Launching Our Very Own Website

After a very long, mind-numbing session of putting our heads together, we have finally got the fabulous, genious, fantastic idea of launching our very own brand new website. "This is one big step for man," Therefore, we, the Youth Advocates have upgraded ourselves from a blog to a website! This is certainly a very huge leap for us. Despite the limited time of one week before the deadline, we are proud and satisfied TO PRESENT, our website!!

http://www.financial-planning-4u.com/aids/

We, The Youth Advocates of AIDS Awareness and Volunteer Services, officially launch our Website!!! Hip, Hip, Hurray!!! Go, Youth Advocates!!

Sandwich Boarding, Part 2

After gathering a number of volunteers, namely Arjun, Tharmelinggem, and Niroshini, plus our own group members, we started off after school, again wearing our sandwich boards.

Initially, our plan was to go to 7-Eleven, like the last time we went sandwich boarding. On the way, we handed out phamplets to all the students and parents. We also managed to record a few short interviews with some parents waiting for their children. Some of the parents were quite reluctant to be recorded on camera, but most of them were very supportive and willing to be interviewed. All the parents thought that we had very good ideas and they thought we should make this a yearly event.

Our journey was cut short when it started raining heavily, causing us to duck into the SK school for shelter. Some of our volunteers had to leave early for a St John's meeting. There, we handed out more phamplets to the school clerks, who in turn passed them to the other teachers in the SK.

Tomorrow, we are going to stayback in school until 3.30 to organize a walking exhibition. Sounds fun, no? Wait and see!

Sales

In the morning, Kah Mun, our team leader, said a few words in the assembly to promote our project as well as ask for volunteers. Amazingly, response was very overwhelming. Students from Form 1 all the way to Form 5 were excited to participate in our project.

Our sale continued today in front of the Co-op. The response was overwhelming! Students came, bought, and left with considerably lighter wallets.

We hope that all our sales will be equally successful for the rest of our project.
=))

The wonderful talk on HIV/AIDS

It started off as a usual day for us but with excitement in the air. Mr. Suraain arrived to give a talk on how is HIV/AIDS is transmitted and a lot of many other useful information. The students were very excited especially Arjun Krishnakumar and Tharmelinggem from 2 Amanah. Even some of our school's infamous students who were at the talk listened attentively. The students and teachers were listening with all ears. It was indeed an interesting talk.

Mr. Suraain is a volunteer from the Malaysian AIDS council. He has been with them for four to five years. He first set foot in this non-goverment organization when he was 19 .

We set up a booth to sell our merchandise such as books, handmade brooches and badges. We also distributed free AIDS ribbons that were handmade by the group members and volunteers. This was done to raise awareness among the school students as the slogan goes "Wear a Red Ribbon - Help Us Win This Battle." The main target of this talk and distribution of ribbons were the teenagers as there were a drastic increase in the cases reported involving teenagers aged 14 to 16 years old.

The talk started off with a brief introduction from the Project Leader of Youth Advocates of AIDS Awareness and Volunteering Services to the Community, Hong Kah Mun and volunteer, Alysha. The rowdy bunch of Form 2 and Form 3 students started to quiet down. The speaker, Mr Suraain was not what everyone expected him to be. His tall and lanky frame caught everyone's attention. He introduced the topic, AIDS by asking us about our general knowledge on HIV/AIDS. Only then did the students realise what they actually knew barely scratched the surface. He showed the students a few interesting and intellectual slides.He did not used technical and scientific terms that would cause confusion among the students. Instead, he kept the presentation simple yet imformative.

During the talk, we learned about how this virus could be contracted and how it destroys our immune system. Mr Suraain even had a short sketch about how HIV/AIDS attacks our immune system with the participation of some students. The participants were later given a complimentary gift which is a book on the experiences of AIDS patients. He also threw in a few interesting facts and corrected some common misconceptions about HIV/AIDS. After that, he quizzed the students on what he had presented. The students were eager and anxious to answer his questions as he had generously prepared some prizes for them.

He also showed us a short video clip that he had extracted from Channel [V]. It was about the public's opinion on HIV/AIDS and it was found that many Malaysians are ignorant about these subjects and had considered it as a sensitive topic. It was clear that Malaysians were narrow-minded about sex education and safe sex. After the talk, the students had a new perspective about this deadly virus.

Lastly, a token of appreciation was given to Mr. Suraain for his precious time spent on creating awareness among secondary school students. His effort was much appreciated. Thank you Mr. Suraain.

Pamphlets supplied by the Malaysian AIDS Foundation or Malaysian AIDS Council were distributed by our members and a group of volunteers.

Sandwich Boarding

We started off by recording a short clip of ourselves introducing ourselves in a very cheery fashion, with half of us wearing our colourful sandwich boards and the others with pamphlets ready to be distributed.


On the way out, we received cheers and claps from our school members. Some of the Form 4's and 5's stopped us and asked us about our cause and other related matters.

We walked to the 7-Eleven down the road from our school and back twice to distribute pamphlets to our own school students, the SBS (Seri Bintang Selatan), the GMI (German-Malaysian Institute) students, and other passersby.


On the way there, people driving by honked to show their support! Even the busy busdriver with his busload of schoolchildren had the time to wave and honk loudly.

