Charities and social enterprises here are striving to keep helping the needy amid the COVID-19 crisis by adapting their services to comply with the circuit breaker restrictions and cope with dwindling volunteer numbers.
But they warn that some low-income families may fall through the cracks since certain services can no longer operate for now.
One social enterprise, Dignity Kitchen, has been hard-pressed to keep its 58 physically or intellectually disabled staff employed at its Serangoon food court with seven stalls since the circuit breaker started on 7 April.
Founder Koh Seng Choon said that with walk-in customers to Dignity Kitchen’s food court dropping to zero, he has deployed the stallholders to cook 500 meals a day for nursing homes and migrant workers.
Project Dignity’s hawker training business, Dignity Learn, has shut down for now, and Mr Koh is using those training staff as delivery drivers. While Dignity Kitchen has received sponsorships from several individuals and Deutsche Bank, Mr Koh said that it is still losing a significant sum.
“I can’t make money. All I can do is keep my staff employed,” he said. Any profits would usually be ploughed back into the social enterprise.
Social enterprises and non-profit organisations like Project Dignity face other challenges in addition to the movement restrictions of the circuit breaker period: Volunteer pools they used to rely on are dwindling and some partner organisations are dropping out of their programmes.
Ms Sim Bee Hia, the chief executive officer of Food from the Heart, said that after the food charity saw 30% of its partnering distribution centres shut down after the circuit breaker period started. It is collaborating with courier service uParcel to make door-to-door deliveries to some 1,000 lower-income households.
Ms Sim said that Food from the Heart’s volunteer sources have also changed. It used to rely largely on volunteer teams from schools, corporations or non-government organisations (NGOs) for its food packing operations, but that source of manpower has dwindled.
In their place, more individual volunteers have stepped up to serve, she said.
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Source: TODAYOnline, 19 April 2020