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With a Little Help from Our Friends
Rejoice is very fortunate to have a group of people in Singapore, which we call "Friends of Rejoice Singapore". The leader of the group is Mr. Wight Wong who has been helping Rejoice now for several years.
I asked Wight, 'How did you get involved with Rejoice?'. Below was his reply;
Hi Alan,
Per our communication, please let me explain a bit about the Friends of Rejoice Singapore group. Most of these people are actually friends or clients of mine. I have a class which I hold pretty regularly, & when we decided to contribute to a charitable cause, we selected Rejoice because we are pleased with the great work that has been done.
We made the first contribution since 2003, when I came across a front-page coverage of Rejoice in the Malaysian Star Paper. I was working there then, so I collected some funds which I forwarded to Rejoice. However, I only made my first visit to Rejoice in July 2009. Steve very kindly brought me around, I took some pictures of Rejoices field work, which I then showed to my friends & clients.
During that visit, Steve told me that donors had been dropping off, & he had been thinking of closing down the charity. I told my friends about this, & one of them, Cedric decided to do something about this. Cedric is from Malaysia. He was working in the UK then. He began a find raising campaign in his office, & raised a handsome sum which enabled Rejoice to carry on. We then paid a visit together to Rejoice, in November 2009. A friend, Arthur, then decided to sponsor the hosting of the Rejoice website, & most of the photos on the header & footing of the site were taken by us during that visit. In fact, I was the one who wrote the articles in the Voice section of the website. Please feel free to add anything you wish to there, or if you wish to remove anything. I won't be offended. ^^
Some of my friends are contributing towards making monthly donations to Rejoice. It is a small effort from us, but we are happy to be able to do whatever we can to support Rejoice.
I wish you luck in the fund raising effort to replace the vehicle, without which Rejoice would be greatly compromised, as you aptly pointed out. I have been to Chiang Dao & Fang, & am aware the distances covered are vast. The Rejoice mobile clinic has been bringing hope to those villagers; we hope that in our small ways, we would be able to keep your good work going.
Please write me if there are any requirements you might have. The least I can do is forward them to my friends.
We are aware that charity work can be very thankless. Salutations from us for the selfless work you've been doing. We hope more people will come forward to help out to enable Rejoice to continue serving the under-privileged in Chiang Mai & beyond ...
Cheers
What is intriguing from Wight’s note is, "Who put the article in The Malaysian Star?". Without that article and Wight reading it in 2003, Rejoice would probably not exist today. |