After hours of exhausted walking and distributing pamphlets, we decided to stop at 7-Eleven for a drink and some snacks.

On the way back, we interviewed several students and parents around the school compound, before heading to the school library to plan our next moves.

These are some of the feedbacks that from our members after volunteering our services to the community which consists of children from Pusat Wawasan Children Centre and also the old folks' home.

Diane:

I was overjoyed looking at the kids' faces. I had never had any experiences with this outing before. It was very well-organized and fun. The party was one of a kind and the I think the kids enjoyed the food and our company. I hope we can organize something like this another time.



Daniel:

I felt touched and overwelmed with joy when I saw the kids faces light up, when they were given the privilege of having companionship with us, the Youth Advocates. Besides that, it was truly fun to have an opportunity to play with them. It seriously was. Other then that, I considered that I had spent the weekend wisely because on every other weekend I would have either just wasted it by watching the idiot box or by just "lepaking" in the shopping malls. It was a very meaningful day and I will remember the gay faces of the kids that morning forever. The whole event was wonderful and it was an eye-opening experience.



Kean Loong:

It was my first time to visit to the orphanage. It's quite fun to spend my whole morning there with those kids. The kids were happy when they saw us with the food. We had a wonderful time with those kids. I hope to have this event again.

We Had Visited Pusat Wawasan Children Centre

We, the Youth Advocates of AIDS Awareness and Volunteering Services to the Community had taken a moment to reminisce about the less fortunate children during the recent Raya holidays. We decided to spread some cheer to these less fortunate children. Well, we did not exactly spread the Raya cheer as the majority of the children at the centre that we had visited were made up mainly of Indians and also a handful few Chinese. But still, we did manage to spread some cheer among the children.

Before I began to talk about our wonderful day, allow me to brief you about this particular children centre. As I had mentioned earlier, this place that we had visited to is not an orphanage. It is actually a children centre called Pusat Wawasan Children Centre for children from broken homes. In the term “broken homes”, I meant to say that these children have a family but was abandoned by their parents. Meanwhile, some children here are born out of wedlock but their parents were not responsible enough to take care of their babies. Instead, they just abandoned their very own flesh and blood at this children centre. This is caused by young women and men that have pre-marital sex without considering the consequences.

Pusat Wawasan Children Centre is managed by Puan Tanamah and her family but it involves mainly her only daughter which is Puan Santhia. On any other days, Puan Tanamah helps her husband with his business, a recycling centre. They believe that recycling can help to reduce pollution in this world and thus making this world a better, greener place to live in. They also said that people should be more aware of the environment and start to recycle as it will reduced the need to use more raw materials and there would be lesser rubbish in this world. Puan Tanamah added that the public should be aware that by recycling, they could actually get paid for recycling used items. This is definitely a “win-win” solution to help to reduce pollution in this world. In fact, Puan Tanamah had actually inspired us, all seven of us, to start recycling our used items and not to throw them unnecessarily which will then piled up to become a heap of rubbish.

So, back to the Pusat Wawasan Children Centre. This centre occupies a corner unit of a double-storey house located in Taman Pandan Indah. The address of this house is 1, Jalan Pandan Indah 1/11, Taman Pandan Indah for those who are interested in donating some cash or groceries to the children centre. Besides that, along the main road there is another Pusat Wawasan Centre but this centre caters for the old folks'. We had also donated some groceries such as digestive biscuit, oats and many more health products for the old folks. It is important that the old folks take care of their health especially when their age is catching up with them.

Besides that, we had also donaed some groceries to the children centre which consist of milk powders and diapers as requested by the centre and also other groceries.

BubbleShare: Share photos - halloween photos

After striding confidently into the Pusat Wawasan Children Centre, we greeted the caretaker of the darling little children, Puan Tangama, whom the children referred to fondly as 'Mother'. To call them 'children' is inaccurate, as there were some of them who were actually older than us! Lets call them 'adolescents'.

Anyway, we spent most of our time there with the preschool children, who were very adorable. We spent a lot of time chatting with the younger residents of Pusat Wawasan, and we found out many things, for example, most of them weren't orphans. Their parents had left them there, telling them that they were returning to collect them.

Things in the centre were very organized. The adolescents actually had a schedule to follow everyday. They may be adolescents from broken homes but education is still a must for them. In fact, they still attend school like any other ordinary kids because they realise that no child should be deprive from getting proper education. They only thing they lack in is LOVE, CONCERN and ATTENTION. Our main objective of having a party and playing games with them was so that we could show some love, concern and attention towards them.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Here comes Halloween!

After spending some time talking to the children and getting to know them, we decided to let the children have some grapes first as they had not eaten their breakfast yet when we arrived. Well, it is always good to eat fruits on an empty stomach. We managed to captured a few photos of these cute little children having their grapes. They just look so adorable that I just want to hug them.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Here comes Halloween!

Well? Aren't they adorable, cute and cuddly? Anyway, it seems like they loved the grapes that we had bought. They loved it so much untill they managed to finish three whole bunch of grapes. And, there was a boy, Kean Hock who loved it so much untill he stuffed a few grapes in his small mouth. But we told him to eat it slowly as there were more to come.

