How Did the Golf Tournament Go?

Surely some of you are asking this now that it has ended. I will write a longer post here after I got some pictures to accompany it. For now please visit my personal blog at this post to read of my reflections. It has been an extremely satisfying moment and the money raised will help speed up our work. However the amount raised is insufficient to cover our total requirements so more fund raisers are in the pipelines.

Excitement Building Up

The past 2 months has been hectic to the organizing committee in gearing up to the big day next Saturday. Most of the time they chased after golfers, sponsors and donors, at times even persuading them to do something good for charity. It is pretty hard to lower one's dignity sometimes but this I must say about the committee, some of them are really GREAT fund raisers. At the recent meetings they just bring in cheques from Mr. So and So or Datin So and So.

Besides that a couple of them went after prize sponsors, especially Hole-in-One sponsors, and they got THREE! This is a marvelous achievement and something to be proud of. As of now, the tournament registration is closed and we have 2 Hole sponsors, many winner and lucky draw prizes. We achieved our target of at least 30 flights. We got 32 flights.

Oh, we went on publicity campaign too. We got our event publicized on an English local and 3 Chinese local editions. We got it announced on air. And a promotion writeup from a major Hole-in-One sponsor is expected to be released soon to the press.

The messages have all been written. The souvenir magazine is taking shape. The banner and buntings are coming along. What do we lack? Yes, a great weather for May 22. Would you help us pray for that? Thank you.

Start Imagining ...

Things get clearer when we approach our goal. In this blog I am pleased to reveal how our new centre will look like as shown in the perspective drawings here. The 4th picture show the real building we bought and how we are assigning our project spaces. At the moment everything are crammed into the ground floor of the existing centre. When the new centre is done up, hopefully before the end of the year (if funding permits) we will assign the spaces as follows:

Existing Centre - Ground Floor Only
Bakery Project
Project Office/Teaching Room

New Centre - Ground Floor
Straw Packing Project
Card Making Project
Project Office

New Centre - First Floor
Admin Office
Conference Room
Teaching/Counseling Rooms (2)

A connecting door will be opened between the 2 centres to facilitate movement. Once the new centre is ready we will recruit additional staff and more volunteers. Then we will start accepting more learning disabled candidates into our centres to be trained in any or more of the 3 projects. Eventually we will have space for 45 trainees. But what we look forward to is that there will be some turnover of these trainees into the open job markets. Although we have sent 6 of them out 2 years ago we wish to see more employers in Seremban creating jobs for our trained trainees.

Every year some kids will be diagnosed to have some learning disabilities. These kids will need to undergo special education. Then when they reach the age of 18 and they have basic survival skills then we are ready to take them in to job train them. Not all learning disabled people can find jobs outside, their disabilities may be too severe to warrant any caring employer to employ them. We will try to provide in-house jobs and help them earn an income.

What we are getting at is that growing demands additional financing. In this connection our first major fund raiser this year is the PBSNS Charity Golf Tournament which I posted awhile back. There are many areas you can help in this endeavour. Here is a partial list:

1. Play golf at the tournament. Part of your fee (RM500) will go toward the PBSNS Building Fund to repair/renovate and equip the new centre.

2. Advertise in the souvenir programme for the golf tournament. RM300 gets you a full colored page publicity.

3. Free donation of any sum towards our Partnership Fund which is to cover our operating expenses. With 2 centres we estimate our annual budget to rise to RM100,000.

4. You can also donate equipment to the new centre. Details below.

We need 10 units of air-conditioners of various horsepowers. Price per unit range from RM1000 to RM1600.

We also need 20 units of ceiling fans, an overhead LCD projector, a notebook/laptop, a DVD player, a 32" LCD TV (for teaching/training), PA system, laser printer, photo copier, refrigerator, microwave oven, office desks, safe, filing cabinets, lounge settee, white boards, time recorder, etc, etc.

The total cost of buying all of these equipment will be beyond our head but individual donations, either by taking up the actual bill or giving a fixed amount to defray their purchase costs, will help a long way.

5. If you are a reader from overseas we encourage you to donate via our PayPal account link in this blog. Otherwise you can pay direct to our account below:

Account No. 3149145906
Account Name: Persatuan Berdikari Seremban Negeri Sembilan
Bank: Public Bank, Jalan Rasah Branch
Routing Code: PBBEMYKL

6. For greater peace of mind we are looking for corporate sponsors to commit their annual support towards our cause. If you can help please let us know.

Contact us for any of the above enquiries with email to:

pbssbn@gmail.com and state 'PBSNS Building Fund' in the subject line.

Thank you.

PBSNS Charity Golf Tournament

It's on.

An organizing committee was formed this Tuesday to start preparing for this special event to raise funds to repair and renovate the new centre we bought last year. The patrons are the Royal Highnesses Yang DiPertuan Besar and Tunku Ampuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan who graciously consented to support this event with their presence at the tournament to be held at the Nilai Springs Golf & Country Club on 22nd May 2010 (Saturday). Tee-off will be at 7.45am (shotgun) using system 36 Stableford (modified) as the mode of play.

We are in the process of appealing to golfers to please support this worthy cause by participating. Entrance fee is RM500 per player (which includes buggy, insurance, breakfast, lunch and goodies. Caddy fees excluded). We are also in the process of getting sponsors to donate prizes for the lucky draws.

Those who cannot play or cannot make it because of prior engagements, but wish to support please help any way you can by donating prizes or cash (of any amount). Please contact:

To register to play in the tournament:
The Tournament Director - 012 6311832

To donate prizes/cash:
Vice chairman - 012 6011338

Closing date: 10 May 2010

Face to Face with their Royal Highnesses

Today a group of five representatives from PBSNS was granted a rare audience with the Yang Di Pertuan Besar and the Tunku Ampuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan who wish to know more of the work of the association. I count this a unique privilege because their royal highnesses made time to come to the Istana Hinggap and spent nearly 90 minutes with us, hearing us, asking questions, examining works by the trainees and having afternoon tea with us.

The objective of the audience was also to seek their royal consent to be patrons of a charity golf tournament to raise funds for our building fund project. It was initiated by a God-sent volunteer who believed in our work and is prepared to use her experience, network and fund raising skills to support us. It appear that her coming into our team of volunteers was meant to further encourage our work and we believe the coming years will be exciting and productive.

I dare not anticipate how much money will be raised but certainly having both the Yam tuan and her royal highness at the forefront lending their support we expect a very good response from the golfing enthusiasts in Negeri Sembilan and the Klang Valley. An organising committee is being formed and soon invitations will be sent out.

381 Legally Ours!

The shop building at 381, Jalan Kenanga 1 in Taman Bukit Chedang, Seremban is legally ours. We have made full payment and a few days ago received the title and key from our lawyer. We are in the process of cleaning up the building, accessing the damages and repairs required. In the recent management committee meeting a taskforce was formed to looked into setting up the new centre. A fund raising taskforce was also formed to organise events to raise funds for this new project. On her initiative a volunteer plans to start a golf tournament to help raise funds for us. I am truly grateful to people like her who cares for the work of helping the learning disabled under training with us. Thank you.

You can help in your own way by donating to our cause. Details are given above.

New Year Greetings

As we celebrate the New Year of 2010 and welcome new opportunities to share and give from our abundance to the needy, we wish you a very Happy New Year. May you be blessed with more wisdom, much happiness and good health.

New Year means newness and to us it means revising our website to update the information therein. We invite you to check out our new 2010 Website.

God bless all your endeavours.