Long before he was in the business of feeding people, Adrian Ang was a hungry teenager, in more ways than one.
It was 1997 and he was 16, when the Asian financial crisis was ravaging his parents’ business.
Now 37, and the founder of a successful restaurant franchise, Stuff’d, he is committing his company to helping children who experience hunger just like he did.
In April 2019, he and a team of four staff members at Stuff’d launched the Free Food For Kids campaign at their Northpoint City Yishun outlet. The initiative provides one free meal a day to children in need.
It has since expanded to a few other outlets, feeding more than 140 children under the age of 14. Beneficiaries can claim their free meal any time they want. They just have to present a physical card mailed to them, and choose any menu item they want.
The team also tries to help those who are in short-term financial difficulty.
One of the beneficiary that Stuff’d helped was 12-year-old Muhammad Sufi. On schooldays, he gets two free meals a day under the Ministry of Education’s Financial Assistance Scheme. But during the holidays, his mother – who works as a cleaner earning $600 a month – can only afford to give Sufi and his three siblings $10 a day in total to spend on food.
His social worker introduced the “Free Food For Kids” initiative to him, and he was happy. To Safi, a meal from Stuff’d isn’t just something to fill his stomach. He enjoys the variety he can choose from, which includes fresh vegetables and meat.
Chin Zheng, 28, who is part of part of the programme team, said that seeing children like Sufi eat bigger and healthier meals is “humbling and heartwarming”, and this project has opened his eyes to their plight. He also spoke of heart-tugging phone conversations with the beneficiaries, their teachers and social workers, when they were assessing applications.
The team’s hope is to expand Free Food For Kids to more locations so that it is accessible to more children.
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Source: The Straits Times, 9 November 2019