Children

After striding confidently into the Pusat Wawasan Children Centre, we greeted the caretaker of the darling little children, Puan Tangama, whom the children referred to fondly as 'Mother'. To call them 'children' is inaccurate, as there were some of them who were actually older than us! Lets call them 'adolescents'.

Anyway, we spent most of our time there with the preschool children, who were very adorable. We spent a lot of time chatting with the younger residents of Pusat Wawasan, and we found out many things, for example, most of them weren't orphans. Their parents had left them there, telling them that they were returning to collect them.

Things in the centre were very organized. The adolescents actually had a schedule to follow everyday. They may be adolescents from broken homes but education is still a must for them. In fact, they still attend school like any other ordinary kids because they realise that no child should be deprive from getting proper education. They only thing they lack in is LOVE, CONCERN and ATTENTION. Our main objective of having a party and playing games with them was so that we could show some love, concern and attention towards them.

BubbleShare: Share photos - halloween photos

Grapes

After spending some time talking to the children and getting to know them, we decided to let the children have some grapes first as they had not eaten their breakfast yet when we arrived. Well, it is always good to eat fruits on an empty stomach. We managed to captured a few photos of these cute little children having their grapes. They just look so adorable that I just want to hug them.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Here comes Halloween!

Well? Aren't they adorable, cute and cuddly? Anyway, it seems like they loved the grapes that we had bought. They loved it so much untill they managed to finish three whole bunch of grapes. And, there was a boy, Kean Hock who loved it so much untill he stuffed a few grapes in his small mouth. But we told him to eat it slowly as there were more to come.

Boogie on down

Every child loves to have fun. Well, that’s what we, the Youth Advocates of Aids Awareness and Volunteering Services discovered on a visit to Pusat Wawasan. When we were there, most of the children were really shy and quiet until we broke the ice by playing various types of games with them. We had a brief discussion about the games we should play with the children and decided that we should play some ‘noisy’ games with them. Let me define ‘noisy’ games. Noisy games as in some games that will encourage the kids or adolescents to open up and mix with us. It’s something like an ice breaker.

So, we started off with the first game called Mother Hen and Eagle. This game is quite a popular one as when we were young we used to play it with our friends. In this game, the Eagle will pass a few keys to the “Mother Hen”. The mother Hen will pass the “Eagle’s” key all the way until its last chick. Then, the last chick would throw the keys away. Then, the Eagle would come along and request for his keys and the Mother Hen will tell the Eagle that the last chick had it. The last chick shall reply that the keys were already thrown away. The Eagle will then attempt to seek revenge by catching the last chick.

After the first game, the children started to open up and communicate with us. After that, we played London Bridge and we were really happy as the air was filled with laughter throughout the game. The children were really excited and happy and they shouted and screamed with joy. After a while, Puan Tanamah, the caretaker of this children centre advised us to lower down our voices as we might disturb the residents around the area. So, we settled down to a game called “Scalo scalo lobak”. This is indeed a popular game especially to all BBGS (Bukit Bintang Girl’s School) and SMKSBU (Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seri Bintang Utara) students. It is somehow a heritage that had lived in us for a long time. There was a song for this game and it goes like this; “Scalo scalo lobak, quack,quack,quack, say yes chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-chick, say yes chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-chick, say fellow, fellow, fellow, fellow, fellow, say 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10”. After that, the childrens were treated to a party. During the party, the childrens’ and adolescents were heard chanting the song joyously.

So, let me move on to the party. The younger children in the centre were more involved with the actual eating, while the older ones were either helping the children or shying away from the celebrations.

We had a scrumptious chocolate cake with delicious icing around the edges prepared for them. Initially, we didn't intend to actually sing, but as they were keen on expressing their excitement and joy, and the only song that we knew and was suitable for the occasion was 'Happy Birthday', although it was no one's birthday.

And so we sang.

After our joyous singing with great gusto, we dug in. The children, who were clearly very hungry, were very polite during the feast. They didn't grab, snatch, or even push each other.

They were extremely polite as they did not dared to take the food themself. Instead, they request for permission from us to help them with the succulent food. Kah Mun and Kah Wai's mom was especially kind as she had made fishballs and nuggets specially for the children. Besides that, she had also helped us as a mummy volunteer at the orphanage. On the other hand, Gaik Xuang's mom had prepared nuggets and drummets for the children to savour on. Diane's mom was really supportive too as she came and joined us as a mummy volunteer.

We would like to express our gratitude to everyone whom had made this visit a great success.

Plans to Visit Orphanage

Visiting orphanage and old folks' homes is a community service project which was listed in our Maxis CyberlinQ's proposal.

A few of our members were in charge of calling of the orphanage and old folks' home to request for authorisation to visit the home of the orphanage and old folks. But sadly, we called up quite a number of homes and but we still could not secured a permission to visit these homes. As a strategy to secure a permission faster before this holidays end, we decided to just focus on searching for orphange homes.

We tried many ways to get more contacts to be able to get permission to visit these homes. We tried to widen out our horizons by asking our parents, aunts, uncles, friends, teachers and also our friends' parents if they have any contact number of orphanages. We actually tried searching for contacts on the Internet now that in this era that we live in, many things could be done or found on the Internet. In fact, we did managed to get a whole long list of orphanages from the Internet.

