Fowarding for a Friend

Hello everyone!

My friends and I are organizing a gift-bag distribution drive to some of the low-income households living at the constituencies of Kreta Ayer and Kim-Seng this holiday season.

We decided to focus our resources and energies on these two areas as we were told that a large portion of the lowest income groups in Singapore reside there. For example, there are 300 recipients of the Public Assistance (PA) allowance of $290 per month residing in those two constituencies. Officially, a person only qualifies for the PA cash grant if they have no kin nor any other means to support themselves due to age, illness or disability. However, as you can probably imagine, surviving on such a small sum of money, particularly for such people, is extremely difficult, especially with the rapidly increasing cost of living.

We sincerely hope to spread some of the festive cheer to these lonely and often forgotten members of our community. This is why we have decided to allocate one day to visiting some of these people at their homes and giving them a gift bag in the spirit of the festive season.

We have been liaising with the key grassroots members and volunteers at both constituencies. They have been incredibly receptive to and supportive of our initiative. They have provided us with a list of the most needy households so as to ensure that our limited resources go to the most needy.

To fund this drive, we aim to raise a minimum amount of $1,500 to buy the items for the gift bags. We would sincerely be grateful for any assistance you can provide to help us reach this target. If we raise more than we need, that’ll be fantastic, because we can then distribute the leftover funds as cash ang pows. In-kind donations would be greatly welcome as well. The items that will be included in the gift bag are mainly basic food items and necessities like biscuits, Milo, canned food, soap, towels and medicated oil.

Also, if you would like to join us in this good cause, we will be more than happy to have more help in (a) buying the gift items (b) packing them and (c) conducting the visits on the actual day. We will be conducting our visit on the 29th December 2007 (Saturday), from 930am to 630 pm. e are hoping to work in teams of 4s or 5s to cover 150 households, allowing us to spend at least 15 minutes at each home interacting with the residents. We believe it’s more meaningful to spend at least some time at each home, rather than rushing through the gift bag distribution process. It would be fabulous to have as many volunteers as possible, as that simply means there’ll be more teams to go around, which will enable each group to spend more time at each home before moving on. If you are a driver with a vehicle at your disposal, you can also assist in the transport of volunteers and gift bags.

For Cash donations please contact Kok Wai at honkokwai@gmail.com or 91847712
For In-Kind donations please contact Amit at ajain80sg@yahoo.com or 96483544
For General Enquiries and anyone keen in volunteering, please contact Joyce at elppaneerg@hotmail.com or 91110949