Jumble Station’s 1st Mother’s Day celebration

From May 1, Jumble Station was asked by Shelter Home to take over its 3-year old Single Mothers Network group since we’re already doing a good job of it! This is a challenge we were more than willing to take on because it is precisely an integral part of our vision and mission.

This special takeover event will be celebrated on a discreet scale on June 1 2008. JS will be holding a Mothers Day event to get all the Single Parents that are currently under Jumble Station’s care to meet up with some of those who were from the Shelter Home Single Mothers Network.

The event will be held at Hall 3 of Dream Centre which is just next door to Jaya 33 at Section 13/1 Petaling Jaya from 2.30pm - 4.30pm. While we have around 150 Single Parents on our database, only 60 of the poorest among them will be feted on that day, together with their children.

Among the activities to look forward to is the dance performance by the Angsana Residents led by single father Aiman who together with his motley crew will perform the “pocho pocho’ dance and some cha cha to boot. Also in the offing will be some lucky draws, a presentation about Jumble Station and its mission as well as a song or two.

Themed “Mum, you’re my everything” this event aims to recognize the special role and continuing importance of Single Parents as they struggle to keep their family together despite their difficulties. We’re currently looking for donors willing sponsor a ‘draw prize or two’ so that as many of these single mums can go home with a surprise gift.

If you’re interested in assisting Jumble Station in this matter of gifts, do drop us a line at jumblestation@gmail.com or SMS 016-2202958 …your thoughtful gesture can bring joy to a mother who may not have won a prize in her life – so go on, surprise someone this time around.

Reading maketh ..some kids?

Jumble Station gets lots of books, adults and kiddies type and we’ve discovered that except for the comics and really light reading, the folks at Angsana aren’t a reading lot, not even the little ones.

Many parents have expressed a wish to have their kids learning English but getting tuition teachers, good ones at that is a problem these days, considering the fractured English spoken by the X-generation.

Anyway JS was approached by the Persatuan Penduduk Pangsapuri Angsana to help generate interesting activities that can be conducted at the newly built multipurpose hall. We immediately offered to start an English reading class to help get the youngsters at Angsana familiar with the English language. This is one good way to launch our plan for a Learning Station which will also include a sewing class very soon, hopefully.

Last Saturday was the first class and co-founders Sanice abd Mary Anne together with volunteer Joyce Leong, Jonathan, Aiman and a cameo appearance by Judy Chai kicked off this programme with some 24 little ones.

Sanice taught the 10-12 age group, I took the 5-9 crowd while Joyce gamely took on the tiny tots who knew nothing of ABC. While Sanice put the bigger ones through their spelling phase, I settled for ABC rhymes, a game, a story and finished the session with a rousing Hokey Pokey song simply because many of the kids don’t know what’s left or right as yet!

Customers later came back with some feedback that their kids had thoroughly enjoyed the session, including a few who had been extremely reluctant at first to go for the class and had to be dragged there by their parents. So folks, do keep up the great volunteer effort and lets make it a firm commitment to be at the dewan every Saturday from 2.30pm till 4pm or at least make sure someone is there to substitute if you can’t because what we do today, will have a huge impact on the future of at least one child if not all of them. I know this ‘cos it happened to me!

The dilemma of being a single father….

Society tends to sympathise with Single Mothers far more than a Single Father. Perhaps it is the fact that Single Mothers tend to appear frail, fragile and are rather overwhelmed by the tragedy that puts them in the sad situation that they are in. If the Single Mother is a homemaker, the problem is made worse for now she has to worry about getting an income while keeping the family intact.

Single Fathers on the other hand are expected to be strong, remain the sole and consistent breadwinner and the bulwark of the family unit. To the public, a Single Father should be a lot better off than a Single Mother so one should not waste too much time on them. The reality may be entirely different!

This societal prejudice against a Single Father exists and it can be painful especially if you are illiterate, poor and lack skills. Sandra Babu (pronounced Chandra) is one such case. The father of 9 children, seven of them boys and two girls, their ages ranging from 14 years old to four years, faced this bitter dilemma ever since wife who suffered from asthma died in her sleep last September.

Babu suddenly became a single father to his brood. While his two daughters were sent to live at Shelter Home, the seven boys remain at home under his care. The snag is, the last couple of months have been really tough on him. With no money, uneducated and no real skills, it has been a really a rough transition time for Babu.

