Celebrating Christmas @ Christmas 'round the corner'

                                   
Greetings Everyone!

How's your holidays coming along? We apologize for the lack of updates as we have been busy with our individual activities and at the same time brainstorming for our next project.

Moving on, on the Eve of Christmas, three of our team members proceeded down to Marine Parade to help raise funds for four beneficiaries.

The event was organized by Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC). Every year, FCBC, will organized an event for Christmas.

This year, one of their highlights was the community charity mural. Sponsored by Nippon Paint, the mural "Nippon Paint Charity Mural" aims to raise a total of $50,000 for four beneficiaries and they are:

• Marine Parade Family Service Centre
• Yellow Ribbon Project
• Pertapis
• Touch Family Services    

Every $5 donated, you get to paint, two tiles. The mural consisted of 13, 872 tiles with a dimension of 17ft x 6ft (yes, it's really small!). All the tiles were numbered . For example, if the cup indicated the number 7, you would paint two tiles with the number 7 on it.


Apart from the mural painting, the event gave out free coffee, (sadly, we didn't drink coffee!) balloon sculpting,hand painting, ping pong challenge and photo booth.

Latest Check: (from their website)
FCBC managed to raise $25,000! Congratulations! :)

Although they did not reach their target, $25,000 is a huge sum raised by the community.

Do check out the video that we placed on this post to see our experience doing #paintforjoy and the event itself, Christmas 'round the corner'.

ENJOY THE LAST BITS OF HOLIDAYS!!! 

Do They Know Its Christmas?

By Momoko Loh 

Growing up with less: A documentary done by students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information hopes to give viewers a glimpse of the children's lives in some of Singapore's poorest estates  (Photo: Xu Yuan Duan)

“There's a world outside your window and it's a world of dreaded fear. Where the only water flowing, Is a bitter sting of tears”

Taken from the song “Do they know it’s Christmas”, it was a song that was written to showcase and a call to the world to aid poverty stricken countries in the 1980s to the early 2000s. Having had lived in a comfortable environment growing up, it is hard to ever imagine that poverty would ever occur or rise in Singapore. Hence this explains my disbelief when I came across this article “Singapore poverty in the spotlight” written by Tom Benner for Aljazeera.

It is hard to imagine that Singapore could have poverty. However based on the data from Singstats –a national statistical system –some 105,000 households in Singapore and some 114,000 individual residents earn less than $805 a month –despite the fact that the country’s average per capital income is $52,305.

Though Singapore has no official measure of poverty, an average household spends $1,250 a month for a four person household on basic needs – food, clothing and shelter (this is based on a 2 year old survey held by the Department of Statistics). How is this affordable for a family who earns less than $805 a month?

However it is not only monetary matters that deem poverty in Singapore.

A documentary done by a student lead organization called Growing up with less, explores the hidden side of the country where the government-built apartment complexes are littered with trash and used sanitary napkins. The documentary also focuses on the plight of children from low-income families where parents struggle to make ends meet, leaving their children unsupervised often hungry for food and affection and also vulnerable to bad influence.  This was done as a final year project by students of Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.

 Hence, as the season of giving is approaching, just stop for a minute and think. There are families here who are not as fortunate as us to celebrate a joyous occasion like Christmas. A parent may not be able to afford to buy a present for their kid or bring the kids out for a simple Christmas dinner.

So take some action, give back to society. You could donate clothes that you cannot wear or toys that you have outgrown of to The Salvation Army . You could also donate some money as you shop for your presents this Christmas as The Salvation Army would be ringing their bells at different shopping districts.

Also, do visit One Singapore as they are an organization based in Singapore that helps and envisions a world where no one lives in poverty –be it overseas or here at home and if you are interested to volunteer you can visit www.nvpc.org.sg for more information.

So bring a smile to another’s face –donate and share things with the less fortunate and spread the joy of giving. Let them know that its Christmas time.

Other Related Articles:

Singapore should measure poverty but not by monetary means: SMU 

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