There was a few websites that displayed the contacts for the orphanages, example; http://www.hati.org.my/, http://www.jiwang.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1313, http://dir.home.net.my/result/SOC/ORP/WKL/CHR and a few others. But of all, I felt that the list given by http://www.hati.org.my/ was the most helpful website compared to all. It has a list of organisation and homes that need attention, help and also donation from the public. We learnt that some of the homes actually only depend on public donations in cash or kind to these homes to be able to survive. It means without any donations these homes would not be able to run. In http://www.hati.org.my/ , there was also a directory for the public to check out homes for the senior citizens, youth, women and many others.

And that actually made us more determined than ever to help these homes to survive in our society. As I mentioned earlier, we actually had trouble trying to secure a permission. We had tried to call a few house but some said there children were not at the house as during the holidays these kids would be sent to camps. Meanwhile, there was also an orphanage home that said that they were fully booked for visiting on the month of October. Besides that, some said there were busy and could not accomodate our visit on that particular day.

We continued searching, sourcing and we had never given up hope to acquire authorisation from orphanage homes. It finally paid off that we did not give up as I received a call from Mrs. Jaykant. She asked me whether I was still looking for contacts of orphanage homes. I immediately said yes and she gave a number to call. She said that this home was located in Pandan Indah. So, I called this orphanage up and Mrs. Satya answered the call. I told her about my intentions and she refered me to Mrs. Tanamah, who happens to be the advisor of the house. I briefed her about about good intentions, plans and other things regarding the donations. After a short talk, she agreed to let us visit the home. She informed us that this home called Pusat Wawasan was not an orphanage. It was actually a home for children with broken families. And she added that we could only visit the home on Sunday as they were busy on other days. We had no choice but to get everything done by Saturday. It was a Friday when we called her up. I immediately started organising with my group members as soon as I got off the telephone with Mrs. Tanamah.

Firstly, a party was to be planned following intial plans or discusssion. So, I asked a few members to be in charge of the food. My mother had also volunteered to prepare some food for the party. A part from that, some members also were also in charge of buying groceries for the home using the funds accumulated from the recent food sales. Another group member of ours suggested that we should wear the same T-shirts so that we would all will look uniform. So, we had decided to wear the T-shirt that MAC had delivered to us earlier.

Since we had to get everything done by Saturday, there wasn't much time left for us to actually gather volunteers but we still managed to gather 5 volunteers who was willing to help out at the home. More pictures from the trip to the home coming right up.

Merchandises, Panels and Discussions

Before I began my post, as a polite gesture allow me to wish all Muslims again "Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri" because it happens to be HARI Raya today.... Yay!

Forgive me for not being able to post yesterday due to some unforseen circumstances that I had been facing with my Internet connection. But rest assured that my Internet had been fixed and problems like that would not happen again. As the saying goes "once bitten, twice shy".

Okay, let's begin from the very beginning. Early in the morning on Raya eve, at around 11.30 a.m., someone rang my house doorbell. I greeted these visitors politely and they told me that they were from the Malaysian AIDS Foundation to deliver the merchandise that I had ordered about a week ago. I was ecstatic that the merchandise had arrived earlier that what I had expected because Puan Tamayanty (Executive 0f the Fund Raising Division of MAC) had intially promised to send these merchandise to our school at Taman Shamelin Perkasa on Wednesday but she could not make it on that day. So, instead she decided to send it to my house.

I thanked Puan Tamayanty and Mr. M. Suntaram for actually delivering the merchandises to me at my house. Puan Tamayanty mentioned that she wanted to see me in person which happens to the reason why she wanted to deliver these merchandise to me personally. We had a small chat and then she had to leave because there were other merchandise that she had to sent to.

After that, together with my sister which happens to be a member of this project, we checked the merchandises to make sure that the amount that we had ordered earlier was the same with the amount that was delivered. There were nine types of merchandise all together which consists of fridge magnets, badges, caps, T-shirts, books and also greeting cards.

After that, I checked my mail and found a mail from En. Roslan that says MAC could provide us with pamphlets and posters but not the sandwich boards. It is because they only have a set of snadwich boards to be used by MAC themselves. But I was told that we could actually collect the posters and pamphlets on the 19th of October, after the Raya break at the MAC office in Jalan Sentul.

The next mail I received was the mail sent by Creative Junction regarding the exhibition panels that I had requested earlier. In the mail, there was a short explaination about the panels and also the price of the panels. The price but a little bit over the budget considering the fact that we only need three panels that is 3 feet X 6 feet per panel. It actually cost RM 550 for all three panels. After that, I called the Creative Junction and managed to speak to Miss Amy. I enquired about the pricing of the panels and why was it so expansive. She said that we were only renting three panels which is a small amount and also the type of panels that we were renting was the expansive type, the velvet based one. I asked if they had a sponge board and they said they didn't have. Anyway, I thanked her for helping us out eventhough we did not rent her panels.

After calling Creative Junction, I told all the other members to help to source for cheaper exhibition panels. Some of them asked their dads while some searched the Yellow Pages for companies that rent their panels. Most of them said that the companies they had called to enquire about the price of the panels were much more pricer compared to the one with Creative Junction. So, all of us decided that we should not rent any panels at all.

