KOTA KINABALU: Happy Family Home Malaysia (HFHM), an NGO assisting the underprivileged to own a decent house, met their target of building three such homes this year.

According to Halidah Guntarak, the admin officer of HFHM, the recipients were Saiful Adli bin Alias of Kg Penampang Baru Tuaran as well as Fernandez Justine and Richelle Audry Juatin, both from Kg Kitobu, Inanam.

They are targeting single mothers, families with many children and those who have no other source to get any assistance as part of the criteria to be the recipients under HFHM.

She said more application for houses would be realised in the following year and, therefore, they are in need of more volunteers in realising the projects for the underprivileged.

HFHM National President George Chong said living in a conducive environment is important for the well-being of the people.

Therefore, it is crucial to building at least a simple house with basic facilities as long as the dwellers can live comfortably.

He said apart from building houses for the underprivileged, HFHM is also looking at cases where existing houses need repairing.

They had a joint effort recently with other contractors to repair and restore some parts of Rosalia Paulus' house in the low-cost housing in Menggatal. Rosalia is the widow highlighted by Daily Express in early October.

Today, she received some assistance from HFHM to paint the whole house and fixed some parts of her house. The paintings were sponsored by one James Ng of Kosai Paint company. Other help came from one, William Chee, a contractor who helped fixed her roof. It was just completed over the weekend.

The volunteers who came to assist in painting and renovate Rosalia's house were former beauty queens (Unduk Ngadaus) of the recent Harvest festival and other technical college trainees.

Reigning queen Kerinah Mah shared her joy in volunteering to paint. She said doing charity work is part of her job and it gave her experience and expanding her social network while doing a good cause.

"To be a beauty queen is not just cat walking and smiling at people. It is all about giving what we can to society. "For me, I am willing to be here to help this family to do the painting work. It is fun. I have other Unduk Ngadau friends with me from other districts like Tongod and Membakut. We are painters for today," she said, laughing.

George said: "This is part of our CSR giving back to the society. This case caught my attention (Rosalia's case) so we gathered a few others contractors who were willing to chip in their services for the sake of Rosalia and her two young children."

George hoped that more locals can come forward to share their expertise, especially in house building skills to be volunteers for their future projects. The information about HFHM can be found on the website.