What is an ABC?
Dear all,
Do you know what an ABC is? Well you’ll be surprised to find out here.
A few months back, 5 of my young students aged between 12 – 16 years old, formed a small group called Animal Befrienders Coalition (ABC). The ABC was formed to increase awareness of animal cruelty and to promote vegetarianism.
I am very happy that these children have a great cause to spend their time on… they still play their video games, they still play sports, just like any other kids – but they also promote kindness towards animals to the world. How wonderful. It’s good to give kids something else to focus on besides themselves and materialistic gifts.
They have been very active on their Facebook fan page which now has 38,000 likes!
These young children raise funds for their own group! All of which goes towards promoting awareness on animal cruelty. A few weeks ago, they had their own mini fund raising event that was within an event for Jeunesse at Kechara Oasis. It was attended by almost 160 guests.
I also heard that Kechara Paradise supported the ABC group by sponsoring a table at the event and another kind sponsor Marianne, donated a pair of 18 carat Tiffany & Co. gold earrings worth RM 4,000 for ABC’s fund raising auction. I’m so glad to see so much support from our department and friends to help these young children, and most of all, to see our young Kecharians take responsibility over the projects that they are heading.
This was what I envisioned when I encouraged these children to start this ABC group… I’m very happy to see them going all the way with it!
Do watch the video of our young Kecharians performing the song “Heal The World” and also a speech that they gave at the event. I like to start teaching children on how to be kind to animals and on taking responsibility from a young age… When they grow up they will be aware, conscious, stable, kind and responsible people. Isn’t that what all parents want their children to become?
Tsem Rinpoche
Speech by ABC
Hello everyone, we are Animal Befrienders Coalition. An animal rights group that was created in the inspiration of our Guru, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche. Our guru has always taught us how to be kind to others, and to help and care for others. And one of the things that he was directing at, were the animals. Animals are being abused and slaughtered for their meat, fur and other animal products. And we would like to put a stop to it.
So therefore, we created a youth group consisting of 5 founding members. And the goals of our group are to promote vegetarianism and to spread the awareness of animal Cruelty. We have a page on Facebook as well, which we would kindly ask all of you to visit.
And we are all standing here as the founding members of Animal Befrienders Coalition. My name is Julien, and this is Sean, Lucas, Edward and Beatrix. We are all very happy to be standing here on stage talking and presenting ABC to all of you. And we hope all of you will help us raise the funds to keep ABC running, and to help us benefit animals around the world.
We are now going to perform a song for you. Thank you for your attention, and we hope you enjoy our performance.
Video of ABC performing on stage
Photos of ABC’s fundraising dinner
Dinner table sponsored by Kechara Paradise
Competing for ‘Best Dressed’ at the event… guess who won…
From left, Dato’ Ruby Khong, Sharon Saw and Marianne.
The ABC kids giving their speech to the crowd! (left to right) Julien, Sean, Edward, Lucas and Beatrix.
The dinner scene!
Dato’ Ruby (left) won one of the prizes for Best Dressed
Proud parents with their beautiful children. From left: Beatrix, Li Kim, Sharon Saw, Sean, Julien, Edward, Lucas (front), Henry and Angel
Please support us so that we can continue to bring you more Dharma:
If you are in the United States, please note that your offerings and contributions are tax deductible. ~ the tsemrinpoche.com blog team
Dear Rinpoche, we ABC were very very happy that night especially the auction where we raised RM6100, all thanks to Marianne. I hope that everybody enjoyed everything during the whole event. I will try my best to turn my close classmates into vegetarians. But the only problem is that they love to eat meat.
年纪轻轻就拥有这种慈悲心，与其他同年龄的孩童相比，他们固然是比较懂事。当然这也归咎他们从小就跟随父母学习佛法的成果。他们学习后化成动力这才是最重要的。随喜他们的善心。
Thank you for sharing about ABC.
This group of young Kecharian is really amazing…
Great! These ABC group is amazing.. Is very important to educate our children from young with great care, kindness and compassion and empathy for preventing cruelty to animals, vegetarianism and etc as well as in raising them to respect and treat those who are different from them with kindness. May them continue influence and inspire others with this. Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this post.
