Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak
Posted By Saimatkong on Dec 27, 2012 | 0 comments
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Recently, I have joined Petronas for the Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali @ Kampung Wellington. We are on a mission to help the villages in the “Gotong Royong”, making Kampung Wellington a better place and a better environment! Despite the long journey, everything was worth it! 🙂
We have to reach very early in the morning as it took about 3 hour’s long journey to reach Kampung Wellington. Even though we need to reach early in the morning, gathered in KLCC before we depart by bus to Kampung Wellington, the journey was fun as it was together with all the media friends and bloggers, and what more it’s for the event that helping in Gotong Royong.
Program Sentuhan Kasih is a PETRONAS festive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSI) programme piloted in 2005 in preparation to celebrate major festivities in Malaysia. It’s initiated to communicate the ‘human’ side of PETRONAS where staffs are given the opportunity to share the spirit of togetherness and share the festive joy with the underprivileged community.
PETRONAS making it an annual affair in 2006 and expanded the programme to cover other festivals such as Deepavali, Chinese New Year, Gawai, Tadao Kamaatan and Christmas depending on the locations.
The target location was Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak!
Kampung Wellington, Perak
Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak
It’s a small village with a total number of 500 villagers that form the 66 families. 80% of the villagers are Indians while the remaining are Malay and Chinese.
Most of the villagers are poor with household income of lesser than RM700 and some are single mothers with many schooling children.
Most of the villagers work at the palm estate and being paid on a daily basis which results in non-fixed monthly income with families have six to eight schooling children.
So we are there to help up a bit and that’s what we could do at least by cleaning up the kampung and giving some incentive and help by Petronas! 🙂
Every year, the underprivileged from various locations were invited to participate in various activities prepared for the programme and received festive hampers, ‘ang pows’ and ‘duit raya’. I would say it’s a great initiative by Petronas to reward back to the society.
Everyone in the Kampung Wellington was given a gift pack each for the Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali celebration from Petronas.
In 2011, the ‘turun padang’ concept is introduced to create a more sustainable impact to the stakeholders and PETRONAS staff where staff volunteers conduct ‘gotong-royong’ to refurbish rundown facilities such as schools and homes.
The day’s programme “Sentuhan Kasih” started with a gotong-royong activity by a group of 40 student volunteers from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), assisted by the local residents, to clean up and refurbish the villages’ common areas and amenities.
We joined the UTP students and locals in this programme. Before that, were being brief about the “Gotong-Royong” when we arrived on how to clean up Kampung Wellington and how to beautify the place.
Each of us was given a pair of hang gloves to start with.
Posing a bit before we start the actual “Gotong-Royong”!
Then we were divided into team to cover different area and started the “Gotong-Royong”. Our aim was just to make Kampung Wellington a better place as the main objective! 🙂
It’s never an easy task but we all enjoy doing that because it’s like rewarding back to the society and we are proud to be of the programme.
Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak
VIP YBhg Dato Medan & YBhg Datuk Rahim also joined in the “Gotong-Royong” and painted the community hall’s wall!
Then VIP proceeded to booth activities and get close and chit chat with the villages.
Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak
Mehndi or Hand drawing art. It’s a temporary form of skin decoration.
The villagers were also given free health screening and an informative workshop on substance abuse by Red Crescent Malaysia and Persatuan Pengasih Malaysia.
They are so happy because their result was good and healthy! 🙂
Learn how to make vada. Vada also known as wada or vade or vadai or Bara (pronounced “wah-dei”, “vah-daa”, “vah-dey”, or “vah-die”), is a savoury fritter-type snack from South India.
Recently I was introduces to this vada and really falling in love with it! 🙂
The aunty is making a living out of it by just selling vada and she’s selling vada for more than 30 years! That’s how determine the villages are.
Had a chit chat with those UTP students which involved in this programme and they are so happy to be part of it and they don’t mind the sweat and the long hours spend.
For lunch, the villagers were joined by another 77 families from Ayer Tawar, Lumut and Sri Manjung, who are beneficiaries of Program Sentuhan Harapan PETRONAS – a community outreach programme that provides basic assistance to hardcore poor families in the country.
There’s also a dance performances by UTP students. The dance move was so smooth and fluid! Awesome! 🙂
Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington, Manjung, Perak
Speech by Pegawai Daerah Manjung.
Speech by YBhg Dato Medan.
Towards the end of the programme, PETRONAS Senior General Manager of Group Corporate Affairs Division, Dato Mohammad Medan Abdullah and UTP Vice Chancellor Datuk Ir. (Dr) Abdul Rahim Hashim handed out cash donations to all of the families
Souvenir presentation to the representatives.
All the bloggers and media friends that supporting the Sentuhan Kasih Deepavali with Petronas @ Kampung Wellington! See how happy and energetic we are!
Check out the official video release from Petronas on the Sentuhan Kasih @ Kampung Wellington below! 🙂
PETRONAS 2012 Sentuhan Kasih & Sentuhan Harapan Deepavali