Why can’t he just go and get a job, you ask? He could but ask yourself this - what kind of a job will give him enough salary to pay for someone to care for all his 7 boys? Even at RM200 per head (which is the lowest price), he will need to fork out RM1,400 just for a day care minder and what about the issue of food, rental, clothes etc?

For the last 10 years or so, Babu has been working as a lorry driver, renting his sister-in-law’s lorry for RM35 a month and was able to take care of his family needs from whatever he earns as a lorry driver cum buyer and seller of recycle items. However ever since his wife’s untimely death and with the high prices of commodities, he has had been able to rent his sister-in-law’s lorry because they wanted to use it for themselves.

Undaunted, Babu has struggled on by renting other people’s lorry for RM50 each time whenever his regular recycle clients call him to take away their unwanted, recycle items. However the lorry owners naturally will rent to him the lorry for only two to three hours or not at all. This erratic means of income has made it extremely tough on him to earn a steady income while still trying to keep his family intact.

Without a fixed monthly income and no savings at all, no bank was willing to loan him the money to buy his own lorry and with no one willing to stand guarantor for him, his future seemed bleak. Worried sick and discouraged, Babu contemplated suicide but only the thought of leaving his children orphans made him stop.

And then Jumble Station, a community outreach initiative learnt about his situation and stepped into his life. First off, Jumble Station helped to pay off his outstanding rental payments, gave him a monthly sum for groceries, got a Single mother to keep an eye on his kids and finally, loaned him the money to get a lorry of his own.

The lorry is registered under Jumble Station but Babu now has the means and motivation to make something of himself for his children. With a lorry of his own so to speak, Babu now has a brighter hope to excel in what he already knows and is capable of doing.

All he needs now is for the public’s support to use his 1 ton lorry to transport goods within the Klang Valley area (he needs to be home at nights for his children) and to collect recycle items be it paper (Photostat paper, magazines, newspaper etc), metals (rusty or old vehicles wanted as well) and plastic.

Babu will also assist Jumble Station with the collection of big items such as washing machine, fridge, TV, furniture etc that people may want to donate to Jumble Station. However, a minimum fee will need to be paid to help cover the cost of gasoline and to help pay off the loan for the lorry.

So if you or anyone you know has need of a lorry someday do call/SMS Jumble Station (mary anne 016-2202958) and do your part to ensure that this Single Father is able to take care of his family without any more ‘charity’ for that ultimately is what Jumble Station aims to do ‘help one needy single parent’s family at a time”.

Prema… shy about asking for help.

In the course of helping out Single Parents, we at Jumble Station have discovered there are two kinds of people – the kind that are so apologetic and embarrassed about their dire situation and need for financial assistance while the other kind is so used to getting handouts, they demand for it, take from all and sundry and demand to know why aid is stopped!

The first kind is where Prema our newest Single Mother belongs to. She is a mother of three children, abandoned some months back by her Chinese husband a drug addict and left to fend for herself and her kids.

Prema works as a tea lady cum cleaner at a manufacturing outfit in USJ 4 and earns only RM650 a month but after EPF deductions, her take home pay is only RM600. She earns an extra RM100 cleaning a house but even this is not enough. Prema was referred to JS by Shelter Home and she tells us that she has problems paying off the monthly rental for her low cost flat especially after the MPSJ raised her rental by RM100 just prior to the March 8 elections.

Her rental arrears amounts to RM1,600 and she’s forced to borrow RM800 from a friend to settle part of the arrears. JS donated RM100 and some groceries to her the first time we met her and then gave her a further RM800 to help her with her rental arrears. We’re now trying to see how best we can help her overcome her financial woes so that life will be much easier for this stoic Single Mother. Prema was quite overcome when we insisted she take the RM800 because she couldn’t quite believe that there are folks out there that care enough to want to help. It is folks like this that makes reaching out to real needs such a joy indeed….

Closing down JS junior ….and opening a new chapter at Angsana

You’ve heard the saying that one should teach another to fish so he can eat a lifetime rather than merely feed him a fish each day. Sometimes though, it is hard to teach someone to fish when the person does not want to fish!

We faced this situation at Desa Mentari when we set up JS Junior and a tuition centre there as part of our effort to reach out to the needs of the 20 Single Parents there. We did that upon the request of the folks there but the sad thing is that none of the Single Parents there with the exception of one, was willing to lend a helping hand to keep it going and ensure its success.

