Where's your family orphanage located..??
Our orphanage is in Kangar, Perlis. We started in 1991 and were the first orphanage in the entire state of Perlis at the time. The orphanage is called Rumah Mak Teh in memory of my late grandmother Puan Sri Puteh Omar. Initially, RMT was operating out of my late grandfather's house with a maximum capacity of 20 boys although we only had on average 16-18 at most.
I know we never ran full capacity because I was there everyday and I slept there on weekends, etc and there was always a few beds extra. In fact, the reason why my hair is short until today is because all the boys had the same haircut. Courtesy of my late cousin who was the administrator and a former Major in the army.
Now, we have our own purpose built facility which is located on a piece of land donated by one Hamba Allah (I think its approximately 2 acres in size) and construction took several years to complete due to lack of funds but Alhamdulillah, it was completed early last year at the cost of over RM3million in donations and has a maximum capacity of 80 children. The building was officiated by DYMM Raja Perlis in May and this year is our second year operating out of the new house.
Btw, last year was first time RMT became an all girls orphanage and we started off with 16 girls. Now we have 28 girls and will be increasing our numbers every year due to the steep learning curve having dealt with only boys since 1991. Funds is another factor and although we consider ourselves lucky to have what I would call 'cornerstone donors' in the form of Yayasan Al-Bukhary, Kuok Foundation, SP Setia Foundation, Lotus Group, Bank Rakyat and others whom I'm unable to disclose, in future I don't see things getting any cheaper and we are committed to supporting these girls all the way through to university.
So the financial side of it is still something that has to be figured out and is still something that keeps me up at night as my Dad is turning 70 and only Allah knows how long we all have on this earth. Therefore its important for RMT to remain financially independent in perpetuity. Don't worry, this will involve another round of fundraising and I hope when the time comes I can add the Malaysian Skyline Club as an organization to which I can turn to for help and support.
---------- Post added at 10:23 PM ---------- 6 hour anti-bump limit - Previous post was at 07:29 PM ----------
Update:
Regarding coverage of the event, it will begin from our designated meet point as Justin & Dinesh will be taking moving shots of the entire convoy so do not follow if and when they overtake or slow down to get various shots during the drive.
Also, I have received the Rev-Junkies apparel from Justin and they have all been wrapped individually as they would when shipped out to customers. Here are the M sizes for example:
On the inside, each and every T-shirt will also include one free Rev-Junkies sticker as shown below (these are mine btw:)
In addition, Justin who is also the editor for Hypertune and Shift magazine has carefully selected 10 of each magazine with no sexy girls on the cover and as decent content as possible for the boys leisure time reading (nearly all are aged 15-17):
Finally, here are the tudungs for the girls which need to be inspected individually before packaging as one of them had slight imperfections so luckily there are extras. This is from a Hamba Allah totally unrelated to the gifts above (just in case some joker tries to contact Justin for Rev-Junkies tudungs):