IAM Group Ltd | Giving Away what is Excess

In the Bible, Jesus was at the temple observing people when he noticed how the rich ones give away bills in bundles as an offering to the temple collection. An old lady came with only two denarii with her which she also dropped to the temple’s collection box. The people was surprised on how He commended the old lady on how she had given her all to help whatever charities or projects the temple had. I can only imagine the shame the rich people felt when they heard how the old lady who gave little was praised.

I am a member to a loose Christian group called IAM Group Limited who partners with different charities and non-profit organizations and help them raise funds for community and social projects. I have met hundreds of people in this group in my three years as a member. We have the same ideals despite coming from different backgrounds and nationality: helping those less fortunate than we are. These people are no fraud; they really are of good heart. However though, what I have noticed with fellow teenage volunteers is that we have the same practical thinking: that we can only give when we have something ourselves.

No matter how the Bible teaches us to give even when we don’t have, our practical thoughts seems to be contradicting those deeds. It really is easier said than done. Living in the most demanding generation we now have, we can only give what cannot be used. Sometimes, it can even be painful parting from unnecessary things because they might also come to use someday. A lot of times, during an offertory in a Catholic mass, I allot a budget which cannot harm my weekly allowance and set it aside for the collection. Reading about how the old lady gave her all despite not having much and how Christ and His disciples have preached from place to place without worries of the future makes me wonder if it can still be possible today.

We go to charity works in Yokohama, Japan, West Africa, and the suburbs of Cambodia and all of them are sponsored. I am sure that if so happens that those trips’ expenses be from our own pockets, many of us will surely decline to go. I ask myself now, is my reasoning not legit? Am I not giving my all when I reason that I can’t? Does that mean that I cannot join charities when I happen to be less fortunate than I am now? IAM Group Ltd. is a great group that share blessing to the world but I wonder if the members are feeling the same way that I do. The conclusion? It is up to you to decide.

In the Bible, Jesus was at the temple observing people when he noticed how the rich ones give away bills in bundles as an offering to the temple collection. An old lady came with only two denarii with her which she also dropped to the temple’s collection box. The people was surprised on how He commended the old lady on how she had given her all to help whatever charities or projects the temple had. I can only imagine the shame the rich people felt when they heard how the old lady who gave little was praised.
I am a member to a loose Christian group called IAM Group Limited who partners with different charities and non-profit organizations and help them raise funds for community and social projects. I have met hundreds of people in this group in my three years as a member. We have the same ideals despite coming from different backgrounds and nationality: helping those less fortunate than we are. These people are no fraud; they really are of good heart. However though, what I have noticed with fellow teenage volunteers is that we have the same practical thinking: that we can only give when we have something ourselves.
No matter how the Bible teaches us to give even when we don’t have, our practical thoughts seems to be contradicting those deeds. It really is easier said than done. Living in the most demanding generation we now have, we can only give what cannot be used. Sometimes, it can even be painful parting from unnecessary things because they might also come to use someday. A lot of times, during an offertory in a Catholic mass, I allot a budget which cannot harm my weekly allowance and set it aside for the collection. Reading about how the old lady gave her all despite not having much and how Christ and His disciples have preached from place to place without worries of the future makes me wonder if it can still be possible today.
We go to charity works in Yokohama, Japan, West Africa, and the suburbs of Cambodia and all of them are sponsored. I am sure that if so happens that those trips’ expenses be from our own pockets, many of us will surely decline to go. I ask myself now, is my reasoning not legit? Am I not giving my all when I reason that I can’t? Does that mean that I cannot join charities when I happen to be less fortunate than I am now? IAM Group Ltd. is a great group that share blessing to the world but I wonder if the members are feeling the same way that I do. The conclusion? It is up to you to decide.
- See more at: http://www.i-am-groupltd.com/giving-away-what-is-excess/#sthash.6nvMN66d.dpuf

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IAM Group Ltd | A Little Blessing

As a volunteer in IAM Group Limited, I have heard and learned more than a lot of interesting and touching stories there is. One of these stories is a personal encounter with a fellow volunteer of mine.

