JOHOR BARU: 'Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow' is a well-known phrase that is used to render the reality that gigantic entities do emerge from small beginnings.
Newly-established non-governmental organisation, Glocal Helping Hands, would quicky disagree with any description of them being a heavyweight on the charity scene.
But they have indeed come a long way since having a humble and unremarkable start in 2017.
Comprising members who include wives of expatriates working in Johor Baru, Glocal Helping Hands has grown from a small group of individuals concerned to help society's less fortunate into an entity that is playing a sizeable role in aiding the down-and-out in the city, who are finding it hard to make ends meet amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Measures under the Movement Control Order (MCO) and Conditional MCO have hurled manual labourers, daily paid workers, petty traders and single mothers into depths of desperation from having no income for weeks on account of closed businesses.
This is where Glocal Helping Hands decided that the piecemeal charity works they have been doing from 2017 – works such as helping families with cancer-stricken breadwinners pull through their lot – must be expanded to impact dozens of the indigent struggling to survive joblessness and poverty.
"We initially started small, pooling our resources before expanding our efforts at fundraising through charity dinners and the like to garner more money to help the helpless," said Poonam Singh, head of Glocal Helping hands.
"Most of our initial efforts to help the poor took the form of helping the cancer-stricken poor to obtain minimal care and getting their impoverished kids to school," said Poonam.
These initial efforts elicited interest from the government and private sectors who responded to Glocal's campaign to raise capacity-building in terms of aid to the poor.
When Covid-19 and the measures taken to combat it began to sever the lower echelons of the working class from jobs and income, Glocal Helping Hands moved with urgency to get aid out to the indigent.
"From the time the MCO was imposed, we have helped 472 families with groceries and rations to help them get through this period of deprivation. The families would be starving if no one else came to their rescue.
"That's the least we could do for them," she said.
A recipient of aid from Glocal Helping Hands, Zaiton Abdul Latif, 71, who has been living at Sri Stulang flats with her husband who is 76 years old and jobless, said she finds it hard to make ends meet.
She is thankful to Glocal Helping Hands for providing them with sufficient groceries as it helped them tide through the recent Hari Raya.
"I thought initially I will not be able to even have a simple Hari Raya this year due to our financial situation.
"Our children have all left us and never come to visit us at all," she Latifah in-between sobs.
Maznan Bachok, 63, who is also jobless lives with his son and depends on well-wishers for food.
"With the groceries I received from Glocal, I was able to have a simple Hari Raya with my family," he said with a smile on his face.
Maznan said it was a surprise that Glocal Helping Hands visited him and distributed the food items to his home in Sri Stulang flats.
Normah Ahmad, 55, couldn't believe her eyes when the NGO visited her and presented her with household groceries.
She lives with her eight children and sometimes get assistance from compassionate friends.
With the MCO, followed by CMCO she is unable to find a job and is in dire straits.
Normah said she was thankful to Glocal Helping Hands for the groceries they gave her as she will be able to make some of her favourite dishes for Hari Raya.