Video on Hope Place generated global buzz — founder

KUCHING: The charitable activities of Hope Place founder Kelvin Wan have caught international attention, thanks to Singapore's Channel NewsAsia (CNA).

CNA had produced a documentary about Wan after The Borneo Post, in particular, and other local media regularly highlighted his and his centre's activities.

On Dec 13, CNA broadcast the documentary film ‘Inspire Asia: The Man Who Brought Hope' on its website and social media.

“Within six days, the video clip received 518,000 views and 13,400 ‘likes'. I think most of the viewers responded positively by giving good comments and 6,500 of them shared the video link to their friends on Facebook and in chat groups,” he said yesterday.

Wan said although the video clip is only eight minutes long, its purpose was to inspire more people to do charity work.

The link to the CNA video is https://cna.asia/2BiszDz.

“After the video was broadcast, Hope Place received many calls from overseas asking about our centre and our charity work, while we also received more donations of food from the public,” he said, while expressing hope that many more Sarawakians will come forward to help the needy and less fortunate through Hope Place.

Hope Place currently cares for 190 needy families from all races. Each month, the centre needs around RM27,000 worth of food items to aid the needy and less fortunate registered in its list of recipients.

Hope Place is a nongovernmental organisation that visits the poor and also less fortunate families to contribute some essential food items like rice, cooking oil, sugar, salt, biscuits, and noodles.

Most of these families or individuals barely earn enough to get through the month.

For families with special needs children or with elderly or disabled members, the centre provides them with milk powder, oats and disposable diapers as well.

Hope Place carries out aid deliveries once every two months due to the numerous families on its recipients' list.

It can be reached either through its hotline 013-5672775 or 082-505987, from 8.30am to 12 noon and 2pm to 5pm on Mondays to Fridays.

On Saturdays, the centre can only be reached from 9am to 12 noon.

Those who wish to contribute cash can bank in their donation to ‘Persatuan Kebajikan Harapan Kuching' through its Maybank account 5112-8900-1160.