We pushed the penguin over the ice, and I finally saw the boy laugh, for the first time in the 3 months I had met him.
As a young boy, he had gone through traumatic experiences. One of them involved his father pulling his hand close to a boiling kettle, after he’d lost his EZ Link Card. You’d wince. But it’s commonplace for many of these children who regularly face difficult parents who stare them down.
Another child was pinned against the wall, and strangled, after she’d done yet another thing to displease her father. Eventually, the abuse reached the mother. She was slapped, and that was the last straw. She took her children and slept near the void deck, at the playground for 2 nights. As a Permanent Resident, she didn’t know where else she could take them.
Yes, money is still important, but there are also other ways
And you too, without working on the ground, may not know where best to donate, so your giving makes the most impact. Most charities ask for money. But there are also other ways to give that might bring more warmth, and help you have a little more heart.
Over the years, Singapore has sometimes been said to lose its kampung spirit, where people come together to help the community. But there are still bright pockets where there are innovative, ground up initiatives, plugging the gaps.
Why give? Look at what’s helped you in the past.
But of course, in an economy like this, you might ask some basic questions. Like:
Why give?
Beyond the intangible ‘feel-good’ factor, is there really anything that benefits us?
When I first started with ex-offenders, I also wondered if there was any helpful reason to give to them. After all, some of them seemed at fault for their substance abuse.
Yet after a while, I realised that the safety we enjoyed in Singapore had been because of the constant rehabilitative work of places like this halfway house. Without them, the ex-offenders would fall into the trap of using more drugs, needing more money to fuel the drug habit, and possibly pushing drugs on our streets to raise money.
This is not a far off scenario. One only needs to look at the 2025 incidents around vaping to realise that substance abuse was now affecting our young, severely, and it was being pushed by vape abusers themselves.
This mattered for me because I didn’t want the next generation to be involved in drugs, and to lose their potential. But you’d have to find your own ‘why.’
Adhoc, or longer-term?
But one of the first questions to ask is whether you’d like to do it ad-hoc, or longer-term. One of the first things we tell volunteers is to start small. We know you’d like to make an impact. But often, this impact can start small. But even if you don’t quite know how to start, you can start by going to the Volunteer SG website, and slowly growing your involvement from there.
Where is the need?
But often times, whilst we know that it may be easier to work with children and the elderly, there are many unmet needs that also need your help.
If you see above, much of the giving is now around children and the elderly, with only 1% going to causes like migrant workers, and ex-offenders. We can do much more to give to this sector, because they are people who need help too.
Here are some of the best.
Befriend them, and bring them out for some social activities
I asked him what he was going to do on his only day off on Sunday, and he hesitated. He didn’t have plans and asked me if I had anything planned. So I brought him to the indie cinema, Filmhouse, where we watched the top-grossing Italian movie of 2025. As he walked in, he remarked,
wow, I’ve not been to a cinema for years!
As he sat there, and laughed to the humor in the movie, one could see that he was enjoying himself. And what pains me, is that this is often the thing they’ve lacked growing up.
It is why he ended up hanging out with negative influences, and using substances to fit in.
We’ve all faced this loneliness. Stare down the barrel of a 322pm on a Saturday afternoon, lying in bed, and you’d be quickly faced with the pang of loneliness, making you feel like you aren’t able.
Many of these residents, come into our programme at The Helping Hand wanting lasting change, but they end up not having it because they don’t have better activities in store for them.
Over the months, we’ve seen more volunteers slowly come through to do befriending activities. One volunteer, Paul (not his real name), has been faithfully meeting them weekly, buying McDonald’s, bringing them out for walks, just to minister to them. And such is the beauty of true relationship. It builds a genuine desire for them to realise that they don’t have to turn back to substances to find belonging.
So if you have time, why not build some belonging by talking to us at The Helping Hand?
Give a birthday cake?
Belonging to a family that might be lower-income is not easy. You often don’t enjoy the things you’d take for granted like birthday celebrations.
