Dear all,

My company - Kenexa Technologies Sdn Bhd Kenexa's website, is having our annual community service event on 16th December. It is an event where we hope to spread the spirit of love & care to our community.

This year, we are working together with Soup Kitchen KSK's website in distributing food to the homeless & urban poor. Please find below some information about Soup Kitchen:

Food Distribution



On weekdays from 10:30am to 1pm, volunteers gather at our premises (at Jalan Barat, just off Jalan Imbi) to prepare and serve food from our kitchen.

We also distribute food to the urban poor from our mobile kitchen van on weekdays. This takes places between 1:30pm and 2:30pm.

Fresh hot meals are prepared for the homeless each week

On Saturdays at 9:30pm, and on Sundays at 5pm, Kechara Soup Kitchen volunteers gather at the same premises to pack food before heading for our distribution rounds in the city.

Mobile distribution to the urban poor and needy






Volunteers pack as many as 650 packets of food before heading out for the distribution rounds

On average, 1,500 packs of halal vegetarian food consisting of biscuits, snacks, drinking water, fruits and hot food are distributed to the homeless each week.



We are thinking of doing more for the homeless & urban poor by giving them some necessary items that they need...such as dry food, toiletries & etc. We are seeking contribution from outsiders as well, as within my company we only have few people and there is not much that we can come up of

Please refer to the attached flyer for more information...your help is very much appreciated...we do not seek for cash collection but only the item that the homeless & urban poor need..You can always email me at zelvina.ling@kenexa.com, for more details.

Thank you!

This post has been edited by Lemonadex07: Dec 2 2011, 04:37 PM

Dear Lemonade,

I am interested ot help the homeless but I am not in KL. Can I donate money to you and then you use it to get stuff that they need?

Btw, there are many scammers around who pretends to be poor and feed on people's kindness. How do you know that they are genuine homeless people?

ALso another question I would like to raise is, what is the reason that they are homeless? Some of them are still capable to work and earn a living. I dont think these kind of people deserve our help. On ly those who have valid reasons deserved our sympathy.

If im not wrong, the government or NGO should already have a place where they take care of homeless people. Why didnt they seek help there.

I am keen to help but I dont want to help lazy people who feed on people's sympathy.

Yours sincerely,

tis.is.a.ball

Dear tis.is.a.ball,

Thanks for your interest. In fact, I just went as an individual volunteer on last Sat n participated KSK on one of their weekly night activities. I thought of experiencing it before my company's community service event

I have seen the other side of our society through this experience, and would like to share with you some answer on your questions through my own experience. I am not a KSK's spokesperson/committee, but below is more like my humble point of view. (My post is quite long, hope you don't mind )

1. The homeless/urban poor can get food from KSK through lining up in front of KSK center during operation hour, or KSK reach out to them on Sat night by looking for them on street side or when they are sleeping in front of shop lot's lanes (this is the activity I joined). Either way, it is not an easy scenario for the homeless/urban poor.

To line up & get food, they need to line up under the hot sun for few hours only they can a pack of rice+bread+water from KSK. Sometimes they get even lesser food, depends on the sponsor that KSK can get. Whereas for the night food distribution, I actually see with my own eyes they are sleeping on top of card board box on street side.

So maybe we can ask ourselves, is it worthy for a person to go through all this & pretend to be poor just to get a little bit of free food, if he/she is not genuinely need help?

2. You are right that we should not pamper those homeless that have the capability to work. Which is why KSK actually register those homeless that regularly come and collect food, so that they can understand the background of the homeless & see if KSK can help them to find job/obtain any necessary welfare needs. The objective of distributing food to the homeless is never to pamper them, or to encourage them to maintain their current situation. It is actually a way to reach out to them, allowing us to break the ice with them and see what we can help them, and eventually lesser the amount of homeless in our country. In fact, KSK has helped few homeless that are healthy with no criminal records found jobs. You can check the stories out from their website.

3. From what I observe, I notice most of the homeless are not in stable mental situation/low educated, which is why they don't even know who to seek help from. I have no comment nor do I have a very clear understanding on our government's effort when it comes to solving this kind of social issues, but I believe they have done their best. Which is why we need NGO like KSK to step in & complement our government's effort, so that we can have better results in mitigating this problem in our community.

I hope my sharing can some how shed some ides to you on how KSK works...but end of the day I still think that it would be good for you to check out their website (just type Kechara Soup Kitchen and google it!) for more info.

Thanks again for your interest on this!

Cheers,
Lemonadex07

This post has been edited by Lemonadex07: Dec 5 2011, 12:51 PM

Hi there,

I am quite interested to join

I am now watching the video that Ms Ruby Khong is interviewed. I am pretty impressed and inspired by her XD

Hi Pistacio,

Glad to hear that! =) I am not a committee of KSK, but my company is going to join one of their activities on 16/12/2011. My company consists of only few people and we thought of doing more for the homeless, which is why I am posting this on Lowyat and see if we can get more contribution from outsiders, and together we donate to KSK on 16/12 =)

Maybe you can share with me more on how would you like to join/contribute to KSK? I will see if I can make any arrangement at my side.

Maybe at this stage, I will try to see if I can make time to join one of their food distributing session and see how things are going there. Then if possible I would like to come out some ideas to see if things can be done differently to benefit the people there even more or spread out to a wider range of people.... Of course, it may sound as easy as I talk here but it has to see how things go first..

No worries, it is good that you have the intention to make our community a better place =) If you would like to contribute through my company event, or to participate it, just let me know k =)

How did your event with Kechara Soup Kitchen go? I hope it was a blast - i have volunteered with them a couple of times before, and it was enjoyable not to mention eye opening, to realise the number of homeless people around KL. And so many of them are old.

I recently got to know about why the Kechara Soup Kitchen was formed by their spiritual guide Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, which is a rather inspiring in itself. Can see here: http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpo...hen-or-ksk.html

is this programme still running? im quite interested. can i join?

refer to TS post and email to the person in charge will do..

the event is still on-going..