MOW FOOD BANK - New volunteers helped deliver groceries on 29 Sep 2013

When Bro Ivan informed me that there will be almost 30 new volunteers coming for last Sunday's delivery of groceries for our MOW FOOD BANK program, I was a little apprehensive. That Sunday was the day of the Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon and many roads in downtown KL were closed, parking is very limited at the PPR flats and the homes of our FOOD BANK families are typically very small and can hardly accommodate a dozen visitors in the living room.

However, we have big plans for our MOW FOOD BANK program next year and we are in need of volunteers who can commit to helping us with the monthly deliveries of groceries. So we pushed on with the delivery with 30 new volunteers and the regulars - Ivan, Andrew and myself.

After a briefing at our Penchala centre, the new volunteers, who call themselves CP 28 helped us load the groceries into our MOW van.

With so many pairs of hands, they passed the boxes of groceries from one person to another, like a factory production line, and completed the loading in no time at all!

The loading was supervised by our veteran volunteer, Bro Andrew.

 After a group picture, we were all ready to push off by 10:45am.

First stop was Mr Maran's house in Sentul, where the volunteers had their first experience of the environment of a PPR flat. The volunteers decided to split themselves into 3 groups, and only a third went up to the flat as they didn't want to overwhelm the family.

Then we moved on to Jinjang to visit Chloe and Lucas.

Followed by deliveries to Mdm Ng and her husband in the adjoining block.

Last stop in Jinjang was delivery to Wena and her son, Fei Hoong.

By then, it was almost 1pm and we stopped at a hawker centre in Jinjang for yong tau foo lunch and drinks. Ais kacang had never tasted so refreshingly yummy as it was a super hot day!

After Jinjang, most of the new volunteers had other plans for the rest of the day. So, four of them hopped into our van and we moved on to Desa Rejang.

One of the volunteers saw a couple of CPUs in Aida's flat and when Aida told us "semua rosak", he offered to take the CPUs back to his office to repair. A new volunteer and able to fix/repair things ... MOW is truly fortunate to get volunteers like him.

As we were leaving Aida's house, we bumped into Kak Ummi, another FOOD BANK family, who was pushing a trolley of thrash (to be sold later for some money to feed her family) which she went around collecting with her Cucu on a hot afternoon. It was such a heartbreaking sight ... to see an old makcik and a little girl having to resort to this to get a few extra ringgit.

Then we moved on to Gombak where we visited our HAPPY CHILD Siti Nurmaisara at her home.

While Bro Andrew guarded the van with our precious commodities:)

Our last stop was Sg Besi where the Chins were waiting for their goodies.

By the time we got back to Penchala centre, it was almost 4pm. We were all tired, but happy that we accomplished our mission to deliver groceries to 18 families in 5 hours, and even had time for lunch:)

Thank you to our new volunteers from CP 28 for participating in our FOOD BANK delivery. We truly hope you will continue to support us in our future deliveries and other projects.

And of course, our gratitude to the following donors for this month's groceries:

Yu Chee Koon
Tan Kai Ming
R.G.
Stone Empire
Joyce Ong
Celine Yong Chooi Ping
C.S.H.
Angie
In memory of Mdm Lam Sum Ying
Peter Liew
Felicia Ong
LGB group




Posted by: Kim
Pictures courtesy of: Kim