I learnt about
FFTH through an old classmate of mine who pointed me to the website
when I asked her if she knew of any agencies that dealt with hunger
and homelessness in Singapore. In the couple of weeks I spent
helping out at the Redhill distribution centre, I got to a know
a close group of volunteers of different ages and backgrounds,
a testament that regardless of your schedule, there is always
an opportunity to serve.
It was during Spring break
in my first year in college that the importance of community service
was truly impressed upon me. During that week, I attended a program
called the Chicago Urban Project during which we spent a week
in the neighbourhood of Austin on the West side of Chicago, presumably
one of the rougher parts of the city. The program focused on issues
such as justice, poverty, racism, racial identity and reconciliation,
and towards the end of the program, participants were split up
into their different ethnicities to talk about how the issues
applied to them directly.
As expected, most of the
program had been implicitly centred on the black-white discourse,
so I was quite curious to see how the Asian group would fit into
the picture. Through our discussion, it was interesting to find
that most Asians were brought up in a way that focussed on self-betterment
as a top priority. It was rather disturbing how the whole “get
a good job, stay out of trouble and mind your own business”
mentality had been so deeply entrenched that it has now almost
become a source of pride.
Here in Singapore, meritocracy
can become a very ugly thing if it is not mitigated by a citizenry
that cares about each other. How can one claim to be a citizen
unless he looks out for the welfare of his fellow citizens? At
the risk of sounding overly patriotic, that is precisely what
our government advocates in its push for active citizenship. There
is no such thing as being an ‘innocent bystander’
when it comes to the underprivileged. As Singaporeans, we need
to take ownership of our identity and start taking an interest
in the welfare of our fellow citizens, not limiting our focus
to just our immediate sphere of family and friends.
The point here is not to
have a warm, fuzzy feel-good buzz at the end of it all, though
that is a perk that seems to come along with the job. We need
to stop seeing community service as something wonderfully noble
and deserving of fanfare, otherwise we’ll probably be stuck
in one-off service trips, constantly seeking that temporary emotional
high to ease our conscience. I believe that community service
should be viewed as a responsibility that we shoulder simply by
claiming to be Singaporeans, or ‘citizens of the world’
for that matter. There is no need to go to some remote place in
Africa to build houses, service can begin right here at home.
With service opportunities
that are very flexible with respects to timing, FFTH provides
a very unique opportunity particularly for people with busy and
even erratic schedules. Furthermore, the very nature of its service
facilitates transparency, in that the bread is transported directly
to those who need it, without going through an intermediary. Volunteers
are thus able to see the real impact of the work that they do,
rather than wondering if some money they collected is going to
be spent on extravagant and unnecessary items.
Although I was only able
to spend a short time volunteering with FFTH as I had to return
to my academic commitments, I really appreciate the community
of volunteers that I was serving with and I hope to be able to
serve alongside them again in the future.
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