It all started with two of Mr's friend who called him up and telling him that he feels like contributing towards orphanage during the Ramadhan month.

Our group of friends, Small Changes, collected money and visited an orphanage last year during the Ramadhan month and it turned out to be a success. So this year, when Mr's friends threw the idea, I straight away thought of Small Changes - where a group of friends share the same interests in contributing to the society. We believe that "Small changes can contribute to BIG differences,"

So anyways. TWO weeks was all we had. We started emailing all in the group and added some other close friends in the mailing list. We shared posts & status on Facebook, we tweeted and retweeted, bbmed, whatapp-ed, oh my, sometimes I'm impressed with how magical the social network works!

We tried to secure a weekend, but it seems that all the orphanage we contacted were booked during weekends. We faced the same thing last year. Everyone wants to contribute to the orphanage during blessed Ramadhan month. So we managed to secure Rumah Kebajikan Baitul Hidayah on a weekday. Initially we thought of visiting their place or bringing them to a restaurant for break-fast, however it was a weekday. And not everyone can make it on time. In the end, we decided to bring them over to our house in Subang.

Abang Azri with the kids during buka puasa.

Some of the children of Rumah Kebajikan Baitul Hidayah

The children, doing a short performance. The girl carrying the Maghrib sign was the cutest!

Everyone giving kids the children duit raya.

Some of the items donated to the orphanage.

Alhamdulillah, event turned out well. We managed to collect a total of RM11k by that morning, and during the event itself, friends passed money that they managed to collect throughout the two weeks, RM2k...RM1.5k..tup tap tup tap, by the end of the evening, we managed to collect a total of RM24k! MasyaAllah. We were all surprised! We have such big-hearted Malaysians!

Different people contributed in different ways. Some brought food for the break-fast session, some donated to the total of 24k, some choose to give individual duit raya packets, some bought items requested by the orphanage like shoe rack, wall clock, mat, etc., some even contributed basic necessity like oil, sugar and rice.

Every small and big contribution counts. They have managed to make the kids happy and may they live comfortably in better beds, better houses, and eat better food, and get better education.

I was personally very very touched with how kind everyone was and how easy it was for us to get donations. Rezeki rumah anak yatim itu laaa...ataupun sebab bulan puasa.

I knew one of the reasons we achieved such high amount was because it was the blessed Ramadhan month. However my concern is whether these good deeds can be follow through to the rest of the year.
We should indeed, be good towards others, and maintain all these good characters even after the Ramadhan month.