Since that now we do not have any exhibition panels, we had decided to have a discussion together with all the group members online. We discussed online using the messenger that we all have in our computers. Some members suggested that we should just paste it up on the wall of the schools. But that does not seems like an exhibition. Meanwhile, some suggested that we should stick the posters on a piece of long cloth that looks like a banner. I thought that idea was a pretty good idea. In fact, all of us thought the same and so we all agreed to use that idea.

I also managed to tell all group members that MAC could not provide us with the sandwich boards. The group members thought why don't we make on e ourselves. So, again we agreed together about this idea. Now that we had to do sandwich boards and the banner, I had suggested that they come to my house and we do everything in my house. They all agreed and we set the date to this coming Tuesday, 16th October.

Today, the 11th of October 2007 marks the first day or the beginning of our week-long school holidays. This means that we will not be able to meet up in school and actually carried out or prepare for our campaign together. It is tough for us because this time, the Raya holidays is actually a time for us to prepare for our upcoming campaign or exposition. But we would not be attending school from Thursday (11th October) until Sunday (21st October). Furthermore, when we begin school on Monday which happens to fall on the final week of the Maxis CyberlinQ project, we would have to start with our campaign. So instead of idling around during this holiday, we had made plans to meet up and prepare for our projects.

Besides that, we had checked with MAC again for the posters needed for exhibition. They had confirmed with us and agreed to give us 3 sets of poster. Each set contains 18 posters with 9 set in English and the other 9 in Bahasa Melayu. After earlier discussion together in our group, we agreed to paste a two sets of poster around our school compound. The first set of posters would be pasted on the left wing of the school while the second set would be put around the right wing of the school. The objective of pasting these posters around the school is actually to constantly remind students about AIDS even after our projects end. Meanwhile, the final set would be placed at our exhibition as a part of our exhibits.

We had also received another e-mail from our mentors. We had two mentors, Ms. Gayesthiri Krishnan and Ms. Wong Wye Yee had e-mailed us. Our senior member in the group would be contacting them tomorrow.

By the way, we would like wish all Muslims

"SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDILFITRI"

and

"HAPPY HOLIDAYS"

to all.

Thank you.

Pamphlets And Mentor in Seri Bintang Utara

Today, I received an e-mail from my teacher advisor entitled MENTORS ONBOARD. At first, I was quite puzzled with the title of the e-mail. What would my teacher suddenly send me an e-mail about mentor? When I opened and read the mail, all my questions were answered. It says that Maxis actually encouraged its staff to become mentors to the finalists of the Maxis CyberlinQ project. And I found out that Ms Yong Wye Yee has volunteered herself to mentor our team. We wished her a warm welcome and we also thanked her for being our mentor.

And the next e-mail I received was an e-mail from Ms Wong. Ms. Wong had given us some suggestions to improve the quality of our blog and also some important guidelines that we had missed out. Thank you, Ms. Wong. We'll be keeping in touch with you, okay?

Besides that, we will be gathering volunteers and even the group members to give out leaflets outside the school's compound to the public and also the parents of the students. This will actually help to raise awareness among the public and also the parents. Parents who are aware of AIDS will be more careful and stern towards their children. These parents also would then educate their children about AIDS and how to avoid contracting AIDS. This is what we hope parents would do when they receive the pamphlets given. Parents play a vital role in creating awareness among their children as parents are regarded as children role model.

For the leaflets and pamphlets, we had liaised with MAC and they will be providing us with these pamphlets containing information about AIDS. We were told by En. Roslan that the pamphlets came in dual languages which is in Bahasa Melayu and also English. There were also four different types of pamphlets with each containing different information. We had decide to take 800 pieces of them which consist of 100 for Bahasa Melayu and another 100 for English for each different types of pamphlets. It means all together we have 800 pieces to be handed out to the public with the main focus on the parents.

More About The AIDS Awareness Campaign

As stated earlier in our proposal, the funds raised through the charity food sale will be donated to an orphanage. We are still currently making arrangements with the orphanage administrators. We plan to host a small party for the orphans as well as spending some time with them. We hope to be able to cheer them with little goodies bags. We are also going to buy some groceries such as rice, sugar and other basic necessities using the funds we managed to raise.

Meanwhile, for the AIDS Awareness Campaign we had contacted the Malaysian AIDS Council to assist us in our campaign to ensure that it will be a sucess. Mr. George Nathan, Head of Traning And Resource Centre Division in MAC, had discussed with us about our plans for the campaign. Our plans was to organise an exhibition about AIDS to create an awareness among the students, inviting a speaker to give a talk, handing out pamphlets and leaflets, distributing the RED RIBBON and also selling T-shirts.

We had also discussed these plans with Encik Md. Roslan Osman, the Training & Resource Centre Executive of MAC. He was helping us with the pamphlets and also the leaflets that was to be distributed to the public. We had also been told that MAC will be sending a speaker to talk about AIDS on 25th October for our campaign. We tried to get the speaker, En. Suraain Azhar to come earlier but he could not as he was a lecturer and was not available on other days.

Intially, we had made plans with Durex but there were some complications that we had faced. So, we decided to cancel it. It is good to learn about having a safe sex as it can prevent sexual transmitted disease (STD) from spreading. The rise in this disease are currently increasing at an alarming rate due to lack of awareness about these diseases which among them is AIDS.

