galvanising the wives and families of ROTARY CLUB members through the length and breadth of the country to participate in the bringing of smiles to the faces of the less fortunate members of society. She is a very dear friend of Lillian Too, my aunt, and in the past three years since returning from New Zealand and getting to know Aunty Juanita, my respect and admiration for her enormous talents, her generous attitude and her big kind heart grows with each passing year! With her Inner Wheel circle of friends that include Datin Khoo Pek Ling, Datin Vinet Lim and Foong Pak, she does meaningful community work through their Inner Wheel organisation. It is an eye-opener, and very heart-warming, that such highly respected ladies of our society - who no doubt have plenty of other pressing demands on their social and professional calendars - can devote so much of their time for the improvement of other peoples lives. More inspiring is how genuinely
kind-hearted these ladies are, something one may not normally expect from women of fortune and position; no snobbish or condescending airs at all. For many of them, their involvement with Inner Wheel has spanned almost a decade! Juanita explains that the focus
of the Inner Wheel Club is to make friends first, and let the connection blossom naturally. Once members are comfortable with each other,
they automatically
gravitate towards working together to achieve something meaningful. Teir tagline “Be a Friend” is more than a cliché feel-good motto; it is something Inner Wheel members truly internalise within themselves and which they fervently nurture as the fundamental DNA of their club’s welcoming culture. I have to say that it really shows!
“Te emphasis is always about
supporting for each other, and doing charitable deeds with happy feelings. What is the point of doing all this charity work if you feel animosity and resentment while doing it?” she
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Group picture of
beneficiaries – orphans - of Inner Wheel charity activities invited to the AGM evening!
explains. Te feel-good sentiments of coming together as friends is the magic fuel behind Inner Wheel’s success – the secret to keeping members coming back for more! “We embrace and love all our members - new members are assigned a personal buddy to help ease them into the club and stay comfortable during meetings, projects and discussion of future plans. “Someone is dedicated to caring
about you, making you feel at home!”
DAZZLING TALENT One of the amazing gifts Juanita brings to the Inner Wheel Club is her dazzling talent for dance and musicals! It is no surprise then that many of
her Inner Wheel Annual Meetings are packed with sensational performances from their own members - many trained by Juanita and dressed up in full gala costume to dance the night away to contemporary themes like Moulin Rouge and the Great Gatsby. None of those boring 3-hour dinner functions that leave you glancing at your watch every 10 minutes and Facebooking secretly on the iPhone to pass time! Meetings at the Inner Wheel parties are always vibrant with loads of fun and chic - among people you know well and do things with, so small talk is never an effort.
Tey take their annual dancing
meetings very seriously - members meet to practice their routines, and their costumes are tailor-made to professional standards, fit enough to furnish a lavish theatre set! But she is also eager to stress that it is not just about partying. Beneath the dress-ups, dancing, singing, dining and wining are a seriously motivated group of very earnest ladies who work tirelessly to effect change in the lives of the underprivileged or the suffering – recipients of money the Club raises to help them. “Glory is not the goal here, changing lives is; so we focus on the small but very significant everyday things that most people take for granted!” For example, their Inner Wheel Club raised thousands of dollars to replace more than 1000 wheelchairs for a group of disabled children.
“I saw this poor child on a
wheelchair. Each time he rode up to his dinner table, his wheel chair would slide backwards because it was old, the brakes were broken and the wheels were not working properly. It took him 10 minutes of struggle just to get to the dinner table! My heart just went out to the poor fella! ” “Not many people know that wheel
chairs don’t last forever. Tey need to be replaced after some time, but they
JULY / AUGUST 2013 | F ENGSHUIWORLD 19
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