it’s been awhile since i wrote something here. yea, missed blogging here.
anyway, am here tonight for a purpose – to post about LKHJ‘s latest charity initiatve. all of the planning and communication with STARLINGs were previously done within the forum HERE.
but now that the project’s nearly wrapped up, i thought it’d be good to do an open sharing. the forum’s a closed one, so not everyone has access to it. and i shan’t and won’t flatter myself to think that all KHJ fans would be interested to sign up for an account with us, keke! now whilst a teeny weeny part of me wants to show the STARLINGs off since you’re such fab people, the main reason i’m sharing the project on a more open platform is to show others how fandom can yield happy people and kind deeds.
am sure everyone would have heard about the huge earthquake that happened in japan in march? 11th march, friday, to be exact, and earthquake (and the resulting tsunami) hit (mostly) the east coast of honshu with a magnitude of 9.0.
to be honest, when the earthquake first happened, LKHJ had received quite
a few enquiries about whether or not we’d be doing something like a donation drive or something. and in fact, emz was seemingly rather affected and appeared to want to help or something.
but for me personally, i had felt we didn’t know better than anyone how we could be of (more) help other than just collecting money and then donating the funds in his name. so in my mind, since we didn’t have the means to ensure that we know of the best ways to help, we couldn’t have done a better job than whatever the organizations and various groups were already doing since we weren’t adding value and didn’t have any bright ideas about it.
of course, we could just collect money and donate in wuri hyun joong’s name, but if it’s just that, then it’s something i’d rather not do at that point. there seemed no special significance or no big difference between this and making a contribution in your own name.
i remember telling emz i had no wish to initiate anything, but if she felt strongly enough about it to want to start some fundraising project, by all means go ahead. for sure i’d be behind her for support, but i didn’t want to spearhead anything. but i felt some pangs of guilt when i told her i wasn’t up to organizing anything.
then later, two very dear japanese friends of mine, FLOWERBOSSA and satovic, found out about one quaint little project and shared the info. there’s this caucasian guy (Jason Kelly) who’s working in japan (very near the tsunami-hit areas) who had come up with the SOCKS FOR JAPAN initiative. i’d spent some time poring over the website and finding out more about the project and… conclusion? the princess loved it!
that triggered me into action and i started posting on the LKHJ forum to start the project rolling.
source: SOCKS FOR JAPAN
SOCKS FOR JAPAN | THE BACKGROUND
JASON KELLY:
Here’s a way you can help Japan, directly and meaningfully.
Hundreds of readers in the United States and other parts of the world have asked me how they can help the survivors
of the devastating earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. There are many places to donate money, and that’s a wonderful thing to do, but direct aid is also cherished by survivors.
My office location is perfect for managing a direct-aid operation because it’s close enough to the primary damage zone that we can physically get there to help, but far enough away that mail delivery is working. So we quickly set ourselves up to run this operation, called Socks for Japan.
JASON KELLY: WHY SOCKS?
Several reasons.
Many of the survivors ended up barefoot after fleeing in a hurry. In the disaster zone, feet get wet and then extra cold at night, especially in currently freezing weather. (*bb: this was written in march) People often forget about socks in favor of more obvious items like blankets and jackets.
Receiving a new, fresh pair of socks provides a moment of comfort. If those socks arrive with a caring note as well, it’s very heartening for survivors. If you’ve ever been stuck in a pair of wet, cold socks or no socks at all, perhaps you remember how soothing it felt to pull on a warm, dry pair. Survivors have already requested socks on TV news.
Socks aren’t primary support, but a token of care that will last beyond their small mid-crisis comfort. All supplies exist here in Japan, so we wanted something that delivered meaning past the need of the moment, something more special than what people get from emergency teams and government supplies. Military socks are not the most comfortable.
Small joys matter.
A March 17 CNN article observed about the survivors: “It was the little things that helped them retain their sanity as an end to crisis still seemed distant.”
The next day, an AP story said a city hall worker reported his town needing “gas, vegetables, socks, underwear, wet wipes and anti-bacterial lotion.”
