Food From the Heart

Mia and I volunteered on Saturday morning, packaging and delivering bags of food for a Singaporean charity called Food From the Heart.  I volunteered here last month with a group of women from the American Women's Association and really fell in love with the charity and its purpose.  FFTH collects donated food and distributes it to needy families and children.  I was excited when the opportunity arose to deliver the bags of food to local residents and that I could bring Mia along!!

Poverty and hunger are not seen in Singapore.  It's illegal to be homeless, beg on the streets, etc, so it is never in your face.  Here, the poor are quite invisible.  So while Singapore as a country is extremely wealthy, having the highest percentage of millionaires in the world (1 in 6), like anywhere, there are people who are in need.  Singapore has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, so many of the poor are employed, but just can't make ends meet in this expensive city.

We delivered our food bags to a cluster of 1 room HDB rental flats out in the burbs.  85% of Singaporeans live in HDB's, which are government subsidized, high-rise, public housing flats, which are a huge part of the culture here...

HDB's came to life after WWII as an answer to the housing shortage and slums that were prevalent here.  Building low-cost HDB high-rises was the government answer to the housing problems.  They then started offering 5-year rent-to-own type of schemes and it caught on like wildfire.

Now, there are millions of HDB flats and 75% of Singaporeans own their own HDB flats outright!  The HDB's are really communities within communities, with grocery stores, banks, schools, etc, located within the high-rise clusters.  Even the super wealthy Singaporeans often chose to live in HDB's.  Many own multi-million dollar condos like mine, but rent them out and live in an HDB.

There are low-end HDB's (1 room rentals) and high-end multi-million dollar HDB flats.  The complexes are usually intermixed, as to not create any "bad" neighborhoods or any economic or social unrest.  You can have a 1-room rental building in the same cluster as a 5-room, million dollar building.  This is why when asked where the "bad" neighborhoods are in Singapore, the answer is that there are none!!  You would never know that these not-so-nice rental flats were behind the walls of a complex which looks like any other HDB complex you'd see in even the swankiest parts of the city.  But, I guess that is the point :)

We delivered to a diverse group of folks, Chinese, Malay, Indian, some elderly, some with children, some were disabled.  There were lots of interesting sights and smells!

I think the last person the residents thought they would see knocking on their door was a 5-year-old blonde girl, so Mia got some big smiles and head pats ;)  It was good for her to see a different side of Singapore, one in which not everyone goes to private school and jet sets on the weekends :) and to give back to this city that we now call home!

AWA ladies hard at work last month packaging up 300 bags of food (everything from ramen, to sardines, to mushrooms, rice, oatmeal, biscuits, cooking oil, etc)

Mia, hard at work bagging food!

Knocking on doors, delivering food

The volunteers!