Stories from the Ground: How COVID-19 Disrupts Lives

During the Circuit Breaker, many lower income families have faced huge disruptions to their livelihoods. Many parents work in jobs such as retail, cleaning services and taxi/private-hire drivers, industries which have suffered hits in this period. With many having reduced working hours, or even being put on unpaid leave, it is unsurprising that they are worried about being able to make ends meet.

Many kids from these families are part of our community, and over the past one month, we have been continuously engaging and finding out how these families have been affected by the pandemic.

One family in particular have been resorting to begging for just-expired food and drinks from the convenience store that are being thrown out. As both parents have been struggling with medical conditions, they were only able to do odd jobs, which they are unable to do during the Circuit Breaker. Even with financial aid, they struggle with obtaining enough basic necessities for themselves and their son.

Another family, which consists of both parents and 5 kids (with 1 more on the way as the mother is pregnant), are struggling to get by. As the sole breadwinner, the father works as a stagehand for MediaCorp, but his work is now reduced to a couple days each week as most filming has been put on hold. Their application to renew their financial assistance has been delayed for over a month, causing much distress to both parents.

Together, We Can Help Feed the Hearts and Tummies of Underdogs

It is heart-wrenching for us when we speak to our families and discover the ordeals they are facing in this period of time. To help alleviate the burden on these families, Glyph has been distributing food to our families living in rental flats around the Bukit Merah area. With the support of generous food retailers who kindly agreed to help sponsor meals for these kids, our team has been working hard, running around under the sun and going from block to block twice a day to deliver sumptuous meals.

While we are grateful for the support of these food retailers, we would also hope to expand the initiative to reach out to more of our families in other estates. At the same time, we understand that F&B businesses are also struggling. Hence if we were to instead support these local businesses and pay for the meals (at a reasonable price), more retailers would be interested to come on board. In this way, we would be able to help more families, and at the same time help maintain the operations of retailers who are interested to do good.  

The meals will be acquired for SGD 7/meal. Our goal of SGD 35,000 will be able to provide 5000 meals in total, feeding the families (200 people in total) for 2 weeks.

Feature article about food distribution: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/social-enterprise-eateries-team-up-to-deliver-free-meals-in-bukit-merah

Facebook post about food distribution: https://www.facebook.com/glyph.asia/posts/2695598257327942

About Glyph

Glyph is a membership programme making premier holistic education accessible and affordable, to kids and youths from challenging communities.

What keeps us busy are weekly organization of activities, workshops and programmes which are non-academic in nature, designed to foster critical thinking capabilities and build creative capacities.

Our work is focused on equipping our community with future-ready skill sets, general knowledge and life skills, as well as personal qualities which will help these young budding world-changers, get out there and succeed in their endeavours.

Above all, we stick true to our mission to cultivate Social & Cultural capital through exposure to empower social mobility for the masses, and the communities who need it the most.

To the unknowing public, Glyph might just be another event organizer, however to our members we want to stand for something in their lives and all their endeavours.

Thus far, we have touched the lives of over 1200 kids and we are not stopping there. We are also very fortunate to be endorsed and even supported by Ministers like Desmond Lee, Grace Fu, Low Yen Ling, and Sam Tan, as well as our exchange with President Halimah Yacob, where we were one of the finalists for the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Awards 2019.

About Glyph: https://www.facebook.com/glyph.asia/

Endorsements:

Desmond Lee – https://www.facebook.com/desmondtslee/posts/3986508071360105

Low Yen Ling – https://www.facebook.com/pg/yllow/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2608209215895454

Sam Tan – https://www.facebook.com/tanchinsiong.sam/posts/2310217595708998

Grace Fu- https://www.facebook.com/pg/glyph.asia/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2287236688164103

FAQ

All donations to this fund will go towards obtaining meals for the kids (including delivery fees).

Meals obtained for the kids are halal certified. An example of a F&B partner that we are working with for this initiative include Big Fish Small Fish.

About Ray of Hope

100% of your donations through Ray of Hope goes to people in need. We do not take a cut from the funds. We even cover the 3rd party credit card charges, if you choose not to, that other crowdfunding platforms deduct from your donation for campaigns.

100% of all campaigns are also fully verified, so you know your funds goes to real people with real needs.

We take donor accountability very seriously – with yearly audited accounts and strong governance in place to ensure that your donations is properly channeled to the beneficiaries.

Ray of Hope is a registered charity and a member of the National Council of Social Services.