PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Human dignity keeps a person alive. It is often taken away by wars, hardship, the loss of occupation and suffering. We need to help people to redeem their worthiness as a human being. Our RCPJ has established ‘the SingleMum Project’. In this Project, we teach single parents useful and marketable skills so that they could be independent and have a livelihood for themselves and their children. Through this, their lives are redeemed and they find life worth living again.

The SingleMum Project first started with baking. Our Club introduced this project at the Malaysian Institute of Baking. Single parents were taught the various skills in baking and rudimentary accounting. The trainees included women who suffered in the tsunami in Acheh. Today, the SingleMum Project has taken on an expansion. We have introduced pedicure and manicure for the single parents. Perhaps we could explore further the professional skills that the single parents could be trained in.

Mothers are important parents in the families. They are the closest to their children. When a mother is unhappy, this is passed on to the children. When a mother suffers from economic hardship, the children would directly suffer as well. So we need to look after the mothers who lack the professional skills to be independent. The RCPJ is helping such mothers.

(Excerpts from The Economist , Jan 24th – 30th 2009, p. 58 (International)).

Humanity’s greatest accomplishment of the past five decades, declared Bill Gates this week, is the reduction in the number of deaths among young children by half, to 10m a year in 2007. The world’s most successful capitalist heaped praise on the WHO, while unveiling an ambitious new global scheme to eradicate polio within a few years. Bruce Aylward described the fight against the disease in the language of markets:

“Eradication is the venture capital of public health: the risks are huge but so too are the rewards.”

The Gates Foundation, with its pots of money and businesslike approach, has transformed the bureaucratic and demoralized world of public health. It has helped revive ailing campaigns, including the fight against polio. This will now get a fresh $600m-plus, from British and German taxpayers, from the Rotary Club International, as well as from the Gates Foundation ($255m).

The decline from 350,000 new cases in 1988 (when the goal of rapid polio eradication was first declared) to 2,000 cases now (chiefly in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) looks like a near victory. But the final stretch is the hardest. Only one in 200 cases is readily susceptible to early detection. Polio is far more infectious.

Other snags include the usual vaccine that has not worked well in densely populated, disease-ridden central India. Researchers are now working on new vaccines. The fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan has hampered vaccination programmes there. Rumours among Muslims in northern Nigeria that the vaccination programme was in fact a conspiracy to sterilize children is facing health-care givers. These are the challenges. 

Our lunch meeting on Feb 10 was well subscribed as almost all seats at the five tables set up were taken up. Many Rotarians turned up to land support to the 11 ladies who went through an 8-week “Beauty Therapy” course conducted under the Supermum project. Turn out from the press was equally encouraging – we had representation from the NST, Sin Chew Jit Poh and China Press to cover the news.

PDG Dato Dr Low Teong handed over a cheque of RM16,000 from the Crocodile Foundation to the project. The President Dato Kevin Yong also accepted a cheque of RM20,000 from Rtn Loo Kit Choong, being contribution from NiYou Magazine to other Supermum projects. 

Under the Beauty Therapy course, 11 ladies are now able to perform manicure, pedicure and beauty facial procedures as a means of earning a living. Rtn Jack Lim offered all Rotarians a free trial session on the coming Sunday at the training centre. Ms. Alice Kok who was chief trainer of the project helped give away certificate of completion to the Supermums.