Carbine Club 4th year in a row
We are extremely thankful to the Carbine Club who has made YouMeWe the recipient of their generous fundraising on the day of the famous Melbourne Cup. Not only is it a day to celebrate the coming together of members in Tokyo but also to dress up and watch the race from hats to heels for the ladies and now some of the men…. The funds raised go towards our Life Connection courses which involve sports, team building and the Designing Artists Academy which we hold annually.
A great day was held with many prizes offered for the raffle including Cathay Pacific’s give away of two economy class tickets roundtrip to Hong Kong and a two nights stay at The Regent.
A speech was given by Michael Perry-Clemons, Founder of YouMeWe:
“As many of you may know I was asked to play Santa for an orphanage in 2007 and I never really left.
What really cemented our desire to help the kids was a trip we made to Disneyland where we were paired off with two ten year old boys
When it came time for the visit to the Disney Store, whilst many kids were throwing things over their shoulders into their carts, our kids did not want to go in or ask for anything.
To me this seemed unnatural and at the same time made me want to do more for kids that do not ask for anything.
Those boys would be 27 year old men now. And we are reminded that these are not marginallzed kids but maximizeable children who need to feel like something bigger than themselves.
Over the 17 years we have been working in the homes, it only occurred to my recently that we may be the only consistency these children have as we visit them every week and or have online classes all over Japan and now Philippines and Brazil. as the principals retire and the staff rotate, we are there every single week.
We teach about 3 dozen children weekly; coding or English or helping them in person or online with their homework. We give them scholarships for university and help them find jobs AND are available to coach them into adulthood.
We also have been holding a summer camp since 2008 here they experienced kick boxing, futsal and soon will be going to a Marinos game in December.
Thanks to the Carbine club in our fourth year we have raised well over ¥3,000,000, Last year we were able to give over 350 christmas presents to the kids we support. We hope to double that this year.
In Summary, I wanted to ask:
Did you ever realize that how many orphans are the protagonist in the movies and cartoons we watch?
Harry Potter, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Elsa from Frozen, even Kung Fu Panda there is something about us as audience where we are cheering for the one making his/her way on their own.
Yet, Harry Potter had various teachers, Superman had his human parents, Spiderman had his aunt....they all also had an adult who looked out for them and helped them become the best version of themselves.
As the future rushes at the children we remind them to to dwell on how their lives started but how they want their lives to end up. And if you do not know what you want, imagine what you do want and then what the opposite of that is.
And come back to the now and focus on what you need to get done in order to happen.
How all any of us have is the NOW...and the depth of our experiences go deeper than the length of our lives. All the more reason to lean into the now....which is another word for the present which is another word for gift.
Thank you very much.”