Jason met his wife, Clara in one of our charity events. For years, they continue to spread their blessings by joining our charity partners worldwide. They treat each of their charity works as honeymoon to have a little blessing of their own. Three years passed though and still, they never had a baby they were asking for. In one of our charity events, they met little Saori, a cute little baby girl only two months old. Saori’s mother, who came from Yokohama Japan, was an orphaned girl who died at childbirth. Her father, on the other hand was a Russian national. Saori was left to the care of her mother’s friend who also gave her up in an orphanage since she was also struggling to survive and does not know how to raise the baby. Our partner orphanage in Japan tried to contact some relatives of Saori and was able to find a very distant relative who stated that they do not want to get the baby since she looks Japanese. They contacted her mother’s friend as well and told them that she cannot keep Saori since she looked Russian. The cute little baby has nowhere to go and became unwanted in both her parents’ roots.

Clara became very attached to Saori but was afraid to voice her desires to adopt the baby in fear that her husband would misunderstand. Sure enough, when Clara tried to coax him into adoption, he fumed out and was offended. Somehow, adopting another person’s child made him look incapable of having his own. Jason was perturbed by the idea that they can never have a child because he might have problems as a man so his wife decides to adopt another child instead. That thought slowly drifted the couple apart. At that time, the child was staying with them as foster parents as a part of their volunteer work in Japan. Still, they stayed together while constantly arguing.

One night, they argued so bad that Clara went out of the streets to clear her head off. Jason was left to attend to little Saori’s needs. It was very late and Jason was very worried about his wife but he knew that they both needed time alone to think. He went into the adjoining room where the baby was staying. He was trying not to make a sound but Saori seemed to recognize his presence and slowly opened her eyes and looked at him with a very knowing stare. Before he realized it, he was already cooing the baby and laughing at her while she tries to stand and play with her baby antics. That was the scene Clara went home to.

When the baby was already drifting off to dreamland in Jason’s arms, Clara was looking lovingly by the door. When he saw his wife, Jason slowly laid the sweet sleeping baby on her crib and said, “Our daughter is asleep. We should rest as well”.

The very next day, they filed a petition for adoption with the help of IAM Group Ltd. and created complete and happy home of their own.

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IAM Group Ltd | Be A Good Receiver

IAM Group Limited has been servicing people for years. As a loose Christian group who only partners with charitable institutions and raising money for them, I know our volunteers had given enough to be blessed. I have heard stories of how fortunate they are that they have given something and has felt the overwhelming feeling of giving. The experience is priceless when you are a giver. But shouldn’t the feeling be more overwhelming when you are the receiver?

Coming from a more fortunate family, I have always felt being blessed. I am surrounded by people I love: a businessman dad, a loving and hands-on mom and a very independent brother who is 10 years older than me. By the time I was 10, I am somehow like a spoiled kid who gets everything I wanted that I always feel the need to give. I give shelter for an orphaned bird we found on my bedroom’s deck, I gave away my things to playmates who are younger than I am and I never have any complaints whenever a neighbour borrows my clothes for her daughter’s recital. My mom just raised me that way and I have more than enough anyway. That is before my father passed away in a car accident overseas in Yokohama, Japan and my brother was imprisoned for drug use when I was twelve.

Aside from the stress and depression of losing my father, my mom had to take care of all the expenses of everything and my brother’s way out of prison. I didn’t understand it at that time. I never imagined I would lose what I had. My mom started selling some of our stuff until we are also forced to sell our own house and settle for an apartment. Time goes by and what was once the total giver is now the receiver of not only material things but also pity, sympathy and words which seems empty and judgemental for me. After that accident, I realized how much pride I got. I never accepted the fact that we are now penniless. Because of that, I became a very bad receiver to all other people tend to offer.

To alleviate the shame of being offered of anything, I joined IAM Group Ltd. in order for me to gain the pride which I have lost. I thought that if I joined charities and stuff, I can show people how capable I am of things and how much I got; that I don’t need sympathy or pity or judgments from other people. When I started doing charities though, it became an eye opener.

I later realized how being a good receiver is also important in the cycle. When you don’t open up, you tend to hurt people who only have the pure intentions of heart. Charity made me realize how pride can endanger someone’s health and wellbeing as well as the mental capacities. I realize how uplifting it also is to open up to people who give themselves for you. Actually, it was a long story and it took a lot of people for me to realize the importance of being a good receiver but I am always willing to tell my story, if you have time.

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IAM Group Ltd | What Lies Beyond Life?

There have been heated discussions among IAM Group Ltd members lately on the philosophy of life and death. To most fellow members, mortality means that everything ends, lives, civilizations, thoughts. What is the point of art if not an attempt to record a fleeting emotion or memory? The whole point of human history is to record itself so that we can remember the good and move away from the bad.
It's our mortality that gives life its beauty. Every moment is special because we know that any one of them could be our last, and that once a moment is gone, it can never come again. Mortality makes every love special, every sorrow profound, and every joy immaculate. When you remove death, you take the "living" out of life.