The talk by DUREX would definitely benefit the students while creating an awareness among them but it is also indirectly encouraging students to have pre-marital sex. Some students might have misunderstood the purpose of this talk which its objective was to create an awareness. Instead, it would possibly be viewed as an encouragement to have a safe pre-marital sex by wearing a condom. This is a very sensitive issue especially among the Muslims and the Christians who does not encourage pre-marital sex.

As we live in a multi-racial country, it is extremely important to respect the beliefs of the Muslims and the Christians. In this situation, we had to give in and avoid the controversial scene that might had caused if we continued with this talk.

Pn. Lim, the teacher-in-charge of this project had requested for the biodata of En. Suraain and also the content of his slide show to avoid any controversial issue. We were informed that he would be presenting a talk together with a slide show which would take around 1 to 2 hour to finish it. A biodata would be posted here as soon as I get my hands on it.

Currently, we are experiencing some problems with the venue of this talk because the main hall of our school that can accomodate 1, 500 students cannot be used as it is an open hall called the 'SKYLITE'. The skylite is equipped with fans and has several electrical points for the set up of the LCD and the laptop acquired by En Suraain. Unfortunately, it is located at an open area, to be more precise, it is actually located directly in the middle of the school. The date of this talk is on the 25th of October which clashes with the Form 4 year end examinations and the 'gerak-gempur' of the SPM students. This might affect the students' concentration and thus disturbing them. So, we cannot use the skylite now.

Now, together with Pn. Lim, we are making arrangements to have this talk at a different location in the school. Our next best choice would be the 'Bilik Pameran' which is air-conditioned, has electrical points and also has a small stage. This room is definitely more comfortable compared to the skylite but there was only one problem. The room can only fit 300 students. We have around 870 students that had been chosen to attend this talk namely the juniors, Form 1, 2 and also Form 3. We are now in the process of dividing the students into groups of half to try and fit them into the room. We hope that En. Suraain would be agreed to give us another session of his talk.

That was what that had been discussed throughout the entire time since our last post. Things are currently getting on the fast lane now that our senior members had just finished their PMR. But we are now racing against time to get everything done before the Raya holidays as the school had declared the holidays for RAYA would begin on Thursday. This means we only have two more days to sort everything out. We are truly sorry and would like to apologize because we could not follow the plans made earlier in the proposal due to some problems that we had faced such as getting a speaker for the campaign and many others.

We truly regret for any inconvenience caused by us to the Maxis Personnel. We would be constantly updating our blog now. We had also displayed the image given to us by Maxis CyberlinQ at the top right of this blog.

Visits

Since the PMR week is on and we don't want to disrupt anyone's schedules, we will try hold our visit on the Thursday before the Raya holidays. Our Head, Kah Wai, will be giving the details, as in the time, the date, te venue,etc to our Teacher Advisor.

Feel free to come and join us!

M is for MORE discussion

We've decided a couple more things.

• Either Kean Loong or Vivian will be going to the MD Textiles factory to check out the tshirts. They weren't free due to the upcoming exams and other unavoidable circumstances.
• Our group will be staying back tomorrow for a short meeting to discuss the next stage, which involves inviting the speakers.
• Kah Wai and Kah Mun will be handling the speakers. Handling meaning talking to them, setting a date for them to come, etc, etc.

Moving on to tshirts.

With the help of Puan Lim, our advisor (as mentioned about a gazillion times), we called the tshirt people. Tshirt people meaning the people who sell tshirts. (As if that isn't obvious.) The name of the factory is MD Textiles.

One of our members, Vivian Fong is dropping by the factory to check out the prices, patterns and colours of the tshirts available. If all goes well, we will probably start designing, printing and selling the tshirts after PMR.

Oh, and while I'm here, Selamat Berpuasa to all Muslims!

The joy of sales...

The feeling was undescribable. As in, how can we ever explain it to all supportive blog readers and Maxis personnel? We just couldn't as we said the feeling could not be depicted.

Alas, we shall still indeed try our best to describe that very special moment...

Firstly,

Let us start by saying " Our food sale had finished in the most gracious manner".

Secondly,

Our profit throughout the three days of the exhausting yet fun filled food sale exceeded our estimations.

*jumps high in the air*

Thirdly,

We had manged to capture moments of our wonderful food sale for everyone to cherish these special moments.

* Picturific moments *

*Preparing sandwiches and cookies..*

Hmm..busy?busy?bee?

Our teacher advisor, Puan Lim came to support us.

Vivian and her JELLY world.....

What we have here? A shy customer, is it?

Satisfied customers....

Cake-mania strikes SBU !!!

...Business running good...

How yummy and tasty! One more please.?

One of our volunteers, Cheng Ken posing with a customer..

*Excited customers*

*Supportive customers*

*Cleaning up sessions*

*....THE END....*

Credits Time...

Credits

We really owe our success to some people. We had already thanked the volunteers for helping in our food sale in the post before this, but in our opinion, we should give MORE credit to MORE people, don't you think so too?

• Sandra Cheah and mum for selflessly sponsoring an ENTIRE chocolate cake for us to sell (which sold out in minutes)
  
• Alysha, Kar Man, Valerie, Cheng Ken, and Jasmine who helped us handle change and promote our food.
  
• The supportive people who came to ask us about our sales.
  
  
• Everyone who supported us by purchasing the food we sold.

Thank You.

