Together.....yes we can.

It was past midnight when we started our ride to Tangkak to attend a meeting at 9 am on Friday at SmarTop Pre Schhol with some parents who have taken up our suggestion to form  the "Parents Support Group". I was extremely excited at the idea of working together to garner strength to focus our vision on achieving a common goal, i.e an early start in educating and developing a child to its fullest potential , physically, mentally and spiritually.

It was a long ride because we missed an exit to Seremban at the Federal Highway and we had to make a long and complicated detour. It was an unfamiliar ground and we were utterly confused. Consequently it took up more time than we had expected. We had to go on and finally it  was okay considering we are senior citizens trying to act young by starting a night journey rather late. We finally reached Tangkak just after 3 am and we rested rather well before the 9 am meeting. 

'When the going gets tough, the tough gets going', goes the saying. And we laughed 'joyfully' at ourselves, invigorating our thoughts.  All is well that ends well....

I was focused on attending the meeting.I personally believe that we need to come together and work together to ensure success. SmarTop Preschool may be a small project with a small enrollment of about 80 kids, but size is not a determinant factor to achieve success. We cannot hope to accomplish all that we need to do without working together. This is a pertinent point in moving forward. 

This is a quick snap of our meeting that day. Dato' Safaruddin as Chairman of SmarTop started the session with a warm welcome to our participating parents. It was smiles all round the table as we introduced ourselves. That day most parents who attended the session are government employees and in a small place like Tangkak, that is a normal phenomena. We were very pleased to meet with each other.

Dato' Safaruddin stressed on the point of working together, parents and teachers and management. No man is an island. And educators believe that 'it takes the whole village to raise a child'.  We have different personalities and different skills. We may even have different philosophy of life and different ways of putting things together when facing a crisis. But if we work together with the spirit of complementing and supplementing each other, we can go a long way. This is because the kinds of things that we need to do, we should do together because none of us is super human as to be able to handle a situation single-handedly all the time. 

Dato' Safaruddin also stressed the fact that together we can strengthen the spirit of giving, of working voluntarily in difficult situations and never turning back to check if others are doing the same. In the spirit of Islam that is called 'giving and helping relentlessly for the sake of humanity in the name of Allah most loving, most merciful'.

All is not lost, stressed my 'partner' (picture below) in setting up this pre-school. Give, and thou shalt be rewarded in the hereafter. 

Convinced that ALL IS NOT LOST, our Support Group outlined the action plan for the year. The most significant and urgent program is to raise fund to finance our co-curricula and extra-curricula activities.  Swimming and tae-kwan-do is number one on the list as we plan to start immediately or no later than the beginning of March. 

I listened attentively, and making my suggestions only when they turned to me. I can feel that they are a conscientious group and I believe we can depend on their support  and move on without much problem. 

May Allah guide us all the way and we hope to achieve our objectives with ease.

Together....yes we can, by the Grace of Allah most High. Ameen....

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