Saying the Unnecessary...

It is mind boggling to read about the late William Yau's parents sharing story in the newspaper about them sending their 2 other kids to stay with their grandparents in Melaka for fear of being kidnapped.

This is what William's mother said as quoted in the newspaper "My husband worries that something will happen to them too as we do not know what really happened to William here.” 

The point is, why do they need to announce their plan and where do they "hide" their children from possible kidnapping? It is like telling your enemy about your strategy. It gives advantage to them and disadvantage to you.

William Yau's parents need help!

On the other hand, it is hoped that our newspaper or other form of media to also play their part and filter the news to be broadcasted. If the information obtained does more harm than good, then by all means, we plead not to share the news.

In order not to further spread the news, we decided not to provide the link to the news.   

True Story...An 11 Year Old Could Have Been Another Victim

What we want to share with readers is a true story that happened only yesterday, 15th April 2013. To protect the identity of those involved, we choose not to mention name and place in this posting. There are lessons to be learnt here.

Today, 16th April 2013, a headmistress of a School A received a phone call from a headmaster of School B that a standard 5 (age 11) pupil (the Boy) of School A slept at School B the night before.   

On 15th April 2013, the Boy was asked by his grandmother to go to the nearby shop. When the Boy returned from the shop, he found that the grandmother was not at home. As he had no key to the house, he left the stuff he bought outside the house and wentto his friend's house. Apparently a relative came to the house while the Boy went to the shop and took the grandmother with him (the relative). When the grandmother returned home at about 5.00pm, the Boy was not at home. Later the Boy went back and called for his grandmother but there was no response (apparently the grandmother was at home at that time). 

The Boy was then seen wandered around School B by the security guard and the security guard asked the Boy to get into the School B compound and gave him dinner. The Boy was then asked to sleep at the gurad post, School B.

Today, 16th April 2013, a teacher from School B gave the Boy breakfast before the headmaster contacted the headmistress of School A. A police report was then lodged by the headmaster. Teachers from School A went to fetch the Boy and sent him back to his grandmother's house.

Apparently, the Boy stays with the grandmother in a state southern part of peninsular, only two of them while his parents live in Kuala Lumpur. According to the grandmother, the Boy hardly stays at home and that irritates her. However, it was not confirmed if the grandmother's act to follow the relative and not to answer to the Boy's call thereafter were seen as a "punishment" to the Boy for hardly stays at home. According to the Boy, he normally stays at home and hardly goes out.

Thereafter, the Boy's aunty (who is said to be a teacher in Kuala Lumpur) contacted School A and claimed that the Boy's parents are irresponsible and sought help from the school. When teacher from School A asked for his parents' contact number, he has no idea how to contact them, as according to the grandmother, the father has changed his contact number. The Boy's parents return to visit him once a month.

What could have gone wrong in this case is that the Boy was exposed to danger as he might have been kidnapped by child predators while wandering without knowing where to go. Luckily we have a good samaritan (the security guard) who provided food and shelter for the Boy. 

The Boy is a victim as a result of the action of his parents who sent him to stay with the grandmother and that of his grandmother who left the house after asking the boy to go to the shop.

There are lessons we can learn from this episode. Even if the Boy likes to go out and hardly stays at home, that was not the way to teach him a lesson so that he will stay more at home. Do what they can to deal with the matter but the last thing they should do is to expose the Boy to such danger.  

Expedition to Mount Nanhu - Dedicated for MfMC

MfMC, championed by a group of mountain climbers had gone for an expedition to Mount Nanhu in Taiwan. The expedition from 3rd to 8th March 2013, which was dedicated for MfMC consist of 11 climbers, 2 of which were female.

Mount Nanhu, which is located within the Taroko National Park is one of the highest mountains in Taiwan, standing tall at 3,740m (12,270ft) above sea level. It is about 4.5 hours drive from Taipei. It is very famous among the local climbers but not so much among the foreigners. 

