Charity & Volunteering 01 (Jun 08 - Mar 11)

[winston]

Ha Ha ... I can see that you dont watch your local news on TV...

[kennynah]

you are right.. ... i spent hours watching Discovery Channels.... and even cartoons can be more informative

but i guess...not informative enough to tell me about social welfarism for pregnant girls ...

and you are not telling me...i get it

[winston]

While you are spending money on ceremonies, parades, sporting events, stadiums, operas, fireworks etc or testing your weapons, developing new weapons or trying to send someone into space or to the moon ........ Shame ! Shame ! Shame !

Economic crisis requires swift action on hunger: FAO chief

ROME (AFP) - – The international community must do more to feed the world's hungry in a "historically unprecedented" global economic crisis, the head of the UN's food agency Jacques Diouf said on Friday.

In an address to mark the UN's World Food Day, Diouf called on world leaders to urgently find "a broad consensus on the total and rapid elimination of hunger".

"The current (economic) crisis is historically unprecedented in several ways," Diouf said in the speech at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's headquarters in Rome.

"As developing countries are more financially and commercially integrated in the world economy, a drop in the global demand or supply and in credit availability had immediate repercussions on them," he said.

Diouf said an additional 105 million people had been pushed into hunger as the crisis had "reduced the incomes and employment opportunities of the poor and significantly lowered their access to food".

The FAO chief said there are now some 1.02 billion undernourished people worldwide -- one-sixth of the global population.

He suggested governments should increase agriculture's share in official development assistance to its 1980 level of 17 percent, up from five percent today.

Pope Benedict XVI echoed Diouf's comments in a statement published on the FAO website.

The 82-year-old head of the Roman Catholic Church urged "the international community and its institutions to intervene in a more suitable and decisive manner", adding that access to food was a fundamental human right.

Heads of state and government are set to meet in Rome on November 16-18 at a UN FAO World Summit on Food Security.

The summit's aim is to find ways for poor countries to boost their agricultural productivity and improve the management of their food resources.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20091017/t ... b2fc3.html

[kennynah]

trying to send someone into space

this is debatable...depending on whether you are speaking with an astronomer or 13th auntie...

if you have read insightfully into the cosmos literature, one can infer that we are not just a part of the cosmos, we are the cosmos... our very cells are made of elements that are now floating in the vast universe million, billion and trillion light years away from us...

that is, without sounding atheist, we were created by the Big Bang....which over the billions of years formed galaxies and solar systems... Earth was a result of such a Big Bang theory....of cos, this is just a theory, just like when the theory that Earth was flat... preposterous as it may sound, we should aspire to learn about the universe, so that we can know who we are and where we are heading towards...

[mojo_]

Shame ! Shame ! Shame !

Cher & Tina Turner - Shame, Shame, Shame

[winston]

we should aspire to learn about the universe, so that we can know who we are and where we are heading towards...

I have no problem with that. But until we get the house in order, I think it's morally wrong.

BTW, as I get older, I'm starting to think that maybe the Big Bang was created by /or in association with a Higher Force if there's actually such a thing as a big bang. Anyway, the Universe seems too orderly, a flower, too beautiful, the body of a human being, too perfect, to have arisen from just Evolution. But this will be a debate for another time ...

[millionairemind]

Hi everyone,

CDAC will be organising a Rice Distribution Event on 7 November 2009 at FIVE locations to distribute rice to 1,400 low-income families who are receiving financial assistance under the CDAC Workfare Programme and CDAC-SFCCA Hardship Assistance Fund Scheme. The rice was raised from the “Share A Taste of Kindness” Rice Donation Drive which was conducted between 30 August and 30 September 2009 in partnership with SongHe Rice, Capital Radio 95.8FM, SPC Petrol Stations and Lions Befrienders. We NEED YOUR HELP to ensure the smooth running of this event!

