Arguably the largest event in the Young Lawyers’ calendar, the Charity Night is an annual event organised by the Kuala Lumpur Young Lawyers Committee (“KLYLC”) to raise funds for worthy social causes.
The Charity Night is an event that utilises a fascinating multi-faceted mechanism in order to raise funds. The first and second method is by generating proceeds via ticket sales of the Charity Night itself and by collecting donations from various law firms; a very traditional methods. The third, especially to an uninitiated, is quite novel; all performances at the Charity Night are performed by lawyers, the very group the Charity Night targets, with the winning performance determined solely by the amount of donations / proceeds that that performance could amass throughout the night. These proceeds are collected via donation boxes (with the performance / performers’ names on it) which are taken around the Charity Night venue for the audience to generously donate to their most-liked performance of the night. Naturally, this mechanism would require a venue with dazzling stroboscopic party lights, full-surround sound, a larger-than-life stage and a floorspace that can easily accommodate a crowd of 700 strong lawyers.
Club Neverland of Jalan Kia Peng fitted the bill perfectly.
What then was the charitable element of the Charity Night? This year, for the 8th consecutive year of the Charity Night we welcomed “Project Light a Home” who were this year’s recipients of the proceeds generated by Charity Night 2012.
Project Light a Home is a community project that is aimed at providing much needed solar powered bulbs for Orang Asli communities who, for a vast majority of, do not have access to electricity. These communities are mostly dependant on kerosene lamps to provide light; lamps of which are costly, hazardous to health due to the toxic fumes emitted, a huge fire-risk due to its dependency on highly combustible fuel and the main source of fires in the Orang Asli community.
All of these, complete with pictures of the very deplorable state and standards of living of the Orang Asli community were effectively communicated to the audience at Club Neverland on 12.10.2012 by Cheryl Teh of Project Light a Home, who were given a slot to present their mission and to inform the legal minds present at the Charity Night 2012 on the worthy cause of that their proceeds would be channelled to.
After the presentation, Club Neverland saw 7 performances from the following amazing talents within the legal fraternity:-
The Cexy Lawyers Crew
Kishore, Arif & Nizam
Fang Lay Har
The Usual Suspects
Your Mama
The SYB
Oh My Swag
Perhaps it was the brilliance of their vocals, or perhaps it was their awe-inspiring dance moves, or perhaps the Orang Asli predicament resonated deeply with our lawyers, but the Charity Night 2012 saw the sale of 968 tickets and a total of RM 32,905.50 collected by the end of the night from the performances; a feat that sets a high yardstick for future Charity Nights to emulate.
The Charity Night saw Oh My Swag placed first as the best performance of the night with their hilariously talented rendition of Beyonce’s Single Ladies dance and the first runner up, The Usual Suspects serenading the Club with their version of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Ironic”, and “Buses and Trains”. Second runner up was The SYB who brought the house down especially with their live performance of “Zombie:; a 1994 smash hit by the Cranberries also sang “King of Wishful Thinking”, “Rolling in the Deep”, “Don’t Stop Believing”, “That’s What You Get” and “Dare You to Move”.
All in all, Charity Night 2012 was a night that showed that when it comes right down to it, we lawyers are willing to have a great time while supporting a worthy cause. May the Charity Night 2012 proceeds, in the aggregate amount of RM52,000, bring rays of renewable and never ending light to the Orang Asli community!
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Prepared by Vince Chong.
Photos by Tan Boon Kim and Munirah Maarof.
Edited by Khaizan Sharizad Ab Razak and Jeremiah R. Gurusamy..