Most importantly, shelters themselves are requesting socks.
you can read more FAQs about the Socks for Japan project HERE.
and oh, BTS pics can be found HERE. or, go check out THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE, lots of pics and sharing from people all around the world.
noticed how people always like to collect clothes for victims at disaster-stricken areas? i guess this is also why the aid organizations and the government tend not to like private initiatives coz when aid is not coordinated, we may end up with a situation whereby the victims are getting too much of something and not enough of yet another thing.
with the earthquake victims in japan, it was a case of too many clothing items… and not enough socks and underwear. look at how many piles of clothing items are at the shelters, unclaimed.
in a way, you could say the same of these socks… that they’re also private initiatives and not coordinated nor checked with the aid organizations. but hey, after making the trips to the various shelters, jason’s team has ‘proven‘ that he’s right, the victims do need socks and these are quite the forgotten items in relief supplies.
at the point i’d found out about the project, there weren’t anyone who had sent socks in from singapore, and nope, no fanclubs yet too. but by now, yea, there are already some singaporean donors, but still not fanclubs from anywhere.
you know what drew me to the project…? well, yea, the victims need the socks. but what i really love about this project is how we’re asked to put one care letter to accompany each pair of socks. i love the idea of how the socks may warm their feet, but our letters can hopefully warm a teeny weeny corner of their hearts.
ASKING FOR MOOLAH…!
so i started triggering the start of the project, all the while holding my breath as i really wasn’t sure at all if anyone’s gonna be supporting it. i mean, the poor victims just suffered through an earthquake of some 9.0 magnitude, and i wanted to send… SOCKS…?! i was bracing myself to be ‘ridiculed‘, or perhaps just have the project met with lukewarm response.
honestly, in my head i was thinking perhaps i’d raise a few hundred dollars to buy maybe 200 pairs of socks or something. and i had wanted to handwrite all the letters instead of printing them. now i understand that the japanese are the sort to treasure letters, and there’s something more precious with handwritten letters rather than printed ones. and i didn’t think it would be that to write some 200 letters. i was even ambitious enough to want to try and write as many in japanese as possible too! coz the victims are mainly the elderly folks and i ain’t sure if they can read english.
coz i wanted these socks to be sent out as soon as possible, so i only gave a four-day timeline for STARLINGs to send money. i’d put up the post on the forum on the evening of 3rd april, and closed the contribution on 7th april.
guess what?
at the end of the entire thingy, we had raised some S$6,300…!
that’s quite alot of money in four days!! a total of 61 STARLINGs from 11 countries participated. of course, the majority (74%) came from singapore, but we’ve contributions from australia, brunei, canada, hong kong, india(!), indonesia, malaysia, philippines, USA and also vietnam!! *whoa!*
okie, so i take it that most people actually don’t think i’m mad to want to do a SOCKS(?!) project, keke!
MINI CHARITY PROJECT SNOWBALLED INTO…
A HUGE BALL OF SOCKS, KEKE!
but but but… as you can probably guess by now, this amount that we’d managed to raise can buy more than just a few hundred pairs of socks. and initially, i was just thinking to buy retail, but with this amount being raised, it would be difficult to just walk into any shop and expect them to have socks in such large quantities, ya?
so yea, that’s when my ‘trouble‘ began… i had to start searching for wholesalers and suppliers. not easy! i realised that the socks people ain’t very online and hee, my network of friends doesn’t seem to know anyone who knows a sock-seller. but not wanting to waste time, i decided to ‘mobilize‘ the STARLINGs to start preparing the care letters whilst i tried to track down the sock sellers in singapore.
[2011.04.11, SUN] FIRST VOLUNTEER SESSION
at that point, we didn’t know yet how many pairs of socks we would be getting, so we just tried to write as many as we could during that time we had. 17 of us gathered that sunday afternoon and wrote away…!
writing materials we’d bought for the first session.
the three princesses at the first session.
and oh, LKHJ has also invited our dongsaengs from what i like to call our sister club, LOVE501.com to join us in this project. here’s a pic of two of the masters from Love501. cute hor, cute hor?
