A Call for Help | Destiny Starting Point Homes

“One is too small a number to achieve any greatness.” - John C. Maxwell

What John meant is team work is important, and if you try to do everything alone, not only is it gonna be hard, but the truth is, that thing you are doing? It’s never going to reach it’s true potential. You’ve dreamed a big dream, why would you want to go and limit it’s growth by your own limitations?

And John, I’ll go on to add that:

“...but all greatness starts with the initiative of one.”

Because in most greatness that we see today, it starts with the intention of one person. Whether it’s unsatisfactoriness, unfairness or just plain uneasiness, those individual realised for anything to happen for anything to be set right, they first need to take the first step.

Img Source : The Star Papers

That’s what @caroljoseph did. From a local newsportal writeup she saw that a few homes were in need of help. She visited one of the homes, was quite touched by what she saw, and realised she wanted to help them do more. She reached out to her friends, one of them being our mutual friend @vincetay, and that was how I got to know about it.

Talk about 6 degrees of separation, huh?

Initially Vince asked me just for a RM10 donation, which is easy. But because I was in the midst of writing a post of Steemit, I thought, why not I do a writeup about the homes, and any SBD I earned from it will be donated. I was averaging at about $25 per post, so it’s definitely better than the initial ask of RM10.

It’s then that I remembered the above quote, and decided to rope @bitrocker2020 to do some kickass Steem charity drive.

And a drive we did.

Yesterday, we drove to one of the homes, Destiny Starting Point <http://www.destinystartingpoint.com/> which is about 20km away.

Me squinting due to the hot sun, while @bitrocker2020 looking tanned.

The home had a nice sign board made up by pieces of wood, probably a project by the boys during their free time. The home was pretty simple, with only the bare furniture. We saw a few boys reading and talking at the living area, spread over 3 mismatched sofas. There was a makeshift dining table, made up by smaller classroom tables of uneven heights. I figured it probably double up as a work area for the boys, and also a play area.

You see, the boys are there because of juvenile cases and most of them are from single-parent homes. Because of that, the home owner, Grace, believed it’s better to keep them in the homes and homeschool them, to avoid them from mixing with the wrong crowd and have the old (bad) habits kicking in again. They do go out daily for studies (at a church nearby), and occasionally has activities planned for them.

It’s a necessary evil. I don’t believe in locking the teens up, but looking at the potential consequences, and to have all her good work undone, I understand why Grace decided to do that.

I saw the entrance to the kitchen, and a room with a couple of bunk beds and some boys sleeping on them. I didn’t enter both, as it was indeed a private space.

Mark, Grace’s son, explained how the homes worked, and it was then that we found that they had 4 homes in total. The one we were at are for teen boys, there’s another for teen girls, another for younger children (below 12), and lastly, one for the homeless and the handicapped elderly. Grace and the team really do have a big heart to take in all those in need, and as Mark went on to say, they solely depended on donations and the good will of the community to support their expenses.

alt

They are very precise with their breakdown of expenses, and as @bitrocker2020 and I looked at it, as business owners ourselves, we have to pat them on the back for being so optimised with their costs and spending. Mind you, in total, they are talking care 25 boys, 18 girls, not counting the young ones and the homeless. As a matter of fact, Mark told me they recently just had their water turned back on because they couldn’t afford the water bill for the past few months. Dry, humid and hot weather, and no water? It’s not funny at all.

alt

Staff and volunteers with big hearts.

alt

This picture is a winner, mainly because of their smiles. The boys, they don’t have much to look forward too, as their parents stayed far away, and probably couldn’t afford to see them often. Their parents tried to donate as much as they can to keep the homes up, but truth is, they themselves are having difficulties coping too. So say that life ain’t easy is an understatement.

The good thing is after the newsportal writeup, they have gotten quite good exposure, and a lot of the largest ticket items they needed were taken care of. Grace gave us a list of necessities that they needed urgently:

5 ceiling fans
3 blenders
2 hot water airport
Toileries
- shampoo
- talcum
- deoderant
- sanitary pad
- colgate (toothpaste)
- toothbrushes
- baby bath
- shower gel
- dettols

She sent us a couple of pics from the router homes we couldn’t visit too.

alt

So while @bitrocker2020 and I are working our network to reach out to more people for help to fulfil those items off the list, here’s where you can help too. As much as we appreciate MYR donations, let’s make this interesting, shall we?

Since we are on the Steemit platform, you can upvote this post, resteem and share it, because we will be donating the payout amount to the homes. We will use the money to buy the goods, and give them additional cash for their day-to-day expenses. Of course, we accept SBD donations too.

This Steemit Charity Drive (or I would rather call it Steeming Love, but @bitrocker2020 think it sounds too much like a porno production house) is our first, and probably of many to come, to showcase to the community that they do not need to contribute in traditional currency to make a change. With the introduction of digital currencies, we can now use our talents, skills and expertise to scale the impact, and great a bigger, more lasting positive change.

@bitrocker2020, the team and myself would like to thank you in advance for your upvotes, donations and support.

This is also a beta run, and if we can raise $500 for Destiny Homes, the next step is to appoint a lead person (probably @caroljoseph because of her passion), and engineer a strategy to get the homes involved on Steemit too, so they can generate income on their own.

Think about it, a world without charity because everyone is self-sufficient.

Now, that’s something we can all to aspire to, and Steem could be the game changer of it all.