Yayasan Suria JB (YSJB) – The new ‘poor’ among us!
Yes, the new poor refers to the middle-income group who are in desperate shape due to the Covid-19 pandemic, never been poor before and don’t know how to be poor.
This group of people have lost their ‘comfortable’ good paying job, now being retrenched, still struggling to find a suitable job, ageing (in their mid-fifties) and having high commitments of paying for their houses, children’s education, car, etc.
And worst of all is that they can’t seek help openly like the rest of the B40s which we have been helping all along – pride, ego and ‘a lost of face’ – understandable.
Lately, we have been handling quite a few cases of the ‘new poor’, mainly through friends but with one condition – no publicity and no photos to be posted anywhere, understandable though.
And they don’t want us to let their family members know (we don’t visit them in their houses) due to pride – we can feel for them, never in their lives they have been ‘battered’ before and they are depressed with suicidal thoughts.
We have a volunteer who told me his childhood friend came knocking on his door at 3.00 am in the morning, wanted to borrow RM1, 300 to pay for his 2 children’s schooling expenses at Foon Yew High School, JB. My volunteer readily gave online and he told me “how can I not help when it was for education and he was my childhood friend.”
Many similar stories of such nature, we helped as many as we can, depending on our funds, to try to pull them out of the dark pit, hopefully they will see light at the end of the tunnel.
Recently, we are trying our best to find suitable jobs for this group of ‘new poor’ – job mismatch like no suitable transport, distance from place of work, no living quarters, no suitable qualifications, age requirements, etc are hindering our efforts to match them to job openings.
In the meantime, our food banks to the B40s are continuing with each family getting RM120(and lately to the ‘new poor’ with no photos to be posted at their requests which we willingly obliged).
Our standard food bank consists of the following:
- Rice.
- Baked beans.
- Sardines.
- Wet tissues.
- Paracetamol(Panadol).
- Yellow Mee.
- Potatoes.
- Onions.
- Garlic.
- Eggs.
- Chicken.
- Mee Hoon.
- Biscuits.
- Promac milk powder.
- Cooking oil.
- Jalen kicup.
- Tomato sauce.
- Chilly sauce.
- Cabbage.
- Carrot.
- Cucumber.
- Milo (or Econsave chocolate malt drink equivalent).
Come on board and be our partners in providing food banks to the ‘New Poor’ & Needy – you can sponsor any number of families. You can contribute on ‘a-one off’ basis or monthly depending on your choice, no amount is too small for us.
We are trying to provide for more families, especially during this ‘puasa’ (fasting) month – the Rohingyas, the Indonesians and our Muslim brothers & sisters.
Together, we shall make this world a better place for all to live!