STARLING KADD was amongst one of the earliest to arrive that afternoon, and she came with some care letters that were already prepared from home. check out what she’d used to write her encouragement for the victims on! lovely, ain’t they?
i’d taken quite alot of pics that afternoon, but hehe, to protect the ‘innocence and modesty‘ of our STARLINGs, i shan’t post them here. those will go into the project scrapbook that LKHJ will be preparing to present to wuri hyun joong as part of his birthday present this year *squeals*
but but but, i did sneak in a group shot in the collage below and i hope the STARLINGs won’t mind. after all, this is for a good cause and we shouldn’t be shy or embarrassed about it, right?
that sunday, we wrote over 800 care letters!! not so easy, you know… when most of us don’t understand japanese, and were just drawing the characters out on the paper as closely to the letters or notes that miyo had kindly prepared for us.
SOCKS…. FOUND!
that week, i was frantically trying to find suppliers… then i read that Xin Min Secondary School (XMSS) also did a Socks for Japan project and they’d sent in thousands just that week that i was searching for info (but I later found out that they’d sent the socks sans letters… but i guess when it’s in that kind of quantity, it would have delayed the entire operations if they were to carry on with the letters)
anyway, i found out the name of the person (thanks, duncan!) who was managing that project for XMSS and emailed me for the contact of the socks supplier. meanwhile, i continued to wait for the other suppliers and retailers to reply. duncan was nice and he replied me quite quickly and provided me with the contact details of the socks supplier he had gone to.
ahhh… so it was KAWATA INTERNATIONAL! they’re sorta like the market leader in customized socks, and they do quite a fair bit of business with schools, golf tournaments, etc.
went down all the way to the east (emz and i both stay on the more westernly side of the island) to choose our socks…!
and… we ended up with some2,598 pairs of socks!! but happy… coz we managed to get good quality socks at fairly reasonable prices *beams*
then my ‘nightmare‘ continued…
we had about 860 letters prepared the sunday before, right? but with 2,598 pairs of socks, that meant that we still needed to write more letters!!
and that’s not all, you know… coz we’re supposed to slot each letter into the plastic bag that held the socks. so now, can you imagine us having to open up the cartons, removing the packs of 12s and then opening up the individual plastic bags and then slotting the letters in, one by one… yea, we’re supposed to do that 2,598 times *faintz*
yea, i’d be honest and ‘fess up that there were a couple of times in the past weeks that i kindda wondered what on earth i had gotten myself into…
so yea, we had to organized a second volunteer session as i wasn’t about to write all the letters myself!
[2011.04.16, SAT] SECOND VOLUNTEER SESSION
the second session saw a total of 18 people joining hands to write letters, keke!
again, we start with a pic of the three princesses!
and here’s a collage of some of the pics i’d taken that day. as usual, i’ve avoided putting up pics that show STARLINGs’ faces too clearly, so hope these pics are OK with most of you.
and here, the completed stacks that day! yup, we did some 2,700 care letters (actually taking into consideration the brevity of the messages, they’re more like notes, hee…) over the two sessions.
thank you much much, STARLINGs!
my thanks also go out to those who had prepared the letters at home and passed them to us. not sure if you wanted your names mentioned, so i’ll just skip the names, but you know who you are, so thanks!
hee, finally a picture that i didn’t have to blur anyone’s face out! but i’d betcha we must have looked real silly doing that in a macdonalds, wakakaka!
[2011.04.19] CHOP CHOP CHOP!
after thinking it through, i decided that just a small group of should gather at my place to ‘process‘ the socks. see, there’re seven cartons of socks and it’s simply impractical to bring them out for STARLINGs to help with the processing.
so the two princesses came over on a tuesday to help out with some ‘preparation‘ work first. you see, since we’re doing this in the names of the two fanclubs, i had wanted to somehow leave our mark on the letters. instead of printing our logos on the care letters or printing stickers, i’d decided on the more economical way of making chops for us to stamp on the letters.
that night for a good four hours or so, emz and miyo helped out with the stamping whilst i was folding the letters… but at midnight, they weren’t even halfway through with the stamping.
we’d arranged a second session the following night to finish the stamping and packing. and for the second night, we were getting three more extra pairs of hands, including my two cute dongsaengs from Love501 and also my bestie rene.
but i reckon the stamping would be the bottleneck, so i stayed up the entire night to stamp over a thousand letters. and mind you, i had to do the stamping twice, since there there’re two fanclub stamps.
i was stamping from 1am to 5am… and it was backbreaking work, surprisingly…!
