street collection

well, yes for my SSVP flag day collection, i went to the jelutong market as i said i would. there were 4 of us – my sister and 2 friends and me. all 4 of us stand at different location. we were there at 8.00am and stayed till 9.30am.

i stand at a corner to ask for donations from people who passed by. of course i have to open my mouth to ask. it’s not that ijust stand there looking pretty with the box and people would be so kind to drop in donations. oh no, not that easy. i did not ask everyone who passed by though. i can tell from their look whether they can give or not. really. since most of the people there are chinese, i speak in chinese (hokkien). i said “aunty, ai tau ka chi wah lang oh?”. anyone know hokkien? can translate?

well, i was just asking them if they would like to help us. “aunty, would you like to help us?” and thrust the tin in front of them.

it was fun to see the different antics of people. of coure many of them ignored me when i asked. some gave me a suspicious look and some giggled or snigger. they must have found something funny with a short fat girl with a badge hanging round her neck, a tin in her right hand and stack of flags in her left hand. haha.

there were those who were more friendly when they refused. they would smile at me and shake their head. many who were asked replied “oh, i don’t have loose change.” some did add “i’ll come back later” but of course they never come back.

those who do give, most of them won’t ask anything but there are quite a number of people who asked “what is this for?”, so i told them “for the poor, we are from the church”. a few of them when they heard ‘church’, they will say “oh church” and quickly fish out some money. as expected, most of them gave coins.

there were very rare occasion… only 2 persons… who came up to me to give without me asking at all. maybe they were catholics and knows about SSVP.

oh of course i shouldn’t leave out those who go all the way out to avoid me. they were coming my direction, then they see me, they quickly cross over the other side. ha! can’t blame them. one of human’s nature. hey, i did it too at times when, from afar i spy some people with a bag of items for sale on the street (esp. small items like pens, books).

this was my first time standing on the street in public to solicit donations but i had done it before twice standing outside the church.

the thing is, to do a street collection, one has to have many qualities like humility, brave – not shy!, dedicated, talk well, persuasive.

first one has to be dedicated to the cause, then only s/he will want to go out on the street to solicit donations. and when s/he is out on the street, she should not be shy. s/he should be bold and even thick-faced! this is because donations won’t come to you if you just stand there looking pretty but you have to open your mouth and asked people. then there’s humility… because there will be people who will shun you or even laughed at you. it help if you are good at words and persuasive, like one of my friend, who got so many donations because she was able to sweet-talk the potential donor! but of course we stop short of forcing people… don’t worry we are never too persuasive to the extend of being irritating.

well it was a good experience for me. pity i only had 1 1/2 hr and only stationed at one place. or else i would have gone to other places like komtar, prangin mall, chowrasta market, and perhaps able to encounter lots of colouful characters and thus have more interesting tales to tell. haha.