Thinking of the spirits of giving, sharing and caring makes me wonder about myself and us Malaysians in general. Malaysians are generally very proud of our 'eastern values' that are supposedly positioning us at a higher level of morality and social awareness. However, faced with almost perpetual plights affecting a lot of people around the world and even at home, we tend to practice more the value of 'Jangan ambil tahu tepi kain orang'; that is Mind Our Own Business. Where any effort is made to assist, normally a lengthy list of selection filters will be applied with the main discriminators being 'whether the victims are like us?'. This is a mind-set that will take us nowhere except backwards in this world. We need to learn to emphatise with and support victims of any disasters (be it man-made, natural et cetera). I have a few 'theories' of the reasons for this but that's not what I'm putting forth now.



One particular organisation makes me proud to be a Malaysian and their actions speak for themselves. Still relatively young in the International Aid scene, Mercy Malaysia is one of my favourite aid organisations (I guess that translates to, if I'm worth it, they'll feature in my will). While I haven't got much to put in my will at the moment, I guess being a volunteer is the natural thing to do. Check out their Objectives and their latest two latest programmes;MERCY Prepares Emergency Response Teams for Iraq and MERCY Malaysia launches China Humanitarian Relief Fund.



To those considering being a volunteer, ponder upon the quote below and see whether it's worthwhile;

"To be a volunteer, you must be a person who is not biased. You must be a person who loves humanity. You must come out of the house to help. People must learn to learn. If you think that you are suffering, you will have to see how others suffer, then will you really know what suffering is." Captain (R) Lawrence Chew, a volunteer with Mercy.