two, a Chinese sinseh two doors away switched to a shop fronting MyMydin and told us we wouldn't make it either - but we're still game to try it and we shall see how it pans out in the end!

70 needy folks get Raya Hampers from PPB Group

Malaysia's sugar king Robert Kuok's local corporate arm PPB Group wanted to bless some of the needy folks around Subang and Sunway areas and approached Jumble Station for help in identifying the right people to give Hari Raya Hampers.

Despite the rather short notice, we were able to get some 70 names - 50 from the Angsana area where JS is located and another 20 from Desa Mentari at Sunway to bring joy to . Our JS lorry swung by PPB office at Wisma Jerneh at Jalan Sultan Ismailwhere 70 invidual bags of oggdies were already ready and waiting for delivery. Expecting the usual gaily wrapped hamper, I was surprised to find several, heavily loaded bags good enough for a muscle-man to carry. Inside each bag were an assorted range of goodies from sardines to flourto sugar, to biscuits to cooking oil, Clorox and even fresh bread and apples. All in all it was one heavy load indeed. Just pushing, dragging and shoving the bags albeit carefully onto the lorry was a hefty task that had workers and volunterrs panting and heaving towards the end. desa Mentari was the first stop and it being a week day, a Tuesday most of the 20 Single Mums were away at work leaving only a handful to collect on behalf on the rest.
After that it was off to Angsana where some 30 or so needy ones which included Single Parents, the disabled, the low income, chronically ill and the down trodden were given their respective bag of goodies. For garbage collector Sadi Nawi for instance,it meant being able to eat for a couple of days because prior to that, he depended on his daily wage of RM1.50 - RM3 from the management in lieu of disposing the mountains of garbage that acrrued at Angsana Flats. While some residents there questioned the wisdom of someone who is an acoholic the key and valid point they're missing is that he more than any other person there is really in need of help and if during this Raya month we cannot keep one more indivudual happy and contented if only for a wee while, why then should we begrudge such a person a little joy like this - after all giving a raya hamper is not like one is giving him cash so he can drink right!