The sole person, Mary Dass initially started off very enthusiastically but soon lost steam when the response from the flat dwellers and the single parents there were pitifully poor. It seems that they were so used to receiving things for free, they couldn’t contemplate paying for anything or volunteering at JS unless they were paid a salary.

To make matters worse, the one month when JS Jr was placed in the care of a single mother who in turn outsourced it to her teenage daughter, whatever monies came in went into ‘feeding’ the teen’s insatiable handphone calls. Even the tuition fees, what little there was, suffered the same fate and the petty cash too were ‘borrowed’ by the teen who spun some very blatant lies to cover the loss of the cash.

In the end, we decided that it was more expedient to cut our losses and close down JS Jr and wonder of wonders, another church group was even then looking to rent a flat and we agreed to let them take over the tenancy of the place and collect our rental deposit.

Meanwhile at Angsana Flats itself, Jumble Station was invited by the Resident Committee to assist with activities for the spanking new multipurpose hall. We agreed to help start an English reading class beginning this coming Sat, May 3rd because this will help us to utilise some of the children’s books that were donated by kind donors. So watch out for more info on this…meanwhile here's the pix of the chairman, secretary and football captain of the Angasana Flats resident committee receiving their football club jersey during the meeting where JS co-founders were invited to attend. What we need now are committed volunteers to assist with the story telling, nursery rhymes and activities for the kiddies at Angsana...

Switch on your TV, tune in to RTM 1

Come Thursday night April 24 at 9pm… catch the 3 minute segment on Jumble Station over on RTM 1 ‘s “Fitra Kasih” show where you will JS stars like Lim Lian See, Sanice Kam, Lillian, Jonathan and Rong Tau, Mala and Rainah all strutting their stuff…here’s your chance to catch them in action….and if you can’t …here are more pix of the RTM shoot…

From Audio to Visual …Jumble Station hits the airwaves….

Being heard …on Bernama Radio 24
JS makes it to the radio… okay not many of you knew that JS made it to the radio waves last Sunday morning except for a few who tuned into 93.9FM belonging to Bernama radio channel 24.

Interestingly a quick check of the Internet prior to the actual interview showed that it’s a radio channel that was launched on Sept 3 2007 which makes it as young as Jumble Station itself. I also loved the fact that the station was born on the same day as myself, minus a couple of years… okay a few decades to be exact!

So anyway, for the last two Sundays, Feb 6th and Feb 13th, Jumble Station have had the unique chance to share its vision and mission on the air and via TV. Thanks to the write up by The Star Metro and the SJ Echo, the other local newshounds have pounced on JS as a good news bite and invited us to share something about what we’re doing with the Malaysian public.

Lian See and I woke up early for the Bernama Radio 24 live talk show on 93.9FM and brought along single mum Rainah Kinsang and Babu Chandran. We treked our way to the Bernama HQ at Jalan Gurney in KL and found not a single warong where e could have a quick bite but McDonalds came to there rescue...

So there we were interviewed live and in er.. fractured BM described to the listeners the plight of the poor single and how JS is trying its best to make life a little easier for them. It was a pretty indepth interview with some pretty incisive questions given during the 2 hour talk show while Rainah and Babu had a hard time overcoming their shyness and gave their replies in strangled voices…

Today, we come out from behind the microphone to stand in front of the camera for RTM’s charity show - Fitra Kasih - and the support from our JS supporters for JS’ television debut was great – almost everyone who cared, turned up to help us out from Lillian of Street Ministry who timed her arrival to deliver stuff and was caught on camera by the RTM crew to Azahar, Rong Tau and Jonathan who had rushed to borrow a van to deliver some teddy bears and electrical stuff… all these were captured by RTM’s eagle eyed cameraman…Then there was also the supporting ‘cast’ from volunteer Joyce Leong to CG leader Chee Leong and a couple of our regular JS customers.

After which the three of us, co-founders of JS… Lian See, Pingnan and little Antz, were asked to ‘act’ like we were in serious discussion before the camera zoomed in on us for a too close encounter of ‘why the focus on Single Parents and how the idea for JS came about.” The RTM team then zeroed in on Rainah and her four little heroes before zooming off to Desa Mentari to focus on single mum Shanti and her girls…meanwhile we let the pix do the talking…