FEASTING AT THE CHARITY DURIAN FEST

T-shirts with caricatures by Reggie Lee were on sale for RM8 each.

Durian lovers, if you missed this year's Charity Durian Fest at Subang Parade, you will regret it for the next 12 months. For only RM20, you get to eat all you can in an hour. But the best part is all proceeds go towards helping grant the wishes of children with terminal illness. Organizers of the annual event Children's Wish Society of Malaysia is hoping to raise even more funds this year.

Our group of seniors from RAMLEA managed to purchase 25 tickets for the 2-3pm session before they were all sold out. As the pictures below show, we had a feast, and all for a good cause.

Good idea to leverage on the charity event to register new voters.

After what seemed like forever, the first basket-loads of durians finally made their way to the sunken plaza at Subang Parade.

More waiting as the durians are being opened.

Our group digging into the king of fruits.

30 minutes later...beginning to slow down. Oh, there's mangosteen and rambutans too?

The sight of more durians as we made our way out was enough to make us belch durian breath!

MAKING WISHES COME TRUE FOR OLDER PEOPLE

 

I recently stumbled upon a couple of websites devoted to making wishes come true for the elderly. Wish of a Lifetime grants wishes to underprivileged, low-income older people. So does Twilight Wish Foundation (TWF). 

I love what TWF is doing. Since its inception in 2004 TWF has granted 1,241 wishes to seniors in America who are over 68 years old and have an income of less than 200% of poverty level.

We can do the same here too - making possible the small wishes of deserving senior citizens who do not have the means to do so. Think of it as personal social responsibility (PSR) as opposed to CSR. The amounts are small and can be given discreetly.

Click here to read chapters from the book.

There is a Children's Wish Society here in Malaysia that's doing good work, but no similar organization for senior citizens. Not yet, anyway. Old people do not ask for much. Their wishes are simple - perhaps a water heater, a wheelchair, dentures, a new bed with mattress or a trip to their hometown.

Big corporations are not too interested in helping individuals. Their CSR programmes are aimed at welfare homes or community centres. The media usually highlight the plight of needy children. I suppose old people are not newsworthy enough, except during Chinese New Year or Hari Raya when CSR teams make their annual charity visits to distribute goodie bags to the elderly.

Old people certainly deserve better.