The details are as follows:
DATE : Saturday, 7 November 2009
Venues & Time: Pls see below

1. CDAC HQ (65 Tanjong Katong Road, near Paya Lebar MRT)
Time: 9.30am – 2.00pm
Estimated No of families: 507
No of Volunteers Needed: 10

2. CDAC@Bukit Panjang (Blk 270 Bangkit Road)
Time: 9.30am – 2.00pm
Estimated No of families: 217
No of volunteers Needed: 5

3. CDAC@Punggol (Blk 512 Hougang Ave 10, near Hougang Interchange/MRT)
Time: 10.30am – 2.30pm
Est no of families: 251
No of Volunteers Needed: 5

4. Yishun SSC (Blk 145 Yishun St 11, walking distance from Yishun MRT)
Time: 10.30am – 2.30pm
Est No of Families: 251 families
No of Volunteers Needed: 5

5. Redhill SSC (Blk 83 Redhill Lane, walking distance from Redhill MRT)
Time: 10.30am – 2.30pm
Est No of families: 175 families
No of Volunteers Needed: 5

If you’re interested to volunteer in the above Rice Distribution Event, please provide us with your following details and email to [email protected] by 2 November 2009:

[winston]

Impatient Optimism... and Radical Generosity by Alexander Green, Spiritual Wealth

Is being rich a good thing?

According to a long line of philosophers, politicians and religious leaders, the answer is a resounding no.

Karl Marx argued that the rich exploit the working class. Franklin D. Roosevelt railed against "malefactors of great wealth." The Book of Isaiah condemns the rich who "crush my people" and "grind the face of the poor."

Yet American attitudes toward wealth remain largely unchanged, especially among young people.

The Pew Research Center recently polled a large sample of 26-40 year-olds and 18-to-25 year-olds, asking them "What are your generation's most important goals in life?"

62 percent of 26-to-40 year olds said their highest goal is "to get rich." 81 percent of 18-to-25 year-olds answered the same way.

Some will say this simply reflects our increasingly materialistic culture.

But money is also freedom, the ability to make important choices. And great wealth often leads to something else: radical generosity.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie established a foundation "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." It has funded public libraries and universities across Scotland and the U.S.

Henry Ford left the bulk of his fortune to the Ford Foundation. It grants more than $530 million annually for community and economic development, education, arts and culture, and human rights.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, funded by the breakfast cereal pioneer, donates hundreds of millions annually to promote education and health care for the poor.

David Packard, founder of Hewlett Packard, set up the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to build community hospitals across the nation.

Intel founder Gordon Moore has given hundreds of millions to conservation groups and universities. (In 2007, his foundation donated $200 million to Caltech and the University of California for the construction of the world's largest optical telescope.)

Standard Oil founder John Rockefeller gave birth to Rockefeller University and through his foundation established the first schools of public health, developed the vaccine for yellow fever, and funded agricultural development around the world.

The tradition of radical generosity continues today. Take Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for example.

His parents were heartbroken when he dropped out of Harvard his sophomore year to pursue a business opportunity he was convinced would vanish by the time he graduated.

But he was right. Within just a few years, he licensed his computer operating system to IBM for $80,000 rather than selling it outright. He reckoned that other PC-makers would soon copy IBM's open architecture and would need to license his system.

It was one of the great business decisions of all time. Collecting royalties from both PC-makers and software developers worldwide, Gates made a fortune for early shareholders and quickly became the world's richest man with a net worth of more than $50 billion.

Lately, however, he has turned his attention elsewhere...

In setting up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates wanted - like all philanthropists - to give away his fortune wisely.

He explored several avenues. But Gates found his mission when he discovered that every month one million parents lose a child they will grieve forever to easily preventable diseases like measles, malaria and diarrhea. Before long he was reading titles like The Eradication of Infectious Diseases, Mosquitoes, Malaria & Man, and Rats, Lice, and History.

After an initial donation to combat the problem, Gates invited a group of doctors, scientists and leaders in the field of immunology to his home one evening to learn more about what could be done. He was surprised to find that 30 million children a year weren't receiving vaccines. He challenged his guests to investigate what could be done and at what cost.

His parting words of encouragement that night were "Don't be afraid to think big."

Today the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants generous gifts to a number of worthy causes here and abroad, including education, technology, agriculture, birth-control and micro-finance. But its primary focus is improving healthcare and reducing extreme poverty in the world's developing nations.

A major goal is vaccination. Why? When you look at the benefits they provide, vaccines represent the most efficient and cost-effective tool medicine has. Administering them a few times during a child's first year dramatically improves mortality rates.