Words of appreciation to everyone...

From,

Youth Advocates of AIDS and Volunteering Services to the Community

Well, basically today's the food sale. As planned, we started off by annoucing our beloved food sale to the members of our school and also promoting it with high hopes that this food sale would be a huge ( mega huge ) success. So, Kah Mun went up together with Alysha who actually volunteered to help out too. Together they went up before the assembly commences and began to say some words to promote the food sale according to the script that was done by Kar Man, yet another volunteer.

The script was something like this:

We, the representatives of the AIDS Awareness and Voluntary Services to the Community Project, are going to organize a food sale outside the Bintang Café from today until this Wednesday.

Before you groan 'Oh no, not another food sale!' let us tell you WHY our food sale is different. No, we will not be selling food from out of this world, or anything like that, but we are different because we are representing our beloved school in a national level competition organized by Maxis.
We seek your support because we want this project to succeed because of the combined effort of the whole school and not just our group's individual efforts. We will be selling various kinds of food such as cookies, sandwiches, shortbread, jellies and other delicious food. You can visit us during the junior and senior recess times.

We urge you to come with hungry stomachs and ready cash! Please help us make this a runaway success! Common all, join in and have fun. Thank you.

And that's the script. More details about the food sale later from Diane. And pictures from Kean Loong.

And also a big heartfelt thanks to Alysha, Kar Man, Cheng Ken, Valerie, Jasmine and also to all who had supported our food sale.

THANK YOU

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THANK YOU

Food sale tomorrow!

Our food sale begins tomorrow and boy, are we excited!

Just so no one forgets,

Vivian will be bringing her absolutely scrumptious jellies.

Kean Loong is in charge of bringing his homemade tuna sandwiches.

Gaik Xuang will bring her totally delicious cookies.

Kah Wai and her sister Kah Mun will be bringing some kuihs on Tuesday and Wednesday because they aren't available on Monday.

My brother Daniel and I will be bringing our shortbread biscuits and Von Houten chocolate covered grapes. Oh, and Vitagen on Tuesday and Wednesday because it isn't available on Monday.

Tomorrow, we are going to ask our teacher advisor, Puan Lim to promote our food sale on stage. That should attract more people! We also have a few people who want to help us with our food sale. Well, we aren't complaining...The more the merrier!

Final preparations

Using the computers and printers in the IT lab of our school, we printed out the information we found on HIV/AIDS. Oh, and before I forget...we got the approval for our food sale! Yay! Our school principal was not around, so we managed to obtain our approval from the PK 1, Puan Ros. We also got a permission slip to bring cameras to record our activities for the rest of the month.

One of our members, Kah Mun, contacted the Malaysian AIDS Council(MAC) to enquire about the speakers, etc. They told us that we needed an official letter or a sort of invitation. So naturally, we set to work on it.

We also sent emails to everyone we knew, encouraging them to come to our food sale and take part in the activities held. Maybe they'll decide to drop by and check out the sales and exhibitions!

Of t-shirts and talks...

Not much could be accomplished today, as there was an Anugerah Kokurikulum rehearsal today, and most of our group members were involved.

Nevertheless, we still managed to get SOME things done. We had gathered as much information humanely possible on HIV and AIDS we could use for our presentations and such. Also, we had called several suppliers and looked over types of t-shirts we could use to sell.

One of our senior members will contact the speakers we plan to invite to talk about AIDS in our school. She plans to inform us whether we are successful tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

We also intended to seek our principal's approval for the food sale today, but as she was not around, we will try tomorrow. Unfortunately, we also discovered that the Interact Club will be having a food sale on the exact same day! We will arrange things with the Interact Club members to make sure we don't sell the same foodstuffs on the same day. Suggestions, anyone?

Day 1: Discussion

We received the letter informing us that we had been selected to represent our school in the Maxis Cyberlinq Competition. Naturally, we were proud and happy tinged with a feeling of apprehension knowing that there is a long road ahead of us filled with hard work before we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Immediately, we decided to get to work. Finally, we decided on a few things;

• We are making some amendments regarding the food sale, that is, we are selling more food stuffs in addition to root beer and vanilla ice cream floats, French fries, sausages, and marshmallow and banana fondues.
• There are some complications concerning the food sale as the fasting month for Muslims begins next week. Therefore, we plan to hold the food sale in our school before the fasting begins, and in public places, such as shopping malls, during the fasting period.
• Despite the fact that there are only eight registered members in the team, we gathered many supportive volunteers who were willing to help us out.
• We drafted the letter to our principal requesting permission to hold the food sale in the school compounds
• We started gathering information on HIV and AIDS to use for our presentations

Those were among the things that we discussed today. If all goes well, we are going to hold our food sale on the 10th of this month, which falls on a Monday.

If you happen to be passing by our school, which is SMK Seri Bintang Utara, do drop by for a bite to eat!

Proposal

Dear blog readers and Maxis personnel,

We, students of SMK Seri Bintang Utara or better known as Youth Advocates of AIDS Awareness would like to offer to you our proposal entitled AIDS Awareness and Volunteering Services to the Community. Our project is an interesting one indeed since we had decided to have not one but two main projects which are 100% beneficial to the community and Malaysia. Read on ....

The OBJECTIVES of our project are as follows:

• To raise awareness about AIDS and the danger it poses among public.
  
