The World of Angy Wong

To Everyone Who Donated to Paper Kite Children’s Foundation through my Canada Helps Fund-raising Initiative in December 2010:

First and foremost, a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who donated to Paper Kite Children’s Foundation through my Canada Helps page back in December. The total amount raised was: $1040!

The money was extremely helpful as our Paper Kite team went to Bihar in late January to early February with $12,000 dollars that was used to help three orphanages. For more information on the orphanages we helped out, please go to: http://paperkitefoundation.com/what-we-do/2011-orphanages-we-are-helping-in-bodhgaya-bihar/.

With the money raised in December 2010, we were able to buy enough food to feed an orphanage of 80 children for a whole month! This is great because if you think about it, the average Canadian family of four spends roughly $250 dollars a week on grocery so $1000 dollars feeds a family of four for a month… but now it’s feeding an orphanage of 80 children for a month!

So, thank you so much for helping. If you want to keep helping Paper Kite, please visit our website: http://paperkitefoundation.com/get-involved/donate/. We are always looking for volunteers as well!

Also, with your help, I was featured as the Volunteer of the Month! Check it out at: http://paperkitefoundation.com/current-events/featured-volunteer-angela-wong/

With much love and immense gratitude,

Angela

A few pictures of our volunteers that went to Bihar in February 2011:

Every year, I host a Christmas Eve dinner. I make all the food (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc.) and invite all my closest friends over for a holiday feast. I love Christmas simply because it’s an excuse to get everyone together in the same room at the same time. It’s just absolute joy for me. However, after getting inspired to raise $1000 for Paper Kite Children’s Foundations , I thought that for this year’s party, I would encourage my guests to help out with a couple of causes.

The first was inspired by an old friend’s experience with living off food bank rations; Chris Fraser (who was a terrific photo mentor to me when I was 16, and is an awesome writing coach!) did the Eat the Math challenge in November in which she lived on a typical food bank ration. She managed to do it for about five days and she blogged about it at http://www.fireflycreativewriting.com/math/. Reading about her experience inspired me to think about contributing to my own food bank but contributing more nutritious items as opposed to the typical canned goods like Chef Boyardees or other sodium-rich processed “meals” (why would we give food to people that we don’t want to eat ourselves?) Thus, I looked at the “most needed items list” for the Vancouver Food Bank and encouraged my guest to bring items that were on that list. I picked up two boxes from the Food Bank and as you can tell from the picture, we were able to fill both boxes as well as a smaller third box! Not bad for a party of 15 people! Anyway, I hope to do more food drives for any upcoming parties that I plan to host in the future as I think this is a great initiative even if it is a small one, but like I say, “every little bit counts!”

The second initiative was that I encouraged friends to donate any clothes or shoes that were in good condition but they no longer wanted anymore. We collected two giant bags of shoes and four giant bags of clothes in which I hope to sort through them and then donate them to various charities in Vancouver. As you can imagine, my house is currently a mess but hopefully, I will be productive today and get started on sorting! Thank you to all my wonderful friends for helping out this Christmas Eve!

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas as I certainly did and so did my cute Brownie! (Thanks George for the awesome picture!)

When I began my goal of raising $1000 for Paper Kite Children’s Foundation by Christmas, to be perfectly honest, I was anticipating that I would at most raise about $500. Thus, I was so incredibly happy and overwhelmed by all the positive responses that I received from friends, family members, and even people I have not spoken to in a long while! The donations came from all over the world too – from Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, United Kingdom, Singapore, and even Melbourne!

On this Christmas day, my grand total is $1,040 which is going to be incredibly helpful for the team that is going to Bihar in February. So, I just want to express my sincerest gratitude to everyone who donated and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Much love goes out to:
Anily Chia
Aaron Stelmach
Grace Ao
Ludovica Price
Tracy Tan
Stewart Yu
Leoma Kwong
Joanne Vuong
Jeanie Vuong
Patrick Vuong
Lisa Chan
Nora Vuong
Teresa Au-Yeung
Amy Lee
Jennifer Wong
Danny Fung
Irene Phan
Mily Phan
Nancy Lum
Lisa Tuyen
Jennifer Lee
James Quach
Teresa Chow
Martin Lee
Elizabeth Molnar
Selena Yee
Wendy Beer
Miranda Sam
Priya Singh
Victor Eric Design Group
Bobby Sam
George Kamiya
Marie Kim
Lois and Alyssa Dunn

Since April 2010, I have been actively involved with Paper Kite Children’s Foundation and this volunteer-based organization truly has the heart, determination and dedication in giving hope to children in a very neglected part of the world. Since everyone working in Paper Kite are non-paid volunteers (even the President), administrative costs are low which also means more money go directly to the children  in Bihar, India. In actuality, allocating as much of our funds as possible to the direct funding of several orphanages in Bihar is one of the main objectives of our Foundation. Thus, marketing costs are also minimal as we are a grassroots organization that rely on word of mouth to fund raise. Bihar was chosen due to its current state of poverty and lack of social services (education, health care, etc.) especially for children born into impoverishment.