I was there at the dinner with them and they were fantastic! So young yet responsible, caring and smart! Lucas and Edward actually went down on their knees for sponsors! They spend time creating awareness for the animals who cant speak for themselves and they are doing such a wonderful thing! Of coz, Li Kim did a wonderful job too in helping them raise the funds! They are such angels! Kudos!
It is very important of what we teach the kids, if we don’t teach them about what’s gppd and what’s bad, when they grow up, they will not know how important is taking and holding responsibility. Tsem Rinpoche has created a group call ABC, it is a group younger kids who go together to do something good where not many adults are doing it.
They are working very hard on creating awareness for not to kill, not to abuse animal, etc. They are a great kids, they learn fast and are really doing it with full passion, before the dinner, they practice and practice for the singing, on the stage, they are performing very good, well, not many people like to be on stage, but for raising fund for their work, they did it, they not only stand on stage to sing, they even go round getting donations.
Just imagine with the work they doing now, how great they will become in future? Really proud of them.
This is very interesting and meaningful about ABC group 🙂 Also it is good for the kids to learn how to care and responsibility.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this post.
In Buddhism, wisdom is said to be the core of the Teaching, and compassion, the core of the Practice. The right purpose of life in Buddhism, is said to be grounded upon the unification of life of wisdom and faith, and upon the union of compassion and faith. With our life spanning a few short decades, we should therefore make good use of our precious life and time to seize the opportunity in Dharma practice as our perfect template for living. The ABC wise-kids have certainly shown the right way, let us all give them our full hearted support all the way! Om mani padme hum.
So proud of ABC kids who is Julien, Sean, Edward, Lucas and Beatrix. They are learning Dharma since young and now have a fan pages at Facebook .They are gathering a lot of info, video clip and photo to create awareness of animals cruelty , and also inspire us to love animal & be vegetarian . Please support them https://www.facebook.com/AnimalBefriendersCoalition .
Good job ABC! Congrats on the fundraising.. It’s always very heartwarming to see young kids being involved in Dharma. How fortunate to be able to meet the Dharma at such a young age. =)
Keep up the good work guys!
Thank you for sharing, Rinpoche!
These children have grown up so much to become such mature, kind, wonderful people. They are so lucky to have grown up to be taught the dharma from Rinpoche. You don’t see many young kids being vegetarian. Though still enjoying themselves in sports, games, comics, they are still able to come up with all this. When they grow up they’re going to achieve so much more and benefit so many people. Congratulations guys on your fantastic hard work to spread awareness, the event really looked like a success. Wished I could have been there to soak myself in them delicious vegetarian goodies haha. Hope all of you are well, good singing guys!
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing ABC on Rinpoche’s blog, we are all very honored to be in this group and very proud to be doing what we are doing. our voices kept on cracking during our performance… hehe that was quite funny.
ABC is a wonderful group with its programmes voicing out against animal cruelty and assisting in saving animals and will play its part in the animal sanctuary in Kechara Forest Retreat. The activities in ABC also provide the children to take responsibility and the chance to practice compassion as taught by Rinpoche. All these aid young children to grow up as responsible citizens of Malaysia instead of just spending their time playing computer games and hanging out in shopping malls and expecting to be served upon by parents and maids.
Wow!! Such young children can do so much things for the Dharma. A.B.C stands for animal befrienders coalition.
Cats,dogs and all other animals do not deserve to be treated in a cruel way. These kids set up a page on Facebook called animal befrienders coalition. We should prevent animals from getting harmed or ill-treated.
We all know that Rinpoche always carry dog and cat food in the car to feed stray dogs and cats.
Please share the awareness of animal abuse and like animal befrienders coalition Facebook page.
These kids are doing a great job to spread awareness about animals – and it is also wonderful that they are vegetarian because of this care for animals, which is a quality strongly advocated by Rinpoche. Rinpoche is always very kind to find skilful methods to nurture people to be better and benefit others at the same time. Thank you to ABC for showing all of us a good example of dedication and love. Well done for raising funds for animal care and keep up the good work!
