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A DIFFERENT GROUP
The jump in cases seeking aid notwithstanding, the profiles of people needing help have expanded.
In its outreach work, the team at The Food Bank has seen about 500 cases where the beneficiaries live in either five-room flats in public housing estates, condominiums, or even landed properties. This group makes up about 10 per cent of all the cases that have reached out to the non-profit for food rations.
In comparison, there were just two such cases last year that fit this profile.
Ms Nichol Ng, co-founder of The Food Bank, said: “It might be the elderly who have not worked for a few years, or maybe those running sole proprietorships,” she said.
A similar trend was observed by Food from the Heart. Ms Sim, who calls these cases the “new poor”, said that she encountered a case of a young couple in their late 20s or early 30s that had spent all their savings renovating their new Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat before the Covid-19 outbreak.
When the public health crisis intensified, the husband lost his job while the wife had her pay cut, and the couple was not able to afford their meals when their savings dried up.
“These are people who managed to get by in the past, day to day… and then now, they totally lost their income,” Ms Sim said. “These are the group of people who would not know where to go for help.”
SHORTAGE OF VOLUNTEERS
At a time when charities have been facing a drop in monetary donations, both food charities said that these and donations of non-perishables have gone up for them, and this has helped them to cope with the surge in demand for aid.
Food from the Heart said that this increase is partly because there was more awareness on social media, for example, of the plight of the needy during this period.
Retail outlets and food-and-beverage outlets also donated their excess goods, The Food Bank said.
However, the struggle is in finding volunteers to sort and distribute the items.
They could no longer depend on students or some employees from private companies, since Covid-19 restrictions prevented most people from volunteering with them.
Ms Sim said that those from the civil service and members of the public stepped in to help in the food distribution efforts in the absence of the usual community of volunteers.
With the increase in donations, Food from the Heart was also able to hire a delivery service to help in distribution efforts.
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/singapo...younger-couples-and-private-property-dwellers