[2011.04.20] MORE ‘PROCESSING’ WORK AT HOME!
i was right about the stamping being the bottleneck… coz it actually took us only about three hours the following night to finish inserting all the letters and packing the socks!
there was this HUGE HUGE HUGE(!) sense of achievement as i looked at the cartons sitting in my living room…
and of course, i was also heaving a sigh of relief that the project was carried out somewhat smoothly, even though it had escalated and ballooned into something 10 times bigger than what i had initially envisaged.
the cartons of socks had been picked up by the courier company last wednesday and they’re expected to arrive in japan 2nd may, monday! will keep you all posted…
MORE SHARING FROM JASONKELLY
what i like about this gentleman handling this project is how he gives such fantabulous updates. each time jason and his team complete a drive out to one of the shelters, he will come back and pen a report, complete with pictures. some stories he’s shared are some sad that i actually teared as i read them.
there was the sad story about the little boy who just sat quietly in the car, the man who broke down in front of everyone and recounted about how he lost his wife… he had found her dead in the kitchen of their home after the quake struck. he’d described the kitchen as a place she’d cooked so many meals with so much love for their family… and then there’s the story about the stubborn man…
anyway, i highly highly highly (get the idea yet..?) recommend that you read those that i’ve marked with an asterisk below.
4/29 Ramp Down Schedule
4/26 Angels of the Earth
4/22 The Day The Ocean Burned*
4/12 Drowning Hearts at Lady River*
4/06 Watari and Yamamoto*
4/04 From Your Home to Their Shelters
3/30 Rushing to Miyagi
3/29 Socks to Iwaki
3/28 Socks for Japan Update
3/26 Off to Iwaki
3/23 Into Ibaraki
meanwhile, i’ll just pluck some pics from the JASON KELLY SITE. hope he doesn’t mind, but i’ve added the credits onto his pics.
first things first… let me say a big fat THANK YOU to jason and his team of volunteers. they must have spent a humongous amount time on this project. and i can’t even start to imagine how their office space must be filled with endless cartons of socks… and the processing… aigoo….!
coz jason and his team drive to the shelters at those quake-devastated areas, they were witness to once-bustling towns now leveled and are practically ghost towns… here, some pics he’s shared on his site, and there’re lots more where these came from.
let me show you how some of the shelters look like…
here are some pics of the victims queuing up for their socks when jason and his team arrived at their shelters.
the victims with their socks and the care letters that came with ‘em.
ohhh…. even NHK got wind of the Socks for Japan project and wanted to cover the distribution exercise!
like i’ve said on the forum, i am truly grateful to the STARLINGs who are always so supportive and trusting whenever LKHJ organizes any activities. thank you for your trust. we haven’t yet detailed the numbers, but we will do so soon. of course, the numbers will be posted to share on the forum, and not on the blog.
for a fanclub this young (we officially opened on 14th feb 2010), so technically we’re about 15 months old, this Socks for Japan project is already our FOURTH(!!) charity activity. our first being the haiti earthquake fundraising, second being the rice-flower project for PK’s press conference, third would be the PK charity sets from taiwan and now this for the japanese earthquake victims.
i’m actually feeling quite good about it. if, through fandom, we can encourage fellow fans to come together to be more aware of charity and social causes, to be more aware that there are needy people in the world who need our help, and to even do something tangible together to reach out to help others, then i think it’s really a great thing.
anyway, this post is already loooooong enough, so i’d better stop here, although i do have a little DHL story to share. will do that in a separate post then.
once again, thank you, everyone. i love this project that’s created with heart, and completed with much heart too. will share the project scrapbook once we’re done with it.
My Heart is a ST★R
bb ♥
Tags: socks for japan
