ALTRUISTIC ACTS

HELPING THOSE IN NEED IS SECOND NATURE TO DR JEZAMINE LIM ISKANDER. THE PASSIONATE PHILANTHROPIST, ANALYTICAL DOCTOR, LOVING WIFE AND DOTING MOTHER SITS DOWN WITH FLOREY D MIKIL TO DIVULGE EXACTLY HOW SHE MANAGES TO JUGGLE HER MANY HATS

“EVERY TIME WE GO ON THE GROUND, IT’S A LEARNING JOURNEY FOR US.”

A heart of gold is just what the doctor ordered when the nation finds itself upended by the pandemic and, most recently, the worst floods to hit Malaysia in decades. “We were wondering if it was really happening. We knew that it had been raining for two days but we weren’t sure if it was real or not,” Dr Jezamine Lim Iskander tells us, recounting the harrowing early days of the recent floods and how her own non-governmental organisation (NGO) actively aided the flood victims.

The Hope Branch, the NGO she and her husband Harith Iskander founded in 2020, was inundated with calls for help one fateful evening as more people found themselves stranded due to the rising waters. “When this was happening, Harith was on his corporate show and I was with our children, and I left for work after they slept,” she begins sharing her own close encounter with the flooding. “After Harith finished work at about 11pm, we got into our car and as the water was rising in KL, we got stuck in the middle of the city.”

By a stroke of luck, or perhaps it was fated, their car stalled in front of a condominium whose foreign residents their NGO had helped during the first Movement Control Order (MCO). Upon recognising the husband and wife, the residents – “30 to 40 of them,” she recalls – immediately joined hands to help. “Because we helped them before. We brought them food when they couldn’t go out, as the area was a red zone. So, they helped us to push our car, gave us towels. These were the people that we once helped and today they’re helping us.”