As I look back on the short history of My Place, I can’t help but feel a great sense both of humility and of pride. From its humble beginning of just a small group of old friends banding together to do what we could to help a

family and its children in desperate need…to, well, a

bigger group of friends, both old and new, putting our

resources together to bring hope and a future to

hundreds of children, My Place has never stopped being

a labour of love, joining and sharing lives together over

the continents. How can one not feel tremendously

proud of this fact, and yet humbled by it at the same

time?

 

In the 2013/2014 financial year, donations to My Place

increased by 139% from the previous year (which was

only half the financial year to March 2013 as My Place

was incorporated in September 2012) with an increase

of distribution of material aid accordingly. And yet, the ratio of administrative expenses to actual material aid distributed was kept at an impressive 0.68%!!! This means that 99.32% of donations received is spent as aid to the homes and children directly.

 

To make this high level of direct aid possible, we have to thank our volunteers who generously give of their time and effort to do the work that other agencies may find it necessary to employ people to do.

 

Between Nov 2013 and Nov 2014, 13 individuals went as guests of My Place to various projects in Myanmar and Thailand. Between them, they were able to help at our Christmas parties, run activities at our summer camps, provide business training to our house parents and older children, teach music and English or simply share love and crazy games with the kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to our friends’ generosity, both of money and time, we found ourselves being able to embark on certain new initiatives in 2014. We were able to commission a new house for one of our homes in Yangon, replacing the previous derelict one which not only failed to provide the children with adequate shelter but was in danger of collapsing on them. We were able to secure bigger premises for our boarding house in Mae Sot, Thailand, and welcome 15 more children from the garbage dump into a new beginning. After meeting a bunch of motivated children who would travel 3 hours each day to attend English lessons during their summer holidays and then finding out the unacceptably poor conditions they lived in, we were able to help them move into a better house and enter into a sponsorship relationship with their home, our sixth in Yangon. We were also able to fund a well and offer scholarships to a handful of children from a slum community in Yangon which had no water source whatsoever and only one third of its children could afford school previously.

 

“It Is More Blessed To Give Than To Receive” was the headline given to the article written about My Place in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on October 3, 2014. I trust and pray that it is a sentiment the My Place family can echo as we do our part in shining light into the darkness in this world…one child at a time.