Happenings & News

Paralympic athlete William Tan will take on a 50-hour endurance challenge at Temasek Junior College (TJC) to raise funds for disadvantaged children.

Dr Tan, 58, who has been paralysed from the waist down since the age of two due to childhood poliomyelitis, will hand-cycle while pulling a child in an attached chariot in the event, lasting from 3pm on Aug 28 to 5pm on Aug 30.

It will celebrate Singapore’s 50 years of independence as well as Dr Tan’s sixth year of survival after a bone marrow transplant.

Diagnosed with Stage 4 leukaemia in April 2009, he is determined to “do more for the community” with his new lease of life. He aims to raise $50,000 to help needy children through three organisations: The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund, Care Corner Orphanage Foundation in Chiangmai, and the Rotary Club of Bugis Junction’s Children in Need Fund.

The 50-hour challenge, named 50/50@TJC, will be Dr Tan’s toughest since his bone marrow transplant. The resident physician at the National Cancer Centre Singapore completed a similar 10-hour challenge in 2010.

Students from 50 schools, including Dr Tan’s alma mater Raffles Institution, will run alongside him during the challenge.

Members of the public who would like to accompany Dr Tan, including children wishing to ride in the chariot, may do so at the TJC track between 7am and 7pm, during the 50-hour period.

Dr Tan will be on a liquid diet and take short toilet breaks.

Eleven-year-old artist Gelyn Ong, whose art has raised over $700,000 for charities so far, has donated one of her paintings to support the fund-raising effort.

Those who wish to donate can e-mail organising chairman Paul Heng at paulhenght@gmail.com , or donate online at simplygiving.com/drwilliamtan.

Source: The Straits Times

Life is not about coming out on top in the rat race or achieving the best academic results.

That is what the Tan family learnt when they dropped everything for a year and left Singapore to volunteer at Shallom School in poverty- stricken Timor Leste.

When Mr Wilson Tan, 43, a director of marketing for cyber security at a telecommunications company, told his boss of his plan, he was asked: “Singapore has many needy people too, why go there?”

It was to do more for a community in which he and his wife Soo Fern, 41, had volunteered before through their church.

Even though their parents feared for their safety, the couple felt it was a calling. Their daughters, Anastasia, four, and Naomi, two, followed them.

Almost half of Timor Leste’s one million population live below the poverty line and about a third are illiterate. Break-ins and street violence are common occurrences.

Shallom School in the capital Dili offers subsidised kindergarten, primary and junior high school education to 500 children.

Mr Tan was an education consultant for the school, showing teachers how to use tablets to teach and to incorporate them into their lessons. He also held critical thinking lessons, challenging teachers to look beyond their circumstances and to plan for the future.

His wife cared for their daughters and taught English to the school’s principal in her free time.

They volunteered there from March last year to March this year with their church, Agape Baptist Church, which provided the tablets. Not many would dare to put their lives on hold for an entire year.

Before he set off, Mr Tan thought he had all the answers to the problems faced by the community. Instead, he learnt more about life and what it means to have less.

“I grew in my respect for them and learnt important lessons, receiving from the locals, learning from their culture and coming to understand – not just empathise with – their perspective,” he said.

The family had to learn the Tetun language twice a week and lived without high-speed Internet, air-conditioning and other luxuries. They also learnt to be flexible and adapt to their surroundings.

Roads could get cordoned off without warning and floods would leave people stranded.

“You can’t even choose what to cook. You have to see what you can get and then decide,” said Mrs Tan.

The couple’s time there influenced their parenting style, which now focuses less on studies and more on character-building.

The people of Timor Leste possess strong character and do not allow their circumstances to stop them from living, Mr Tan noted.

He hopes he has done enough to advance education there.

“We hope that with the knowledge, they can break out of the poverty circle by going on to university and so on,” he said.

A video of the family’s time in Timor Leste has been published on the Our Better World website (www.ourbetterworld.org).

Our Better World is a Singapore International Foundation initiative that tells stories of people doing good in Asia in order to encourage others to contribute.

Mrs Tan hopes it will inspire others to volunteer, be it here or abroad. “The way I see it is that if everybody can just give a little, then the world would be a better place.”

Source: The Straits Times

Races, gelato flavours created by celebrity chefs and donations were some of the ways Marina Bay Sands (MBS) raised $5.4 million for charity over 10 days.

This was the third charity festival held by the integrated resort and the money raised will support 80 local charities and more than 300,000 Singaporeans, said MBS in a statement.

There were 27 fundraising and community events over the 10 days, including having the takings from July 31 to Aug 2 from attractions – Sands SkyPark Observation Deck, ArtScience Museum and sampan rides – donated to Community Chest.

Over 1,000 Pioneer Generation beneficiaries and senior volunteers were also treated to the LKY Musical at MasterCard Theatres, and proceeds from the 11,799 scoops of gelato sold went to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund.

The Heartstrings Walk organised by the integrated resort and Community Chest also raised over $2.01 million this year.

Chief executive officer and president of MBS, Mr George Tanasijevich, said: “The strong support from the public encourages us to continue to create unique experiences and events to raise funds for local beneficiaries.”

Last year, the Sands for Singapore Charity Festival raised $3.8 million over a weekend.

Source: The Straits Times

The 50 for Fifty charity drive, which had 50 young people raise $3.5 million in just three months last year, is back, but organisers have their eye on more than just money this time round.

Co-founder Rebekah Lin, 30, said she wants to create projects that go beyond raising awareness or funds and can be sustained even after the latest run of the charity drive, which was launched last month, ends in March next year.

One such project is a food packing job outsourced by Samsui Supplies and Services – a Soup Restaurant subsidiary – to the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (Minds).

Under this, 20 intellectually disabled trainees pack dry food items for 17 Soup Restaurant outlets across Singapore and get paid for their efforts. Ms Lin intends to take this project further.

“We want to find 30 to 50 offices and get them to order their pantry stock from these people instead of buying their sugar and Milo from supermarkets,” she said.

Samsui Supplies is building a website that lets companies place their orders easily, Minds will provide the manpower, while Ms Lin’s staff will approach companies about pantry orders.

This model differs from last year’s, where each youth adopted a charity and raised money for it. Some held ticketed music events, others collected unwanted handbags from friends and sold them to raise funds.

But Ms Lin said some volunteers had “felt stressed by the fund-raising and couldn’t focus on working with the charities”.

“But we know that fund-raising is still important,” she said.

Therefore, 50 for Fifty will take care of the fund-raising this time round. The target is to get 50 companies to donate $10,000 each – a figure that will double after the one-for-one matching under the Care and Share movement.

“This way, it is fair across the board for all the charities since each will get about $20,000,” Ms Lin said.

Instead of having only individuals under age 35, the charity drive this year will include businesses from hair salons, radio stations to magazine stands.

Ten “changemakers” from last year are continuing with the charity drive this year.

One of them is Ms Brenda Eng, 27, owner of Balloon Blasters, which sells balloons.

Last year, she raised $136,000 for widow support group Wicare and is hoping to do more for the same charity this year.

“I will create a video based on one of the widows, so that we can share it and raise awareness of Wicare on social media,” she said.

Source: The Straits Times