Bihar is one of India’s poorest and most neglected states. It is quite deplorable that the literacy rate of the state is only 33% for girls and 60% for boys when the country itself has the fourth strongest economy in the world. Government funding is minimal in Bihar and although other parts of India has developed greatly in the past two decades, Bihar remains largely impoverished and neglected by the national government as well as the rest of the world. The caste tensions and the lack of public infrastructure including health care and education often results in children being born into a life of poverty and sadly, hopelessness. Thus, Paper Kite Children’s Foundation hopes to alleviate the pressures relating to poverty for children residing in several orphanages that we fund directly.

A team of Paper Kite volunteers will be heading to Bihar in February for a month-long journey to distribute the funds. I write this post in hopes that you will help us in our cause and help me in my goal of raising $1000 for this charity that I believe in so passionately. If you would like to donate (however much you want!), please follow the link: http://www.canadahelps.org/gp/9971

I go through periods where I become literally obsessed with learning about a certain region in the world. Usually, Cambodia happens to be that region. There is just something about that country that tugs at my heart whenever I read about its tragic history and its daunting present. So, I came across some videos on the current sex trade in Cambodia. Please watch and hopefully, you will understand why Cambodia will always have a place in my heart.

Please visit: http://www.sayno.eu/

When I was a child, I loved attending wedding banquets. I was always in awe of the bride who adorned such beautiful dresses, the opulent decor, and especially the food that was served. A Chinese wedding banquet dinner consisted of 8 to 10 courses that represented the best of Chinese culinary arts. The first course was usually a delicious assorted cold plate platter followed by prawn paste wrapped around a crab claw. There would also be lobster, broccoli with sea cucumber, crispy chicken, and the lucky “yee mein”. My favorite course, however, was shark fin soup.

I loved shark fin soup and it was the dish that I looked forward to the most at these wedding banquets. The thickness of the broth, its aromatic flavour with dried scallop, and the rarity of experiencing such an expensive dish meant I purposely took my time when it came to consuming the soup – slowly savouring every spoonful and not realizing that every spoonful was a crime in itself.

As a child, my only thoughts on sharks were that they were scary and would eat me given the opportunity. Thus, why should I care that I’m eating them? It’s better them than me that’s getting ingested. Yet, as I grew older, my opinions were no longer so black and white. The first time I felt ashamed for enjoying shark fin soup was in 11th grade when a classmate explained to me how sharks were finned in explicit details. He told me about how fishermen would capture the shark, bring it on board, cut the fins off, and dump the rest of the shark back into the water. The shark, which is still alive, sinks to the bottom of the ocean and suffers an inhumane and in a way, a humiliating death. After he finished his story, he warned me not to eat any shark fin soup and I brushed him off since I was never the one who ordered the shark fin soup at wedding banquets or fancy dinners with my family. If everyone else wanted it and the shark fin soup has already been prepared, what can I really do for the shark that was in my dinner bowl?

Despite this naive and somewhat irresponsible mentality, the chance of consuming shark fin soup became rarer and I was secretly glad about it. My brother went through a shark obsession and despised the brutality that humans committed on sharks, which had a deeper influence on me in making an active decision to not consume shark fin soup. It was not until last night after watching Planet in Peril, which did a segment on shark finning, that I’ve decided to not only never consume shark fin soup again, but I will make it point to tell others that they should not do the same. Hearing about the inhumane methods of shark finners were one thing, but seeing it is a completely different experience.

Witnessing the fishermen slicing the fins off the struggling shark and then pushing the finless shark back into the ocean, so it can sink to the bottom to suffer a slow and painful death brought tears to my eyes. I just could not fathom how someone can treat another living thing with such cruelty. After watching the segment on shark finning, I looked for more information on shark finning and this is what I found:

• Shark specialists estimate that up to 100 million sharks are killed annually (and often illegally) for just their fins.
• Any shark is taken regardless of size, age, or species.
• Shark finning has increased dramatically over the last 10 years as a result of higher demand, improved fishing technology and improved market economics.
• Loss of sharks threatens the stability of marine ecosystems.
• The demand for shark fins mainly comes from Asia which want it for shark fin soup and traditional cures.

There are quite a few conservation programs and non-profit groups trying to reduce global threats to shark populations and promote greater awareness on the plight of the sharks. For those who are not affiliated with these organization but want to be active, I encourage you to not consume any shark fin soup or shark fin remedies, and also to discuss shark finning with people. As long as we talk about, it will garner greater awareness which may translate into fewer consumption of shark fin and thus, less demand for it.

Here are a few websites to check out for more information:

www.wildaid.org

www.sharktrust.org

www.seashepherd.org

www.sharkwater.com

Let’s stop shark finning now!