House of Joy Sem 2'14

          Sunway CPA Australia Student Charter (SCSC) organized a meaningful Corporate Social Responsibility activity, meeting up with the orphans of House of Joy. This semester, SCSC members took this opportunity to celebrate Moon Cake Festival with the cheerful kids over there. It was held on 14th of September 2014 (Sunday) from 3pm to 9pm where at Taman Paik Siong, Puchong.

            Before the day, SCSC members were busy preparing materials to celebrate Moon Cake Festival, i.e. candles, lanterns and activity games. We planned to play the candles and lanterns with kids at the park nearby the House of Joy. Food and beverages were also prepared by SCSC members as in the style of “potluck”. Furthermore, we received some sponsored items from companies to donate to the orphans in House of Joy for the purpose to support their basic needs and wants. The fundraising items were 20 pieces of moon cakes, 10 units of plastic pails and 5 dishwashing liquid.

            During the day, all SCSC members gathered at Sunway Campus at 3pm and departed at 3.30pm. There were 35 SCSC members and 15 kids from House of Joy and their age were around 10-11 years old. When we reached the House of Joy, tasks were allocated systematically. Partial SCSC members cleaned the park and eating area as well as prepared the food and beverages. On the other hand, other SCSC members were meeting up with those lovely and charming kids. When the kids saw SCSC members walking towards their house, their faces showed cherry smiles and kept waving their hands to us.

            The bonding sessions were cut short this time because that was not the first time visiting them. SCSC members played together with kids and shared their stories in these past few months. The House of Joy has adopted chicks and those kids were so excited to share their experience with SCSC members on how they take care of the chicks and even named those chicks too. The kids looked so attentive and careful when they were looking after the chicks.

After a session of playing in the House of Joy, SCSC members brought those kids out to the park nearby and started the games session. The kids were so energetic and ran actively around the park. We prepared some game activities such as frog jumping, charades, freeze dance and Simon Says. Children were very creative on the games as they changed the instructions and style of playing the games. The creativity of theirs   brought us laughter and joyful which would melt our heart.

The game session ended an hour later, kids were arranged to clean their hands and ready for dinner. Our SCSC members prepared fried meehun, fried rice, curry chicken, fried chicken, hard boil eggs, cucumber, cabbage, fruits and Ribena drinks. Besides, our advisor Ms.Fong ordered 7 boxes of pizza to all of the orphans of House of Joy. It was an enjoyable moment as we could eat and chat together, sharing our past experiences and thoughts of future. All of the members in House of Joy enjoyed the dinner prepared by SCSC members as they showed thumbs up to those SCSC members who prepared the food.

Later, the kids started to help to clean up after meal and we started our main activity immediately which is celebration of Moon Cake Festival with candles and lanterns. Kids were extremely happy to see lanterns in different cartoons’ theme such as Minions, Powerpuff Girls, Princess and etc. They were so contented on holding the lanterns and playing with candles in the night. Of course, there were SCSC members by their side to guide them the proper way of playing candles and lanterns. Furthermore, we also explained the story of Moon Cake Festival to the kids to teach them the origin of this festival.

Time passed fast and the evening time of spend with kids were passed. From the order of person-in-charge, we had to send those kids home on time as we promised earlier. Those kids were so reluctant when we told them that we are leaving soon. Some kids also asked when will be the next visit again.

As a conclusion, we should continue to visit and support House of Joy in the future. Different activities can be conducted where most importantly is to pass the positive thinking to them. Last but not least, we managed to take lots of photos with them throughout the whole evening and keep them as memorable memories.

Written by : Nyoke Yee

Edited by   : Soo Lim Lee (Enaly)