For 2 short hours, my family and I recently helped out the volunteers at the Bandar Utama Community Centre who were packing and loading donated goods for the flood victims in Kelantan. Donating goods to others wasn't tremendously new to us, but it was a first for us to actually go on the ground and help pack up and organize donated goods.
Upon arriving, one of the first sights that greeted us was the vast amounts of donated goods that have been dropped off: rice, mineral water, clothes, blankets. There were just tonnes and tonnes of goods filling and spilling all over the assembly hall of the community centre. I was really encouraged and touched by the sight. Well done, Malaysia!
There were a few observations and thoughts that I've jotted down, and a few lessons that I've learnt through this humbling experience: -
1. Truly, truly encouraged to be seeing volunteers coming together to help sort out the donations. A large number of donated goods is of course encouraging, but the staggering amount is so overwhelming. We were working for about 2-3 hours, my arms were aching, I've broken into a very hot sweat, and we've moved about 1% of the goods. I am not even exaggerating. But I was very thankful for the volunteers, who have taken the time not just to drop off goods, but to also mill through the gritty work of sorting out the donations. It was a lot of hard, manual work, but no one complained for a second. Everyone came from different backgrounds, different ages. We even had a 15 year old girl helping us out. Some injected a little bit of zest into the task by trying to play "American football" with the plastic bags, and some worked quietly and steadfastly. But whatever the differences in our personalities, we came together and worked to get those goods sorted out.
2. Not all donated goods are good. A personal lesson I've learnt is such: It's great that you want to donate all the items you no longer need. But, be discriminatory about what you're donating. Used undergarments are a known no-no, but they still turned up in donated goods, and there were weird things like iPad covers being donated (which may be good for causes other than disaster relief perhaps...?). Have a careful look through your donations. Do you truly feel that these can be donated? Or are you merely trying to dispose of old items in a way that would salve your conscience?
3. Take the effort to have a bit of care. Yes, life is busy, and you're just wanting to drop off your donations before rushing off to cook dinner for your family. But before you donate, just take some pains to make sure that your donations would be such that it would be useful for the victims, and easy for the volunteers to sort through. While it was great that everyone donated so so much, if I was being strictly honest, there were times when I felt the piles and piles of donated clothes resembled a landfill: there were ripped plastic bags, clothes spilling out of boxes onto the floor. I'm actually guilty of just "dumping" donations without properly sealing the plastic bags. But now I learnt that it would save a lot of time and energy (and heartache) if we all would carefully seal the boxes, plastic bags, and garbage bags that we put our donations into. It would be ideal to label them too.
4. Research. Again, everyone has so much going on in their lives that we can't really expect people to be complete experts in knowing what to donate, or how to help out etc. But it is important to just take some pains in finding out the right centres to drop off goods to, what kind of donated goods would be valuable, etc. For instance, we were actually told that the Bandar Utama Community Centre wasn't really the designated place for people to drop off clothes, but it's still being done anyway. And also, it is actually better to give canned biscuits rather than rice because the victims wouldn't have stove or the equipment to boil rice. I found that most of this information could be found on the posters, especially the ones on FB, but for some reason, the message isn't getting across. So yeap, read through the posters carefully, see what people really need.
People are generous in that they want to help out and donate. And that's great! But it's also time that we also start getting on the ground and help out practically, in physical labour - rather than just financially and materially. Also, if you do want to donate, take some care and effort in doing so. These goods are being donated to actual people who need them.
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