I remember the time I got a client a cake. Never mind that it was late. It was still a cake. And I could immediately see his eyes soften. In these low-income families, where money is often spent on necessities, a cake can be the furthest thing one can buy. And that’s why it’s so vital that we take the effort to intentionally celebrate this.
Why not try donating a cake to A Cake for a Child? They’ve been organising regular birthday celebrations for those in need.
Refurbish laptops together with Engineering Good?
One of the most impactful charities I’ve seen is Engineering Good, which collects decommissioned laptops from big companies, and gives them to families who need them the most. That’s why their work matters so much. Because at the end of the day, you don’t want to just give them a fish. You want to teach them to fish.
We’ve seen countless clients benefit from being able to study with the laptops, and you can help them too!
The other part of their work is training students to become better ‘tinkerers’, or innovators. They run regular hackathons to build accessible devices for those with disabilities.
They are always on a lookout for trained tinkerers, preferably people who know circuits, and computers, to teach students how to refurbish laptops and also build better items. Go join them!
Donate groceries or second-hand items through Pass It On
Beyond celebrating their birthdays, there are also more regular ways to help by donating groceries. By going to Pass It On, which aggregates requests from different donors, you can give to where the need is the greatest.
As a social worker in the FSC, I regularly saw clients who struggled with the most basic needs like milk powder and diapers, which would add up to hundreds. For a family earning $2000 a month, this would have been nigh impossible.
Often, household appliances are a problem. I once recall going into a client’s home, and asking why they didn’t cook. The 13-year-old boy brought me to his fridge, and said,
open it.
When I opened it, the fridge was dark, and stank. They could not afford a new fridge and had to make do with something that wasn’t working well.
If you’re getting a new fridge, or washing machine, you can always donate your older one to us.
That’s why you can always help through Pass It On.
Fund other needs through Kampung Spirit?
Another innovative crowdfunding platform has been Kampung Spirit, built by Open Government Products. They rightly found out that many families needed something new, like a new phone. They put together the requests, and tada! They came through.
Provide caregiving to children with Caring.sg?
In many low income families, parents are dealing with a lot of stress. But they also have kids they need to manage. But sometimes, because of poor family support, they aren’t able to drop off their kids with kind grandparents or aunties. As a result, they need to take time off just to provide help.
If you’ve more time on your hands, why not volunteer to help? Taking care of kids might be a handful, but you can go to Caring.sg and see how you can help.
Organise outings with MINDS Youth Group with those who have intellectual disabilities
What led me to social work was MINDS Youth Group, which taught me to be inclusive and accepting of differences. One formative experience was when I was a stressed JC student, trying desperately to get an A. That Sunday, I was helping a 30 year old man. He could speak English and Chinese, and looked just like you and me.
But that afternoon, as we were drawing a Mother’s Day card, he said,
I don’t know how to do this!
That was when I realised that in my chase for the As in my life, I had forgotten what a privilege it was even to chase.
Some of my best memories came:
- Organising the camps
- Having outings
- Visiting the families during Chinese New Year, where we got the chance to hear how each child was doing.
Bond with migrant workers, through Healthserve
One of the best ways to give is to one of the most marginalized groups – foreign workers. If you look at how hard they work, and the spaces that are afforded to them, it is a miracle that they’re still able to push and give their best daily.
If your heart goes out to this community, then go forth and help them.
One recent event I attended was their 20th Year Anniversary, where they had a soccer tournament with migrant workers. They put on a great performance, but more importantly, bonded with locals over a game of soccer.
Give where there’s need
Often, in an economy like this, we are tempted to batten down the hatches, and slowly see how to ride out the storm. What we’re trying to say here is,
yes, you need to care for yourself.
But there’s also a need to build up our community, so there can be a common wealth that is shared with all. Why?
I once heard this great insight by Lim Siong Guan, the former Head of Civil Service. I’d asked him why we focused so much on social compact. His reply?
If you look at the great empires of the world, they have always fallen apart because of infighting.
When we’re willing our whole Singapore, you’d be surprised at what can happen.