JOM MAKAN
Jom Makan! This simple act of giving is what humanity should be about. Just last Saturday we carried out this event at night around KL town itself. I knew that there were homeless people but I never expected it to be that many. I guess this is a social problem where little has been done to help the homeless not just in Malaysia but everywhere in the world. From the many times which I’ve attended a street feeding event, I have come to find out that not all homeless friends are what we perceived them to be. Though some may be drug addicts and alcoholics, there are still a lot of good souls out there. In fact I found that this homeless friends are actually some of the kindest people around. They aren’t greedy even when it
comes to receiving free things. Some homeless friends do work jobs to make ends meet but unfortunately they do not have enough to rent a room to stay in as cost of living in sky rocketing that even those who are working do not have much savings.
As part of the organising team, what we want to bring to the table is the raise of awareness towards the homeless community. This for many may be their first time experiencing it face to face. Though I feel that giving our food is just a short term thing it is a good start to begin with. In essence, we are just trying to reach out in whatever way that we can as students to help our fellow Malaysians to get back on their feet. Our aim is to show respect and offer hope to our homeless friends and also to break the social stigmas over the homeless and underprivileged.
Meet this uncle at Petaling Street
Restless volunteers awaiting the arrival of food
Throughout the planning stages, I am very satisfied with the response which we received from students in UCSI. The main reason why I say this is based on the amount of clothes which we received. Right before the event, Yu Jing, Shi Song and I went to collect all the clothes and begin sorting this out. We had such great response that it took us about 2 hours to get the sorting done. It was basically a whole car boot filled with bags and bags of shirts, pants, dresses (super fancy ones) and also blankets. We were really grateful for all that we received as it would be of good use to the homeless. As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
We begin our adventure out on the streets at around 9pm when the food arrived. My group’s route was Chinatown and we had 21 members. Apparently this route was the longest but I applaud those who chose to join it despite knowing that it would take long. As a safety precaution, our group had to go through a warm up session by one of the MSS member. It was to prepare us for the journey ahead. Well it is after all for a good cause. As we head through Petaling Street night market, we came across a few homeless friends and handed out a pack of hot chicken rice. As we reached the end, we divided the group into 2 and headed in opposite directions. My ground had a good 20minute walk all the way to Stadium Negara but we could not find anyone over there. So we headed back and went on with our instinct. As soon as we find one guy we asked him where the others might be. After around 1 hour plus we covered the whole of Chinatown but we still had around 10 packs of food. Being such good people and not calling it a day off, we headed down Kota Raya to hand out more food to those who need it. As a group, we weren’t going to head back with goods still in hand because that would be a failed run.
As I handed out the food to this elderly lady, I could feel this intimate connection as we looked eye to eye. I could see the gratitude through her eyes and it spoke a thousand words. It was a really humbling experience which gave a new perspective on live. My heart felt good that I was helping someone in need but at the same time it pains me to see that there are people living in this condition. It aches my heart that they have to go through this experience in their life and nothing much has been done by the government to help our homeless friends to get back on their feet and sustain their own life. This is one of the reasons why I started joining this event a few years back in Johor Bahru. I like joining this movements because there is no religion, race or politics that motivate it but the big hearts and open minds that acts as the impetus to reach out to the poorest of poor and the homeless of the city. This is something we all could do for humanity's sake without waiting for the government to act on it. I believe that there is just one race on this planet and that would be the human race. As different as we may be, deep down on the inside we are all brothers and sisters.
Spread Love, Peace and Unity
Warm up session by gym trainer