2 of our team members before boarding the airplane at KLIA with MfMC stickers

2 other team members before boarding at Changi Airport

This expedition, in line with our objective i.e. climb for a reason was used as a medium to promote MfMC to the world out there while we continue on our effort to increase the awareness level among the community on the importance of the safety of our children. This is simply because the issue of missing children is a global issue. Statistically, a total of 2,185 children gone missing daily in the US, in 2012 in average about 4 children went missing daily in Malaysia, more than 7000 children were missing in Taiwan in the first 6 months in 2012, while in 2011, an average of 182 children under the age of 12 were missing daily in Indonesia. Those are few statistics in few countries about missing children. That is scary!!! Hence our objective was to let people know first about MfMC with the hope that they will be interested to find out more about what MfMC is all about, hence the awareness level will rise.

While in Taiwan, we did little promotion among the locals. The hostel's operator, which we supposedly stayed in his hostel in Taiwan was excited with our mission. She asked for 3 MfMC's stickers to be pasted in her hostels in 3 different locations. Unfortunately, we did not manage to take picture of that as due to technical reason, we had to move to other hostel.

Our guide for the expedition, Wen Ting-Yi who had even "liked" our fb fan page while we were still in Malaysia was also excited about the mission that he wanted to understand more. Now, he posted a lot of our photos with MfMC stickers and flags in his facebook, which is accessible to 561 of his friends.

We bumped into local climbers on the mountain and took the opportunity to explain about MfMC. Apart from the explanation, they also took our photos with the MfMC flags. Again, we hope that would help us in promoting MfMC.

Explaining about MfMC to local climbers

In the meantime, during the expedition, we had unforgettable priceless, yet scary experience as we were hit by earthquakes 6 times as far as I can recall (but 12 times according to the report) with the strongest one was at the magnitude of 5.6 on the 5th day on the mountain. Praise be to Allah that we were not harmed. Everybody was safe.

For the rest of this posting, I will let the photos do the explanation.So, enjoy the photos.

Group photo before we start our day 1 trekking

The jungle

To Allah we submit ourselves

One of the water sources - near Yuling Cabin

At the peak of Nanhu East

On the way to Nanhu East

Subhanallah...Amazing

At the peak of Nanhu North

Waiting for sunset

Nanhu East

Marching...all in one line

From the Main Peak of Nanhu

Finally...at Main Peak Nanhu

One for the album...MfMC at the Main Peak Nanhu...Congratulations to all

Lost and Found

They were reported missing from their home and we reported it here.

Today, The Star reported that the girls have been found. It was a case of run away from home and not kidnapping as suspected by the father. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, the girls refused to go back to their house. Hence, according to the newspaper, they would be staying at the hospital or a shelter.

During their missing days, they were staying with a Nepali, said to be one of the girl's boyfriend. According to the father, while the girls used to have disciplinary issues in the past, they did not abuse them.

Over the years, it has become more challenging in bringing up children the way they are supposed to be. The surrounding factors, their friends, easy access to internet, etc influence their behaviour and attitutde. Hence, as parents, we need to be ahead of them and closely monitor their activities. More important that we must know who their circle of friends are. 

Missing Children

Name: Chen Poh Choo
Age: 15
Name: Poh Fong
Age: 13
Last Seen: 1st February 2013
Location: Pandamaran Klang
Status: Missing (suspected to kidnapped victims). Went missing on the way to school
Those with information, please contact 03-3167 9897 (Klang MCA Office) or 017-365 9897 (David Foo).

News taken from here

Wrist Road ID - The Way to Go

Parents invented various ways to keep the children safe especially at the crowded place. While some hold tight their children's hand, some were seen using a strap to connect between them and their children. There is another way that may be quite effective to keep our children safe. 

While the hand holding and using of the strap are seen more to ensure the children do not get separated from us, this other way that we are going to share with you serves as a tool to reconnect our children with us in case they are separated from us, mostly at the crowded places.

Wrist Road ID is what we would like to share with you. 

Wrist Road ID is a wrist band that contains our personal details such as emergency contact number, address, blood type, etc. In fact it is up to us to put what details we want on the Wrist Road ID (refer to the photo above).

