Archive for the ‘UMIC’ category

Back To School 2008

December 17th, 2007
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Dear friends,

“Back to School” project is back again for the year 2008. This is our 3rd year and we thank the members for the support and understanding. Early this year we successfully concluded the project, whereby we sponsored 59 students from SJKT Bkt Darah and SJKT Ldg Sg Buloh who had difficulties in meeting the school expenses due to their unfortunate poor conditions. Photos of previous Back To School event can be found at http://umic.shutterfly.com. Previously, in the year 2006, we helped 35 students from SJKT Bkt Darah. Beyond just providing uniforms and school bags, we also helped to cover expenses for extra classes and school activities at both these schools.

Due to the support by the public via UMIC, the teachers, and also the effort by students and parents, we are able to announce that for the FIRST time in 17 years, SJKT Ldg Sg Buloh has produced a 7A student! The school’s overall passing rate improved slightly from 9.1% to 11.7%. In the district of Kuala Selangor, SJKT Ldg Sg Buloh lies in third position, behind two other schools located in urban areas. As for SJKT Bukit Darah, the school maintained the single 7A student achievement from last year, while the passing rate improved vastly from 30.8% to 44.1%. In the near future, our target is to achieve 100% passing rate. Again, all this is only possible due to the overwhelming, continuous support and commitment shown by people from all walks of life, who contribute through us. The funds were used to cover the lunch expenses during weekend classes, purchase of study materials, payment of fees for student participation in events, etc.

Over the last 2 years, we have increasingly helped more students, and the trend continues this year. This year, we have identified about 76 poor students from SJKT Bukit Darah in Sg Buloh, SJKT Ladang Sg Buloh in Bkt Rotan, and SJKT Ldg Bradwall, Siliau, Seremban. These students are facing difficulties to step foot into school again due to their unfortunate family backgrounds of single mothers, labourers, phyisically/mentally disabled parents, medically affected parents, etc. The parents can’t afford to provide these young souls the education and the study materials which will provide them a better future and to contribute to the community growth. This project is in line with our focus and objective to assist poor students to continue to excel their education and to kill off the young age school dropout rates.

The breakdown and total cost are as below:
1. SJKT Bkt. Darah, Sg Buloh – 29 (3 students are going to Form 1)
2. SJKT Ladang Sg Buloh, Bkt Rotan – 35 (Expected)
3. SJKT Ldg Bradwall, Siliau – 12
Total – 76 students (Expected)
Estimated total expenses – RM 11,400

The students list will be update by early next week on our website at www.umic.org.my. Those without access to website may request the list from the contact persons below. Similar to last year, interested donors can adopt one or more students from the student list which has been published by UMIC Charity Wing . The approximate cost per student based on age will be as below:
1. Std 1 – RM130
2. Std 2 – RM130
3. Std 3 – RM150
4. Std 4 – RM150
5. Std 5 – RM180
6. Std 6 – RM180
7. Secondary – RM200

The cost per student above includes the basic needs (2 pairs of uniform, school bag, 2 pairs of shoes, 3 pairs of socks, shoe polish, water bottle, exercise books, & stationeries) AND also to cover for motivation seminar, education seminar, extra classes, and purchase of workbooks. We invite interested donors to contact the following committee members below for more info and pledge:

Koppal 019-2796669 / koppalai@epsontoyocom.com
Poobalan 019-2664042 / mpoobalan@gmail.com
Muru 012-3072027 / murudevi@yahoo.com
Rajj 016-2200765 / l0rd_huntsman@yahoo.com

Account details are as below:
Name: Ananthi Ramakrishnan (Treasurer)
Maybank account no: 114833039081

Upon bank in, kindly SMS your name and amount to any of the above numbers.

Pls visit http:///www.umic.org.my and http://www.umic.com.my for more details of the club and the projects/events (we are still updating the website, so do bear with us). Again, we look forward for your support. More info will be posted as it is made available. Please forward this to your friends and family members.

Thank you.

Deepavali with Kids

November 20th, 2007
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Deepavali with Kids was held in Klang last Sunday (18 Nov 2007). The event was organised by a group of friends and their families for the last 10 years or so. UMIC were invited to sponsor some of the items and also to help out at the event, since about 250 children were expected this time.

I went there on Saturday evening to help pack the school bags full of goodies – stationery, towel, food stuff, shoe polish etc. However, most of the work were already done. We also helped to do the “thoranam” (decoration made from young coconut tree leaves) and pack gifts for children.

