Food from the heartlands

In the Mount­bat­ten area every Sat­ur­day morn­ing, res­i­dents and oth­ers liv­ing out­side the area drop off food dona­tions for the elderly and dis­abled homes.

By ELEANOR YAP

A shel­tered area which sits on Old Air­port Road near a cof­feeshop is often used by the cof­feeshop if its area is crowded with patrons. But every Sat­ur­day morn­ing, that area is emp­tied out of its plas­tic chairs and tables to give way to donated dry goods for elderly and dis­abled homes. This is all part of an on-​going, 15-​year project called Food & Friends by a hand­ful of vol­un­teers who are grass­roots lead­ers from the Mount­bat­ten Man­age­ment Committee.

The idea was orig­i­nally muted by one of the pio­neers of the project, Elaine Yang, to the then Mayor Eugene Yap, pre­vi­ously an MP for Mount­bat­ten. He was quick to sup­port the ini­tia­tive and erected a sign near the shel­tered area in 1999 as a call for action for dona­tions. Since a new mayor has taken over, the project con­tin­ues with food dona­tions going to eight elderly and dis­abled homes – Jamiyah Home for the Aged, Metta Home, Soci­ety Home, Man Fut Tong Nurs­ing Home, MacPher­son Moral Fam­ily Ser­vice Cen­tre, Lions Nurs­ing Home, Thong Teck Home for Senior Cit­i­zens and Moral Wel­fare Home. Those in the Mount­bat­ten area, as well as oth­ers liv­ing out­side the area, come before 11.30am every Sat­ur­day to drop off the dry goods. Even some of the shop own­ers nearby have joined in to make food donations.

The donated items include eggs, Milo, bee-​hoon, oranges, rice, apples, bananas, adult dia­pers, oat­meal, Hor­licks, instant noo­dles and veg­eta­bles. Each home receives a food dona­tion worth S$400 to S$500. How­ever, espe­cially dur­ing Chi­nese New Year sea­son, they get an over­whelm­ing num­ber of dona­tions. Accord­ing to Yang, some donors even go to the extent of pur­chas­ing eggs from the store nearby and ask­ing the staff to bring them to the shel­tered area or even to pass the goods to the nearby NTUC Fair­Price for staff to bring to the area. For over two years in the begin­ning of the project, when the food sup­plies espe­cially eggs were low, Yang took it upon her­self to use her own money to buy them.

As the food dona­tions arrive from the pub­lic, the vol­un­teers help to seg­re­gate the var­i­ous dona­tions to the homes with metal signs on the ground des­ig­nat­ing the names of the homes. Some of the vol­un­teers go into the mar­ket­place to pick up food dona­tions at the shops and pub­lic dona­tions of food given to the shops. Since those who donate know the food would go to eight homes, the food is equally divided with enough sup­plies for each. John Goh, a real estate agent and a pio­neer­ing mem­ber of the project, added: “Most of the times we don’t know the pub­lic who give but they seem to trust us because they know that we have been doing it for a long time.”

Like clock­work

At about 11.30am, var­i­ous vans from the elderly homes pull up on the side of the road and the dri­vers get to the shel­tered area to tally up the day’s dona­tions. After the details are recorded and Yang or a vol­un­teer gives the go-​ahead, the dri­vers and their assis­tants start load­ing up their vans. A lit­tle after 12pm, the food is emp­tied out and most of the vol­un­teers are gone.

Self-​employed Michael Leong, a vol­un­teer for over 10 years and one of 10 reg­u­lar vol­un­teers who come down, shared: “Rain or shine except for pub­lic hol­i­days, we will all be here. … I come down around 10 to pick up food in the nearby mar­ket­place with a trol­ley. I like doing social work; it is really a passion.”

Added Goh, “When I was young, I liked to help the needy. I do it out of my inter­est.” He arrives on Sat­ur­days usu­ally at around 8am to go into the mar­ket­place to pick up the food donations.

The homes receiv­ing the dona­tion are praises of the project. Shared Edmund Tan, man­ager of Metta Dis­abil­ity Care: “We are always heart­ened to see our clients’ sparkling eyes when­ever they savour the veg­e­tar­ian food, know­ing it would not have been pos­si­ble with­out our donor’s gen­er­ous dona­tion. The bas­ket­ful of gro­ceries received every Sat­ur­day help us lower the expen­di­ture for food sig­nif­i­cantly in Metta Home. The Food & Friends project has made a huge dif­fer­ence in our clients’ lives by con­tin­u­ously pro­vid­ing them with qual­ity food for many years now. Our heart­felt thanks to them.”

Yang is happy about the pos­i­tive feed­back both from the vol­un­teers as well as the homes in the project and is glad to have played a hand in start­ing it. A pre­vi­ous busi­ness owner for 30 years-​now-​turned retiree, she noticed that peo­ple would often donate food to tem­ples. She saw this as oppor­tu­nity to bring it into the com­mu­nity and the ini­tia­tive being “owned” by them. She per­suaded the shop own­ers in Old Air­port Road to meet up at the Mount­bat­ten CC to dis­cuss her project and they were read­ily happy to lend sup­port. Accord­ing to Yang, some 30 stop own­ers agreed to donate what­ever dry food they could. How­ever, the pub­lic started notic­ing and wanted to get into the act.

So how did she select the homes? Yang went to ask the var­i­ous homes if they would be keen to par­tic­i­pate and if they could pro­vide their own vans for the pick-​up. She shared that ini­tially, some stop own­ers went to the homes to see how their dona­tions were being used and Yang some­times makes trips down to check on them. She said she is not adding more homes for now as she wor­ries that she might have a short­fall of supply.

“I am very happy see­ing peo­ple drop by to donate. I am 66 years old and have no plans on tak­ing a break and not being a part of this project,” said Yang. “Peo­ple pre­fer donat­ing food than money to the homes. Also, they find hav­ing the shel­tered area an easy and con­ve­nient place for them to donate (since some live nearby) rather than go all the way to the homes. They also are con­cerned with a money dona­tion as they don’t know where the money might go to.”

A com­mu­nity that cares

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing as the vans were being loaded up, there were a few strag­glers still bring­ing plas­tic bags of food. Nicky P and her mother, who didn’t want to be named, were the last ones that morn­ing as they quickly went to NTUC Fair­Price and bought around S$50 to S$100 worth of food includ­ing Milo, crack­ers and instant noo­dles. “We moved to the area last Decem­ber and we didn’t know about this project. We only found out in Jan­u­ary when some­one told us about it and we wanted to be a part of it. Every Sat­ur­day, my mother comes down and buys food for the dona­tion. Since we live in the area, we felt it was impor­tant to con­tribute,” said Nicky.

A com­mu­nity that binds together and cares is a com­mu­nity that wins in the end of the day.