Singapore is a more economically developed country, yet there is still a significant number of people suffering from hidden poverty. Singapore has a large income disparity, having a GINI coefficient of 0.375 in 2020. While I typically choose to focus on environmental issues, I chose to focus on the topic of hidden poverty for my community project as I have seen firsthand how people suffer from relative poverty here in Singapore, and wanted to find ways to help. While researching one of the ways I found that I could help was by volunteering at Willing Hearts, which meant that I would be indirectly supporting those in relative poverty.
UWCSEA and Willing Hearts have worked together for some time, with students from my school going to the Willing Hearts site to help with food preparation. My siblings had also previously helped out at the site and this is how I found out about Willing Hearts and what they do, and I decided to give my time to them to help prepare food for their beneficiaries.
Willing Hearts is a non-profit organisation that works to deliver daily meals around Singapore to its beneficiaries, combatting the hidden poverty that is prevalent in Singapore. It started in 2003 by Tony Tay, and over time has grown into a well-recognised charity, and recently moved to a new site in order to accommodate the number of meals they send out a day. Their beneficiaries include the elderly poor, disabled, low-income families, children from single-parent families or otherwise poverty-stricken families, and migrant workers in Singapore. They also provide other services such medical care and legal aid. While not a permanent solution to the poverty problem, providing nutritious food to these groups of people can help to prevent future health problems and help people obtain enough energy to work for the day.
Throughout my time there, I learnt they distribute up 15,000 meals a day, and that the number of meals needed significantly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They regularly have volunteers that come down to help out, some on a more regular basis. I learnt about how important a volunteer’s role in the kitchen is when they show up, to deliver enough food daily to those who need it.
The Willing Hearts Kitchen, while highly organised, is also a space where there can be no specific leader at times. This allowed me to develop leadership opportunities in speaking up to help others who did not understand what was happening and help them to learn how to do certain jobs required. While this leadership was not largely impactful to the greater Willing Hearts community, it did help to keep the workflow going until the work was done at the end of the day, so that enough meals could be distributed the next day, continuing to help those in need.
On the 4th day.