On Sunday morning, myself and Then reached the venue at 9.30am. Had breakfast and started with arrangement and allocation of groceries to be distributed to the various groups. Then, there were some decoration work – putting up balloons etc. My duty was to be photographer, so i basically hung around pretending to be busy while others were huffing and puffing away 🙂

Most of the UMIC members started to arrive after 10am, while the children started arriving around 12pm in buses and vans. There were children from Klang Utama, Anbe Sivam, St Barnabas Home, Destiny Home, Padmasambava, etc. and also disabled children. 4 poor families previously identified by the organisers also attended the event.

After a brief opening ceremony, food was served. And what food it was! Nasi goreng, nuggets, chicken burger, mee goreng, fried chicken, sausages, fresh popcorn, satay and candy floss to name a few. They kids dug in and had a great meal. At the same time, we had a clown who went around entertaining the children. But i think what the children loved the most were the two air-filled playpen. Kids were jumping up and down, really lost in their own little worlds!

Then some of the children danced and sang, and were rewarded with prizes by the organisers. Amidst all this, the superbikers came! They took the children for a ride around the block, and left the kids wanting for more. The bikers were sporting enough to take nearly all the children around, taking turns with their bikes.

Following this was a special appearance by ChaCha the clown magician, who entertained the kids with his antics. The rain made us move under the canopies and ChaCha continued his show.

After that it was gift session where every child was given a gift. Finally, schools bag were handed over to the children and representatives from the homes took the provisions.

The event ended at around 4.15pm. The organisers then cleaned up the area and most of the left by 5.30pm.

Thanks to UMICians – Rajj, Mr Gopal, Then, Mamba, Muru@Ritesh, Shirley, Ananthi, Guru, Ms Rahimah, Capt and Mrs Asohan, Mr and Mrs Kannan, and Perumal for helping out with this event.

Thanks too to the organisers for extending the invitation to UMIC to take part in this year’s Deepavali with Kids. Hope to have the same fun next year!

Businessmen with compassionate hearts

November 11th, 2007
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UMIC is one of the recepients of this noble act. The provisions allocated to UMIC were channelled to Sungai Buloh families. Thanks to Dato' Rai and Mr Mahendra, among others for helping us to help others.
 
 
Businessmen with compassionate hearts

source

DO businessmen think only profits and have no compassion for the poor and needy? Certainly not the Hindu tradesmen from Kuala Lumpur's famed Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman and Jalan Masjid India. 

For nearly 50 years, it has been an annual tradition during Deepavali for these businessmen to come together to collect and donate large amounts of groceries to be distributed to the poor and needy during the festive season. 

According to this year's project co-coordinator Mahendra Kumar Malani, the tradesmen are very generous and each year the amount of groceries increases. Mahendra said the annual collection usually started about three weeks before the festival. 

This year, about 200 poor families from Klang, Setapak, Sentul and Sungai Buloh were given RM200 worth of groceries each. 

Businessman Ramesh Kodammal said the practice was initiated by the late Datuk Gurdial Singh about 50 years ago and was continued by the late Datuk Makhan Lal. "The Gujurati, Punjabi, Sindhi and south Indian businessmen from the area work closely together to ensure that the needy receive some contribution during Deepavali,'' Kodam-mal said. He said that they hoped to continue the tradition for many more years to come. "We will continue to do this every year and are looking at increasing the amount of groceries given out to the needy,'' he said. 

UMIC’s Merdeka Treasure Hunt 2007

September 3rd, 2007
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25th August was a memorable day indeed since it was the first time I took part in a motorized treasure hunt. The hunt was organized by UMIC (or try http://www.umic.com.my) as part of its recreational activity. The event had a noble cause of channeling the proceeds to its community projects to help single mothers.

Well, back to the event. Our team consisted of myself, Then, Ananthi, and Guru. Only Ananthi had experience as a hunter before, so you can pretty much estimate our expectation and confidence level. Anyway, we took part more as support for the event rather than gunning for glory. I missed the briefing by the organizers, so had no idea what a tulip had to do with a treasure hunt, until it was duly clarified. Good thing I did not bring a bunch of tulips on that morning 🙂

Guru took on the driver role (it was his car anyway), myself the navigator, and the two ladies as the crew.