Rinpoche believes in starting kids young with the quality we would like them to embody. Responsibility, love, kindness and compassion for beings who have less defense systems than ourselves.
ABC has gone quite some miles with their promotion against animal cruelty. You guys should keep it up!
There are so many things wonderful about ABC. It is not only about a group of young people wanting to use their lives to do good things, it is also about a group of adults who not only impart mere information about the importance of having good values to the children but also give them the support, encouragement and infrastructure to nurture their kindness.
To me this is a long-term and well thought out strategy to fight animal abuse i.e. by going upstream to get young people involved so that they can influence and show their peers through example. And from the looks of it the young ones are loving every minute of their work in ABC.
Nice to see these young kids growing up with a meaning to their life. Children these days are usually pampered and exceptionally playful. But not these Kechara kids for sure.
These kids are taking leadership to be the voice for the poor abused animals out there. They not only care for the animals but also take a step further to raise funds for projects concerning these poor animals. So please do support them!
Thank you Julien, Sean, Beatrix, Lucas and Edward for being a good example to everyone!
Very nice kids. This group of young Kecharian is really amazing.Thank you for sharing about ABC on Rinpoche’s blog.
Dear Rinpoche. Thank You for encouraging us to create an animal rights group. I’m so proud to be part of the team! Rinpoche’s compassion towards others has inspired us to do more. We are so happy that we were able to raise some funds on the night itself, everyone was so helpful and generous. We passed Pastor Susan some of the money we raised on that night to neuter the doggies in KFR, and also we will be sponsoring 5 bags of dog food to the animal shelter that we will be going to wash the doggies.
We will be consistent on our work/ page and will never let it stop working.
Thank You for sharing Rinpoche.
Love, beatrix.
Dear Rinpoche. Thank You for encouraging us to create an animal rights group. I’m so proud to be part of the team! Rinpoche’s compassion towards others has inspired us to do more. We are so happy that we were able to raise some funds on the night itself, everyone was so helpful and generous. We passed Pastor Susan some of the money we raised on that night to neuter the doggies in KFR, and also we will be sponsoring 5 bags of dog food to the animal shelter that we will be going to wash the doggies.
We will be consistent on our work/page and will never let it stop working.
Thank You for sharing Rinpoche.
Love, beatrix.
Thank you for sharing about ABC on Rinpoche’s blog. I do my best and more with my team at ABC. I thank the generous sponsors from Jeunesse and lovely Ms. Marianne for donating her earrings to be auctioned. ABC will continue to grow and benefit many more animals 😉
Congratulations Sean Wang and Beatrix Ooi. Fantastic work of organizing this amazing soiree. You are all growing up just fine and doing great work with ABC. The Dharma work you are doing is making you guys grow up faster and you will be great adults and fantastic additions to Kechara.
As you grow, you guys will notice things that you hadn’t noticed before and you will start forming opinions about people and circumstances. Please do not let it affect your Dharma practice. Always remain strong and yet inoffensive about it. Please do remember this. In the end, never forget the kindness of Rinpoche and your parents. Cherish what you have now and make you own adult decisions and most importantly, do not place the blame on any body.
Is good to learn about CARE during young age, proud of Beatrix,Sean, Julien, Edward and Lucas. Thanks to Rinpoche always gave a guiding to us.
Support them in FB fan page – https://www.facebook.com/AnimalBefriendersCoalition
Regards : Eric kksiow
Very nice kids… This group of young Kecharian is really amazing… Can you imagine while most the kids who are in the same age group are spending time on games, computers, comics, toys, but ABC is raising fund for others now, what a great memory while growing up…
This group of five still play like normal kids, but at the same time they are promoting animal right to protect animals that can’t protect themselves…
They spend a lot of time on searching youtube clips, information to create awareness of animal cruelty, vegetarianism and etc. No one force them to do this but they wanted to do it because they feel the pain when animal are torture or hurt.
Let’s support them by sharing this post to many, and let’s bring your kids to join this wonderful job on earth…
Click here for more:
https://www.facebook.com/josh.b.ho.7?cropsuccess&success=1#!/AnimalBefriendersCoalition