1,600 poor folks get by on Hope
NGO provides poor families with household essentials and hot meals
GEORGE TOWN: Bad times do not last forever and as long as there is hope, people can hold on and outlast the most trying situations.
This is true for Nor Hidayah Md Tahir, 31, her husband and their three young children.
They are among the urban poor in Penang. Her husband earns RM600 a month as a lorry attendant and it is not enough to feed so many mouths.
But every month, Nor Hidayah and her friends take the bus from their homes in Macallum Street Ghaut to a place in Ayer Itam, where a group of kind souls helps them.
House of Hope, an NGO dedicated to helping the poor in Penang, is where Nor Hidayah and the other poor folks get their monthly provisions.
“House of Hope has been providing my family with essentials for almost a year now,” Nor Hidayah
said, adding that the handouts included rice, oats, milk powder, eggs, biscuits and baby diapers.
Nor Hidayah is among 1,600 people who receive the monthly
provisions from the centre.
Each recipient has a card from House of Hope, which they sign after receiving their provisions.
House of Hope founder Khoo Cheng See, 67, said the initiative aimed to help underprivileged families until they could break free of poverty.
She said it began in 2006 when she went to the Rifle Range flats and asked the poor there what they needed.
Two years later, she had so much support from donors that she was able to set up House of Hope.
“A friend pays the RM3,000 rent for our two-storey building, which was a plastic factory,” she said at the centre in Lorong Sempadan 2 in Ayer Itam yesterday.
Khoo said that six days a week, staff and volunteers cook for 30 poor families who pick up their food at around noon.
They begin cooking from 9am, filling tiffin carriers with chicken curry, vegetables, fried eggs and hot rice.
The hot meals programme started 10 years ago and Khoo said her kitchen staff comprised nine people aged 50 onwards.
“Today, we are very lucky because we have a group of young volunteers helping us,” she said of the young Indonesian women who recently became volunteers at the centre.
But sustenance is not the only aid available at the House of Hope. On the second floor are three rooms where free tuition is given to primary and secondary school students from 3pm onwards.
There is also a learning space, decorated with colourful cartoons, for those aged seven and below.
Retired teacher Judy Foo, 76, said she had been with the centre for about 10 years and enjoyed being part of a good cause.
“I live in Tanjung Bungah and hail a ride to come here,” said Foo.
The centre is open from 9am to 5pm on Mondays to Fridays and from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays. It is closed on Sunday.
For those interested in lending a hand, call 04-8264826 or e-mail houseofhope.rr@gmail.com.