The $800 million the Gates Foundation currently spends each year to fight infectious diseases is roughly the same amount given by the U.S. Agency for International Development - and approaches the annual budget of the U.N.'s World Health Organization, a group receiving donations from 193 nations.

Last year Gates gave up his day-to-day role at Microsoft to devote more time to his foundation. His generosity has already saved millions of lives. Yet he's just getting started. He calls himself "an impatient optimist."

Gates understands how incredibly fortunate he was to be born in a country that values freedom, education, and individual initiative. He also knows his success could never have occurred in a society without adequate healthcare, property rights, free-market incentives and well-developed capital markets.

Many are born into this world with no such advantages, indeed with little chance of surviving their first year.

Gates has taken this problem and embraced it as his own. Indeed, his foundation is so effective that Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett - no slouch himself - has pledged $30 billion of his own fortune to it.

Some will grouse that a poor man sacrifices more when he gives ten dollars than Gates and Buffett do when they donate $10 billion. And I won't argue the point.

But these men provide an inspiring example. They don't just know how to make money. They know how to give it away.

[millionairemind]

Please feel free to contact me or the undersigned if you are interested.. thanks

Dear Volunteers,

CDAC will be organising our 6th ‘Ready for School’ Project this year and we will need your support once again!

Date/Time: 19 Dec 09 (Sat), 9.30am-3.00pm
20 Dec 09 (Sun), 9.30am-1.30pm
Reporting Time: 8.15am
Venue: CDAC Building, 65 Tanjong Katong Road
(Location map can be found at http://www.cdac.org.sg/eng/contact_us.htm)

We will be inviting the less-privileged families and students under CDAC’s various assistance schemes to participate in this event. The monthly household income and per capita income of these families are mainly $1,500 and below, or $450 and below, respectively. We are expecting about 4,500 families to attend the event this year.

This year, we will be giving out one family pack, worth $30 each (include $10 food vouchers and other groceries & household items) and a maximum of three school-ready packs, worth $115 each (include $40 transport vouchers, $50 book & shoe vouchers, a school bag & other stationery) to each of the participating families. We hope that our assistance will help to lighten the financial load of these lower-income families.

The theme for CDAC ‘Ready for School’ 2009 is “有健康才能打拼,有计划才有未来”. Hence, the programme for this year will be focused on the importance of healthy living and sound financial planning. We will be bringing in free health screening for parents, financial management games for families and engaging talks, workshops & activities for all to have a fun-filled day together.

In order for the event to be a success, we will need the support of ~150 volunteers for each of the two-day event. Your duties may include any of the following:
- transportation & distribution of family packs & school-ready packs
- registration & administrative work
- usher & crowd control
- workshop assistants
- food/drinks/games stall helpers
- others

For your info, you will be required to attend a Volunteers Briefing at CDAC Building before the event.

If you are keen to Volunteer your service for the CDAC ‘Ready for School’ 2009, pls provide us with your personal particulars as follows. Friends and family are welcome to join us too =)

Full Name:
Gender:
Age:

Contact No.:
Email:
Address:

Day(s) of Event (pls tick one):
( ) 19 Dec 09 (Sat), 9.30am-3.00pm Only
( ) 20 Dec 09 (Sun), 9.30am-1.30pm Only
( ) Both 19 & 20 Dec 09

Volunteers Briefing (pls tick one):
( ) 12 Dec 09 (Sat), 10am-12noon @ CDAC Building, Blk B, Room B1-02
( ) 15 Dec 08 (Tue), 7.30pm-9.30pm @ CDAC Building, Blk B, Room B1-02

T-shirt Size (pls circle one):
XXS (34) / XS (36) / S (38) / M (40) / L (42) / XL (44) / XXL (46) / N.A
(Pls note that we will be wearing the blue 华助会义工t-shirt. Kindly indicate N.A if you already have the t-shirt)

RECRUITMENT DEADLINE: 28 Nov 09

ENQUIRIES: Chiu Loo @ 68437271 / [email protected]
Liling @ 68437249 / [email protected]

[winston]

Ahd while there's money for parades, fireworks, stadiums and opera houses ...

Poor nutrition stunts growth of 200 million children: U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Nearly 200 million children in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and health problems due to poor nutrition in their early years, the U.N. children's foundation UNICEF said on Wednesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNe ... health1100