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Friday, August 12, 2011
About Touch*A*Life @ 5:12 PM
Touch*A*Life is an international humanitarian organization that embodies the principle of loving kindness to serve the world’s poor and displaced. It works to prevent and relieve suffering by providing programs, projects and partnerships that help save lives, promote health and education. It strives to bring hope and restore dignity in a compassionate way. Assistance is provided without regard to religious beliefs, gender, or ethnic background.
TAL has been providing meals to the poor in Siem Reap, Cambodia since June 2008, from a simple beginning of 52 sandwiches to close to a whooping 3000 meals a month to various communities within and beyond Siem Reap town.
Meals are served at TAL house on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, mostly to the young children who are too poor for schools and have to rummage through bins and dumps for items that can be sold for recycling.
Each and every of them who came, had a story to share; who have to carry the load times heavier than them in order to earn the few cents, who slave for more than twelve hours day, who live in slums, who are abuse, who were abandoned, who once took drugs, who often get into fights, who are always starving... ... you name it.
They ate like giants, fearing for their empty stomach for the next day, not a single grain of rice wasted. They learn about hygiene and practice them, and clean up after they have finish their food. At TAL house, they get to drink portable water, rather than the soiled liquid. They get to have nutritious and filled meals, to keep their lives going. Kind souls donated multi vitamins and deworm pills for them. All these, not without the help, from you, from me, from us.
While we are deciding what to eat for our dinner today, they, are worrying if they have any to eat at all.
(disclaimer: some photos are courtesy from boss of social organisations, Bloom and Bloom Guest House, Diana and ex-mediacorp actress Jesseca Liu, who had joined Mavis in the project before)
And the good deed doesn't end here.
Once a week, Mavis will make a trip to the very poor district of Siem Reap in the motorbikes loaded with packets and packets of food, distributing them to the poor villagers, whom she and her helper had screened through the family condition beforehand. As updated by Mavis recently, the figures had since soared, more bikes and manpower are required. Thus, they are raising funds for a jeep, as the route to areas are not possible by Tuk Tuks, cars nor vans.
And if you haven't notice the man on the bike, he is riding on the bike with his crutch, lost his right leg when he stepped on the land mine when he was much younger. And that, didn't deter him from helping other with what he can.
When the children are malnourished, and too poor to own even a proper piece of clothes, their homes are made up of nothing more than leaves, zinc and cardboards.
No bedrooms, no kitchens, and not even the washrooms. What you see, is what you get. Even a proper shelter is luxury.
(disclaimer: some photos are courtesy from boss of social organisations, Bloom and Bloom Guest House, Diana and ex-mediacorp actress Jesseca Liu, who had joined Mavis in the project before)
Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
~Martin Luther King, Jr
With just that bit from us to part, is how we can help them out.