Spread warmth in this home
And rally, she did. Within three weeks, she managed to get more than 4,500 volunteers from about 45 schools, organisations and agencies on board the effort to put together 7,000 care packs for the healthcare heroes of Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).
When the DORSCON level was raised from Yellow to Orange in February, Singaporeans were gripped by a wave of panic. Ms Sherry Soon, founder of ground-up movement Be Kind SG, decided to do something about it.
“When you are faced with fear, sometimes the way to overcome that is to try to do something bigger than it,” said Ms Soon with the wisdom that only comes with many years of volunteering experience.
“So I thought we could channel our contacts and experience with Be Kind SG to rally Singaporeans to come together for a bigger cause, to show appreciation for the frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19.”
SG Cares: Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures
Ordinarily, Be Kind SG’s regular projects centre around visiting and engaging the residents of welfare homes, holding #CraftforGood sessions to craft birthday cards and hats to gift residents of welfare homes, appreciating “invisible” heroes in the community with various handmade crafts and care packages (these are people whose work are essential in our society and yet are often overlooked) and collaborating with National Kidney Foundation and Singapore Prison Service.
However, COVID-19 has made it difficult to continue such work, which requires a lot of direct physical contact.
“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, so some of us from Be Kind SG conducted a video chat with the residents from the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society (THK) Home for Disabled @ Sembawang and are hoping to try it out with Moral Welfare Home. These are Homes we have been regularly volunteering at for the past few years now, so we do miss the residents,” shared Ms Soon.
She added, “We have not been able to see the residents ever since the ban on visitors to the Homes in early February, and while we have been periodically sending over some snacks to try to lift everyone’s spirits, we know that what they really need is human interaction. So, we will try our best to spread some cheer in the video chat, with songs, games and jokes!”
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