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I took up a pledge to fulfill Mr Tan wish to have karaoke lounge with his family http://samaritianka.blogspot.com/2010/08/promise-me.html *26 august* That was absolutely AWESOME day. AIESEC in Malaysia is running Promise me http://www.tlcpromiseme.com/campaign with a mission to engage more youths in addressing social causes and focus in creating meaningful benefits for those who are less fortunate, underprivileged or disabled in our society. Promise Me is an amazing initiative to bring awareness that one small action can make a difference! I was inspired to give back to the society. My pledge: Tan Jee Tong A jovial strokee, Mr Tan from Klang, age 43 years old, loves to sing. His wish is to spend an enjoyable evening at a karaoke lounge.

A few weeks ago I went to NASAMto meet Mr Tan. Nasam is really a place where it helps the stroke survivors as their objective is “There is Life After Stroke through proper rehabilitation.” Now I have a real example of what is NGO and how people are supposed to work. While waiting I’ve studied information about the results and activities NASAM runs all over Malaysia. rehabilitation + cultural events + attracting volunteers

GOOD JOB! There is nothing to add

Mr Tan has a wonderful wife and 6 years old daughter.

Organizing this session I’ve faced a few challenges

1. Mr Tan doesn’t speak English, his native language is chinese. I’m grateful to his wife who communicated with me. Still I’m sure actions and body language speak more than any language.

2. Find karaoke place and get together my friends at the time suitable for Mr Tan The only requirement was to have lift. For KL its not a problem every mall and subway has a lift for disabled people.

Still there were a lot of excuses about timing. I’ve managed to negotiate only at 5 pm, obviously, when everyone is still in the office:)

3. Change my mindset.

This is the question WHY I’ve decided to do it. My whole life I’ve been escaping people an thoughts about disabled people. I had only one in my mind: I’m so happy being healthy and having an ability to see, run and dance. Trying to run away from it you’ll never solve it. So when I’ve read about the campaign I said to myself: ‘nice opportunity to be useful to society here’ In a week after that I’ve started to do customer support for Sean’s Stephenson Living At Cause program. This guy is amazing! I’ve asked myself why not to make a person happier at least for a few hours!

And we went to Red Box karaoke with Mr Tan and his family!

And it was 180 minutes of joy, smile and singing.

It took some time to find cantonese songs. Still the whole process was cool. Now Mr Tan is a rock star.

Love and light,

Liuba

http://twitter.com/liubovv skype: liubashla http://samaritianka.blogspot.com/