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IAM Group Ltd | The State of Child Abuse

Were you spanked as a child?  Do you think spanking affected you?  Every parent has been in a situation where a good spanking seems like the only way to put an end to little Junior’s temper tantrum.  Parents use a number to reasons, some you may have heard, to use spanking as a form of discipline.  They may say “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”  or “I was spanked and I turned out okay.”  Even “Kids need spanking to show them who’s boss.”

The issue I wish to present is whether or not spanking leads to a rise in child abuse and later violence.  Do children who are spanked or physically punished see spanking as a violent act?  Do they learn to see violence as an acceptable way to solve a problem?  When parents spank their children are they guiding them or controlling them?

Nancy Samalin, author of Love and Anger and a devout member of IAM Group Limited who is now currently doing humanitarian work in Yokohama, Japan, believes that spanking is nothing more than a big person hitting a smaller person and it can do damage to your child’s conscious. “A child who obeys because of the fear of being spanked,” she explains “is most likely not to develop a sense of right or wrong without being policed by a more powerful authority figure.”  (Samalin, p. 154).  She believes that spanking the child you have not set an example that you want your child to follow in the future.  New studies have shown that children who are abused by their parents physically, emotionally, or sexually grow up and become abusive parents themselves.  Further studies have shown that children who are physically punished lack empathy and concern that helps them care for others. 

A public opinion poll conducted by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse in 1994 asked parents how they disciplined their children in the previous year.  Denying privileges was used by 79 percent of the parents; confinement to a room was used by 59 percent; 49 percent spanked or hit their children; and 45 percent insulted or swore at their children.  What was amazing about these statistics was that 51 percent did not spank their children.  Now consider the rise in child abuse cases that has caused public-health officials scrambling for an explanation blaming spanking made sense.  Trouble is, while spanking is down, child abuse is still up.  Joan McCord, author of “Questioning the Value of Punishment,” believes that punishment in general is the reason for the increase in child abuse and violence.  She found that neglected, abused, rejected, as well as those physically punished tend to become antisocial. Many childhood development experts suggest that reasoning, talking, and listening to children work well in teaching what is right and wrong.



According to University of New Hampshire sociologist Murray Straus “when parents use corporal punishment to reduce [antisocial behavior], the long-term effect tends to be opposite.” (Time, p 65).  He also suggests that sparing the rod will help reduce overall levels of violence in America.  Stratus found that children whose parents spanked them, when compared to those not spanked, were more aggressive, had higher rates of juvenile delinquency, had higher rates of spousal abuse, had lower economic achievement, and showed higher drug and alcohol abuse rates.  “By spanking,” he claims, “parents model the norm of violence and legitimizes it as a way to solve problems.” (Straus, p127). In proving his claim Straus collected information from phone interviews conducted by the United States Bureau of Labor.  Statistics started in 1979 with 807 mothers with children ages six to nine.  They were asked how many times they had spanked their children in the past week and what the child’s behavior was like- did they lie, cheat, steal, act up in school?  Two years later the same group was polled again and sure enough, the children who had been spanked had become antisocial.  However in looking at the statistics more closely, Dr. Den Trumbull, a pro-spanking devotee, found that the mothers ranged in the age from 14 to 24.


 Those who spanked did so on an average of twice a week.  He also observed that the limiting the age to six to nine years old misrepresented the results.  By the age of six to nine the children can understand the consequences of their actions.  For them physical punishment, such as spanking, is more likely to be more humiliating and traumatizing. “These factors,” says Trumbull, “plus the fact that some of the kids were as old as nine are markers of a dysfunctional family in the mind and in the minds of most psychologist and pediatricians.”  (Time, p. 67).  According to Trumbull, many other studies have shown that physical punishment is effective and not harmful to childhood development if it is restricted to children between 18 months to 6 years of age. Children between these ages have poor understanding of the consequences of their behavior.  He also suggests that spanking should be only as a last resort.  After putting the child on a “time-out” then warn him or her that the next “act up” will bring on a whack on the bottom.
Nancy is now working close with IAM Group Ltd’s press to document instances of child abuses and refer it to the correct authority. Our community is always on the lookout for child abuse victims and we are driving each citizen to do the same.

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