Charity Night 2015

The Leo Club of Wesley Methodist School had organised its annual charity event – Charity Night on the 21^st of March 2015 (Saturday), from 6.15 p.m. to 10.15 p.m.. Instead of a charity dinner, this year we hosted a charity concert with one and only one reason – to reduce the cost for the event thus raising a larger amount of funds to be donated to the charitable organisations. The concert was held in HELP College of Arts and Technology, where it can be easily accessed through the public transport system as it was situated next to the Chan Sow Lin station of RapidKL STAR LRT system.

"Stop The Traffick" was the theme for this year’s Charity Night. Aside from raising funds to help the less fortunate and to be donated to the charitable organisations, we hope to raise awareness in the public on the worsening human trafficking situation around the globe. Despite its worsening condition, human trafficking has not been paid attention by the society across the globe. Many youngsters especially do not know what is human trafficking and they are not aware that they are under the risk of being human trafficked. We hope to play our part and make a difference. Thus, the organising committee, led by the Community Service Director of Leo Club of Wesley Methodist School, Leo Wong Gwen Lyne, chose the theme “Stop The Traffick for this year’s Charity Night. Leo Wong Gwen Lyne was helped by two Assistant Organising Chairpersons, namely Leo Lydia Yeoh Kai Ying and Leo Lee Jia Hern, together with her fellow committee members, Leo Ong Kye Ying, Leo Tan Hooi Xin and Leo Cheah ZiTing Eunice.

On the day of the event, around 300 people attended to support our cause, mainly consisting of students from Wesley Methodist School Kuala Lumpur, parents, teachers, non-academic staffs as well as students from other schools. We were honoured to have the representatives from our sponsoring Lions Club, Lions Club of Ampang to grace the event with their full support. Madam Evelyn Sim, the Admin Manager of Wesley Methodist School also attended our event. We were also honoured to have representatives from four of our beneficiary organisations, namely Tenaganita, SUKA Society, Reachout Malaysia and Klang Utama Caring Home, to attend our event.

That night, we prepared a line-up of spectacular performances that varied from singing to dancing to sketches and even drawing to feast the eyes of the audience. Registration started at 6.15 p.m. and at 7.10 p.m., a breathtaking dance performance by our very own junior Leos kick started the event. It was then followed by a video presentation about human trafficking, a roll call session for the VIPs and clubs present and a speech by the organising chairperson, Leo Wong Gwen Lyne. After that, many amazing performances by our Leos and invited outsiders filled the auspicious night.

We had a total of 10 performances to entertain the audiences for the night. Before intermission, we had performances by our very own Leos and students of Wesley Methodist School Kuala Lumpur such as a sketch performance and a singing performance. Stereoman, a beat-boxing group and Exodus, a professional dance crew also performed at the first-half of the event. The performances definitely left the audiences in awe and wanting more but first, it was intermission.

At 8.10 p.m., VIPs and guests were invited to the food hall to enjoy a Chinese buffet-style dinner. Everyone devoured their delicious dinner and was served chocolate cake after it. Guests also took this time to mingle around, take pictures and relax with their friends. Homemade M&M cookies were given out outside the food hall with a minimum donation of RM 5. Intermission passed by quickly as at 8.45 p.m., ushers started to usher the guests back into the auditorium for the second half of the show.

With everyone’s appetite satisfied, everyone was seated and ready for the upcoming performances. The emcees, Leo Teoh Yhin Sarah and Leo Nigel Ng Zi Xuan, started off by giving a shout out to our generous sponsors such as Zalora, Hakka Restaurant Sdn. Bhd., Jemco Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd. and many more. The next half of the show consisted of performances by The Nomads, a band, Dominic and Nisha, multiple championship Latin dance winners, Tracia Chan, an extraordinary painter and HyperActive, a famous dance crew. We also had Liva, the representative from Tenaganita to give a talk on human trafficking. Her talk was definitely engaging and interactive as well as informative.

We proceeded with the presentation of mock cheques to the representatives of the charitable organisations by Madam Evelyn Sim. The presentation of tokens of appreciation to all VIPs and performers, as well as souvenirs for clubs and societies present were carried out as well. Last but not least, we closed our show with the one and only Mark O’Dea, a multi-talented singer, actor, Youtuber and currently a presenter on the 8TV Quickie. He performed with his talented friend, Leonard who was on the acoustic guitar. At 10.15 p.m., the event officially ended.

As mentioned, working on this project we had two goals – to spread awareness on human trafficking and raise funds for donation. I believe that these two goals were without doubt achieved that night. The message on human trafficking was passed on and hopefully the guests attended will now do their part to stop this situation from worsening. Secondly, we are extremely glad to say that we have raised a staggering amount of RM 24,286.20, which is actually the highest sum of profit raised over the past few years. We are ecstatic to know that with this sum of money, we are able to help many tragic trafficked victims as well as the less fortunate. We are planning to donate to more charitable organisations with the large amount of donation raised.

Although the whole journey of planning this event was tiring and stressful, it was a great learning experience in general. Our biggest takeaway would be not to be last minute and the importance of communication. The most rewarding thing is knowing that we got to help and change many people’s lives out there. To see a smile on everyone’s faces and overhearing conversations of how they loved the show after the event definitely made all of our hard work and effort over the past few months worthwhile. All of the Leos did a fantastic job that night and we couldn’t be more proud. The event definitely exceeded our expectations and was a huge success.