  
• To be able to purchase daily needs for charitable organisations with the funds raised.

• To gather as much volunteers as possible and volunteer services at orphanages and old folks' home.

• To ensure that the public will not remain shallow minded on AIDS after the exposition.
  

The STRUCTURES of our project are:

Title of Project : AIDS Awareness & Volunteering Services to the Community
Duration of Project : 4 weeks

Structure:

Our project can be divided into a few phases namely phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 and phase 4.

Phase 1 - Week 1-

Using the amount of money given to us to carry out our project, we will begin with

* Seeking the approval of the headmistress of SMK Seri Bintang Utara to use the hall as a exposition hall and venue for the fund raising food sale

* Printing materials all about AIDS inclusive of the HIV virus, how does HIV virus spreads, how to avoid transmission of the virus and many more informative facts about AIDS and HIV that will be exhibited at the exposition to create an awareness among the community

* Preparing a presentation about AIDS using Power Point

* Inviting a few speakers to talk about AIDS and also individuals that had survived AIDS and lived to tell their story or experience to the public

* Design and print a sample of the T-shirt aimed to create awareness about AIDS, the sample with then be displayed to the students of the participating schools and orders for the T-shirt will then be collected

* Buying the food stuff needed for the fund raising food sale according to the budget showed below

* Gathering volunteers to help out at respective orphanage and old folks' home and choosing a particular orphanage and an old folks' home to volunteer our services to them

Phase 2 - Week 2 -

* Leaflets and pamphlets containing information about AIDS and the exhibition that will be held in the hall of SMK Seri Bintang Utara organised by us will then be printed to be distributed to the community around our school area. We would actually loved to spread AIDS awareness to other communities as well but we are afraid we will not succeed if we do so. Instead, we decided to focus only on the communities around our school consists of the other three schools and the housing area.

* Printing banner to be displayed outside the school compound to attract and inform the public about the oncoming exhibition

* Notify the local newspaper about the oncoming exhibition so that they will inform the readers of the newspaper

* Promoting our exhibition by going to others schools around the area and notifying them about the exhibition and the fund raising food sale

* Ordering the T-shirts from the supplier according to the amount of T-shirt ordered by the students

* Confirm with the speakers who are attending the exposition

* Asking authorisation from the respective orphanage and old folks' home for permission to visit and offer them our services. Besides that, we will be donating groceries and cash accumulated from the fund raising food sale

Phase 3 - Week 3 -

* Getting the venue and materials for the exhibition ready for the final exposition

* Carrying out our exhibition on weekdays for students of SMK Seri Bintang Utara and on weekends for the public

* Presenting the presentation about AIDS done by us

* Prepare a small token of appreciation for the speakers

* Carrying out the fund raising food sale at school and on the exhibition day itself

* Using the money raised and collected, a part of the money will be used to buy groceries for the orphanage and old folks' home

* Distribute the T-shirts ordered by students and also selling T-shirt to the public on the exposition day itself

* Asking donation from the public to raise fund for the orphanage and old folks' home

Phase 4 - Week 4-

* Visiting and volunteering our services together with the volunteers we had managed to gather earlier at the chosen orphanage and old folks' home

BUDGET

The BUDGET:

T-Shirt : 1 T-shirt for RM 15.00

We are purchasing approximately 50 piece of T-shirts for the project (depending on the orders of the students).

Amount: (RM 15.00 x 40)= RM 600.00

T-Shirt

Estimated Cost: RM 600.00
Estimated Profit: RM 300.00
Selling Price: RM 20.00 per shirt

Banner

Estimated Cost: RM 150 per banner (1 banner)

Amount:RM 150

Printing Materials

Estimated Cost : RM 5 (100 sheets of leaflets)

Amount: RM 5

Token Of Appreciation

Estimated Cost: RM 25 per speaker ( 2 speaker)

Amount: RM 50

Besides that, we are going to have a fund raising food sale in order to raise more funds for the charitable trusts.

1. Float (Root Beer & Ice-Cream -Vanilla-)
Estimated Cost: RM 40.00
Estimated Profit: RM 60.00
Selling Price: RM 2.00 per cup

2. French fries
Estimated Cost: RM 25.00
Estimated Profit: RM 25.00
Selling Price: RM 1.00 per cup

3. Fondue (marshmallow and banana)
Estimated Cost: RM 25.00
Estimated Profit: RM 37.50
Selling Price: RM 2.50 (marshmallows and bananas)

4. Sausages
Estimated Cost: RM 30.00
Estimated Profit: RM 20.00
Selling Price: RM 1.00 per stick

Total Estimated Cost of Project: RM 925

Total Estimated Profit of Project: RM 442.50

*Note: 100% of the profit will be used to purchase daily needs for charitable organisations.

The BENEFITS OF THIS PROJECT are:

1. The public are able to know and understand deeper about AIDS after the campaign.

2. The public gets an opportunity to contribute to charitable organisations partially at the campaign.

3. Daily needs for charitable organisations can be purchased using the funds raised at the exposition.

Last, not least, this project had truly given us a one in a lifetime opportunity to carry out a wonderful project of such. We shall hope for days and nights that we will be the chosen ones.

We would like to say THANK YOU to all blog readers and Maxis personnel.

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