FON launched 'Inspire'

‘Inspire’, is a collaborative effort between The Force of Nature Aid Foundation and a group of prominent Malaysian Personalities who have excelled in their respective fields locally and abroad.

Each personality has designed an image or worked together with the design team from Proof Design Sdn Bhd (a local Design House underwriting the initiative) to create a raya greeting card with a message, important to the personality, or captures what the festive season means to them.

The launch of the ‘Inspire Campaign’ held at Pink Sage Diner, Jalan Dang Wangi, featured personality revealing (for the first time) the design themes for the card that they inspired. Datuk Ali Abdul Kadir (Trustee FON), Sheila Majid, Sazzy Falak, Dato’ Tom Abang Saufi, Tengku Djan Ley and Ifzan Ibrahim (Wondermilk) were present at the launch. The cards will be available by the end of August at all major bookstores select Berjaya Group’s retail outlets namely; Starbucks, Strategic 7-eleven Outlets, and Border’s Books in Malaysia.

For any enquiries, email us at contact@forceofnature.org

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Force of Nature - View from an intern

Below are the words of Anisha Menon, who spent 2 weeks as an intern with FON

If I’m being honest, before my two weeks here, all I knew…or rather, remembered, about Force of Nature was that amazing concert back in 2005 and how the money for my ticket went to tsunami victims, but little else.So when I was looking for experience in a non-government organisation, and someone suggested interning here I immediately agreed. What was the worst I could have to do, meet the Black Eyed Peas?

So I started here at the easy-to-get-to-if-you-know-Raju’s-restaurant office with a whole two weeks in front of me. The office is quiet, but that’s not surprising when you realise that behind the high-profile and not as high-profile fundraising events that they organize, the nuclear Force of Nature team consists of seven people, who all just work really hard!

I was told by Richard about the various aspects of Force of Nature, and of any Non-profit organisation I guess and how these can be divided into fund development, field development, grants and communications. Me, I worked with Anni on fund development during my two weeks at FON and saw how important (and not easy!) it was to organise an event and put plans into action, and how you need sponsors, and generally people to believe in your idea if it’s going to become real.

I was also set the task of planning my own event for FON, and I had a lot of fun coming up with different ideas, choosing venues, local artists for performances and such like but as Anni reminded me, that was the easy, more enjoyable part of the process!

So even after my two weeks at Force of Nature I still have loads to learn. Before I started, about two weeks ago, Nori told me that to her, experience in the Non-profit Organisation world was invaluable regardless of what career path you choose. At sixteen, with no solid career path ahead of me, I am going to agree completely with her, and I think a lot of it is down to you guys at FON who’ve made my two weeks at FON what you wouldn’t normally expect from work experience; chilled out, fun, and overall just great.

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Working in Force of Nature

Working in a foundation and/or NGO is practically different from the fast paced corporate world, isn’t it? NOT EXACTLY! I have seen slower pacing people in the corporate arena.

Working at FON is challenging as FON is just a small outfit and most of the time we need to multi-task to make things happen. Our main activities are grants/project management, fund raising and also public awareness/communications. It can be a place to learn all the processes of implementing a successful or full project starting from planning up to completing a real project that makes a difference for some communities hit by natural disaster.

FON is expanding its scope of work and would like to hire more people to be able to assist more natural disaster affected survivors and also expand to more areas in this region.

Why not make a career in doing something good?

We are always looking for the right person to add to the FON family and right now we are urgently looking for Grant Officer(s) to make sure we can undertake more projects and make lives better in disaster affected areas. Don't worry, we don’t need rocket scientists but people who can monitor and manage projects, willing to travel, cooperative and enjoy making things happen. Check out our official website at http://www.forceofnature.org/ or enquire at contact@forceofnature.org with your details.

Act now, you could be the one we are looking for!

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We are the Force of Nature

“Force of Nature? Oh yeah, they are the one who did the concert for tsunami. Great concert, I get to see Black Eye Peas & Backstreet Boys.”

“You are working with Force of Nature? Yeah I know about the concert. Wow, it must be cool working with an event management company, huh?”

Those are the kind of reactions we get every time we mentioned Force of Nature (or more fondly known as FON). People remember the concert and unfortunately mistaken us as concert organisers. Well we are not, and this is why we turn to blogging, to get the message across loud and clear. We are FON, a Malaysian non-profit grant making agency dedicated to rebuild the lives of natural disaster survivors.



FON is arguably the only grant maker in the developing world that concentrates on long-term disaster management and risk reduction. That means we don’t do relief work, we fund projects that will benefit the disaster affected people in the long run. We build something stronger than bricks, we build hope.

Our projects are people centred, we aim to help individuals and local communities to achieve a standard of living higher than before the disaster hit. We do that by giving them loans to start business and teaching them how to run their business. We hope to reduce the impact of disaster by learning & research, bringing together countries affected by disasters in workshops & conferences to share their experiences and knowledge.

In short, what we can say about our projects is, we don’t construct buildings, we ‘construct’ what’s going on in the building.


“When are you guys going to Myanmar? The victims need all the help they can get. The sooner you go the better.”

“I can’t remember FON doing anything for the Pakistan earthquake but I remembered reading about X organization that went there to set up temporary shelters.”

Those are the general views of the public towards us. It’s understandable given the nature of our work. We only start telling the public about our work after the media attention on a disaster has subsided. In contrast, relief work (setting up temporary shelters, supplying food & clean water, etc2) gets a lot of attention because of the timing. It starts immediately after a disaster has happened when the world is full of interest and gives full attention.

It is after the relief work has finished (normally 6-12 months) that we start to go in the affected area. For example, the Indian Asian Tsunami that hit the world in 2004, we waited until the relief phase has ended before going in and we have since disbursed RM6 million for our tsunami projects. Overall, our projects has supported more than 100,000 people in Pakistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Malaysia to rebuild lives, restore livelihoods, empower communities and rehabilitate & protect the environment.

Relief work is very important, but so does long-term disaster management. Everyone has a part to play, and ours is long-term post recovery initiatives. We have different roles with different purposes but in the end we are all aiming for the same goal, which is to lend a hand for the survivors of natural disasters.


WE ARE THE FORCE OF NATURE…

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