We flagged off from Safety Driving School, near Armada Hotel/Asiajaya, PJ at 8am, wearing our “bright” yellow competition t-shirts. It was a sight ripped off from Batu Caves during Thaipusam 🙂 By the way, we also got a bagful of goodies courtesy of various sponsors.

The hunt was confusing since it had many segments – solving the clues (riddles more likely!), collecting treasures, road safety questions, challenges (like shopping in a hypermarket for the items or acting out weird characters), and they even had apair of 3-piece jigsaw puzzle pictorials! It was a steep learning curve for the 3 of us and Ananthi tried her best to expose us to the complicated world of treasure hunters.

The first clue led us to Cyberjaya, where we had to use our acting skills to obtain the tulips and questions. From Cyberjaya it was a hectic 8 hour (YES, 8 hour) trip along Dengkil, Bandar Salak Tinggi, Bandar Baru Nilai, PLUS highway, Tampin, and then towards Alor Gajah and finally ending at Straits Meridian Hotel, Malacca.

We practically had to keep our eyes peeled open and try to process the information we saw along the roads all the time. We tried to answer as much as questions as possible, but ended up completing about 26 out of 40 questions only. Probably got half of that correct 🙁

We did not manage the time properly and had to rush to reach in time. Managed to reach the hotel about 5.05pm and handed in our answers and the treasures. After that, we checked in and relaxed until dinner time. The organizers then presented the answers. From what I saw and heard, I believe this was quite a tough hunt for beginners like me. Anyway, I was glad we got some of the answers correct. The winners were announced (top 10 places) as below:

1st place: Awesome Foursome (Capt Sundar, Rajes, Deepa, Rajiv) – 119 pts

2nd place: Riddle Raiders (Chew Seng Cheong, Lim Gin Lee, Chin Siow Chin, Loh Chee Kwan) – 114 pts

3rd place: Little Ferrari (Manivannan Velayuthan, Prabaharan Sukumaran, Liana Jacinta Gaganathan, Shobna Nair Kunjoo Nair) – 89 pts

4th place: Sivaji – The Boss (Kannan Ramasamy, Krishna Moorthy Ayadurai, Murali Puncharatnam, Tharmen) – 87 pts

5th place: Lanun Merdeka (Perumal Naidu Ramiah, Siva Kumar Ramayah, Malar Supramaniam, Lim Chuan Leng) – 85 pts

6th place: WD Hunters (Edward Raj Selvarajoo, Sanmugam Subramaniam, Theva Kumar Kailasapathy, Selveratinam Manickam) – 82 pts

7th place: Charlie’s Angels (Saravanan Arumugam, Kavita Branavasoruban, Subanandini Thuraisingam, Vanaja Pamela Arumugam) – 81 pts

8th place: Flying Dutchman (Thavaselvam Tesanggu, Premala Naidu Haridas, Sumitera Sena, Sheiila Rajj) – 78 pts

9th place: Info (Ong Jen Jen, Andy Yap Woei Wen, Irma Malyana, Lee Choon Ping) – 76 pts

10th place: Die Hard 5.0 (Nilamegam Maniam, Omantaram Kangarajoo, Sadishwara Rau Narayanasamy, Paramasivam Perumal) – 74 pts

The winners received RM5000 worth of Star Cruises voucher plus other goodies! Not bad for a days’ effort. Even though we did not win anything, I really enjoyed the hunt and we are thinking of participating in upcoming hunts in the future. It’s a good way to explore places and improve on your knowledge.

**update – Then has written on the hunt as well on her blog

As usual, the pictures can be found at Picasa, or just click on the slideshow below.

Dr Kadeer Ibrahim Talk at Kuala Selangor

July 25th, 2007
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This program was organised by Majlis Guru Besar Daerah Kuala Selangor and Sabak Bernam together with United Malaysian Indian Club on 23th July 2007 at Sri Subramaniam Temple, Kuala Selangor as a follow up to the SJKT UPSR Education Seminar held on 14th July. More than 300 students from 26 primary SJKT schools took part. The hall was brimming with students. Prof Dr Kadeer talked on Motivation and Learning Techniques in the session with students which lasted for about 2 hours (3-5pm).

The evening session for parents was from 8 – 10pm in which he talked about problems faced by parents, what parents need to do, the roles of parents and teachers, importance of education etc. About 300 parents attended this session.

Some of the photos of the seminar are available at: Picasa

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