Wrist Road ID was originally created for athletes such as runners, marathoners, cyclists, triathletes, etc who do a lot of outdoor training. It serves as a "spokeperson" in the event the owner/athlete is found unconcious, perhaps due to accident during individual training. To understand more how Road ID started, click here.

Enough of the athletes story, let's see how Wrist Road ID can work for us to keep our children safe. First of all, as we mentioned earlier, hand holding or using the strap may be useful but it does not 100% guarantee that our children won't get separated from us. That is when the Wrist Road ID comes to our help. With the Wrist Road ID on our children, they will have information about the parents such as the contact number, in case of accident, it will have our blood type. Hence, when the child goes missing, it will be easier to reconnect with us as the person who found our child will be able to immediately contact us.

Something to ponder.It is never expensive when it comes to our children's safety.

4 Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

We posted an article and a youtube video earlier about the children's safety online. The article titled "Our Children's Activities Online...Do We Care to Know?" encourages parents/guardians to be more proactive and bother to know about what our children do online. Now we want to share the tips about how to keep our children safe online. Knowing what they do online is one thing and keeping them safe is another thing. The two compliments each other.

This generation of kids spends more time online than any generation before it, which makes it increasingly hard to protect them from online dangers. According to a 2010 study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 93% of teens use the Internet, and the National Crime Prevention Council found in 2008 that on average, adolescents 18 and younger spend around 18 hours per week online. So how do you protect your kids without spending all your time standing over their shoulder? Here's a quick guide to keeping your kids safe online: 

Open Communication

The biggest thing parents can do to help keep their kids safe online is to talk to them about what they do, see and experience there. Keep the conversation open, and be sure they know they can come to you if they see or experience anything that worries them. If you explain your rules and worries, kids will be better prepared to help themselves stay safe online.

Filtering Inappropriate Content

Many parents worry about the material their kids are able to access online, and with good reason. There are hundreds of millions of websites online, and some are full of information that may not be suitable for young kids or even older teenagers. In a study by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2006, 34% of young people reported seeing sexual materials online that they did not want to see. Many parents use parental control software, at least while kids are young to block some of the less appropriate material. Most operating systems (like Windows or Mac OSX) including filtering capabilities, or you can add on a separate application like Net Nanny to help out.

Social Network Safety

Though kids under the age of 13 are not allowed to have profiles on most large social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, it's fairly easy to get around this rule, and many kids do. Consumer Reports projected in 2011 that around 7.5 million of Facebook's users were under the age of 13. We encourage parents to enforce the sites' rules about underage members if they can. There's plenty of time for Facebook later. If you're concerned your pre-teen has a profile he or she's not telling you about, you can check your computer's history or use parental control software to track activity.

Facebook also does its best to filter out underage profiles, flagging users who mostly have much younger friends to be sure they're the age they claim to be and responding when other users flag underage profiles.

For teens between 13 and 17, Facebook automatically imposes stricter privacy settings than those it uses for adults, so be sure your child is using the correct birth date on signup. According to Facebook's customer service department, the profiles of minors are automatically hidden from public search and Facebook restricts tagged photos and posts to just your child and his or her friends, at the most.

Sharing Information Online

This brings us to the importance of talking to teens about sharing information online. As many people have learned in the last few years, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other websites are public places, and information you post there can and will be seen. Even after a post or a photo is deleted, it can be hard to wipe it completely. For the sake of their online reputations, it's important that kids and teens understand that what they share online can form a permanent record. If they'd rather a parent, grandparent, teacher or employer not read something, they shouldn't post it online.

If you'd like to see just what your child's profile looks like to a stranger or a specific friend, just ask your child to log in and then use the "View As" link at the top of the timeline to see what shows up. We also recommend that parents "friend" teens on Facebook and check in to see what they're posting regularly.

While it's impossible to completely monitor everything your kids do online, these steps will help keep your kids safe and informed while they are on the web.

This article is taken from here