1>Books from the heart

Families who do not have enough funds to buy three meals a day certainly don’t have the funds to buy toys for their kids.

So when one of our volunteers stepped forward to organize this charity drive , we all thought that this would complement our efforts to help needy families. Our volunteer set up collection boxes at 13 law firms and 3 schools and the result was a wonderful collection of quality toys, clothing and books. Even brand new toys, lovingly wrapped in Christmas paper with nice Christmas messages attached ( “This is a card game – hope you will enjoy playing it”), and brand new T-Shirts with the original tags intact, came our way. Even the US Navy (Sembawang Base) played Santa Claus by asking their staff to buy some additional items during their Christmas shopping, which they brought to our storage centre.

After receiving the 60 (!!) boxes full of toys, we realized that we needed a proper way to present and store the various toys. We approached ALNIFF Industries Pte Ltd, which installed a rack for us over the Christmas period. Instead of delivering the goodies to the families, we invited the families and kids to our storage centre in order to let them choose and pick their items of preference. In December and January alone, we have had 5 large groups of families from various districts. Everybody who saw the smiles on the faces of the kids agreed: that this is the best reward for all our efforts! Read more on this drive at “Spice of Life – Reaching out to Individuals”.

December was a month of happy surprises! News of FFTH has spread and we saw a lot of food items such as oil, rice and noodles, being donated to us from companies and private individuals who had heard of our programme. We also received some donations of left over cakes and cookies after Christmas period. The highlight was the arrival of 50 beautifully done Gingerbread houses from the Mariott Hotel, which we immediately delivered to children’s homes with the help of our volunteers. They were much appreciated.

On Christmas Eve 2003, we received a wonderful Christmas present from Shell. In appreciation of the good community work which our volunteers are doing, Shell informed us that it wished to donate petrol vouchers to FFTH. During the official launch of the partnership between Shell and Automobile Association of Singapore (AAS), we were handed the symbolic cheque for this donation. AAS was also kind enough to waive the membership fee for FFTH volunteers who are interested in joining AAS! This was a very good Christmas present for FFTH !

Just before Chinese New Year, we started distributing petrol vouchers to our longest serving volunteers who have made outstanding contributions to our scheme. We will continue to do so in February.

Our friends at CityCab (Charity Group) approached us to organise a joint Christmas celebration at a home of our choice. So on 16 December, 50 CityCab drivers (all FFTH volunteers!), arrived at the Thong Teck Home for the Elderly in Geylang East for a Christmas Celebration. Apart from gifts of towels and thermal mugs, the generous cabbies also gave the residents a cheque for topping up their CPF accounts so that they would be eligible for the ERS! As if that was not generous enough, some cabbies also treated the residents to musical entertainment by demonstrating their singing skills!

FFTH did not come empty handed either. Four volunteers, together with their kids, baked a selection of 8000 Christmas cookies at home, which we handed over neatly wrapped! In addition, Primafood kindly donated 30 Christmas Log cakes which were enjoyed for dessert at the lunch sponsored by CityCab.

At that same function, CityCab kindly donated a sum of S$10,000 to FFTH, which was presented to Mr. Henry Laimer. We thank CityCab for their generous donation and hope that our cooperation, which has turned into friendship, will see many more of these joint functions! It is gratifying to see how eager the cabbies are to bring joy to the needy!

Philip Morris, one of our corporate sponsors, kindly hosted a Chinese New Year dinner for 50 members of our FFTH team ! It was a cosy affair in their lavish corporate lounge, with yummy food and drinks. It provided an excellent opportunity for our core team of volunteers to mingle and exchange stories!

Mr. Anthony Lau from Philip Morris and Mrs Christine Laimer from FFTH shared with us how they had made their initial contact and how the sponsorship came about. Philip Morris is a shining example of caring and giving back to the community !

Last year, FFTH started a tradition of going to children’s homes to distribute hong baos. To make good on the promise made to the children last year, we went back again this year! This year we were able to brighten their day with a lot of goodies like pineapple tarts (freshly baked for us, a donation by Primafood ), love letters, biscuits, ice cream and drinks! 18 of our volunteers were involved in that special project which took place in the week after Chinese New Year.