On September 1st this year, Food from the Heart welcomed a new family ‘member’ - a brand new Mitsubishi van. A kind, private donor who has chosen to remain anonymous had generously donated the vehicle. The FFTH van serves as an 'advertisement on the move' with its beautifully decorated exterior.

Indeed this van has served purposefully the past several months, especially with ad-hoc, special donations. For instance, a collection of special donations may have to be made within two hours of receiving the call from the donor. In the past, there were times where we had difficulty getting volunteers and there was also lack of transportation. In order to fully utilize the van, a full-time driver was employed to quickly respond and collect these donated items from the location, to be delivered immediately to designated areas.

Our new Mitsubishi is really an important addition that has further improved the efficiency of the workings in FFTH. Such a donation is certainly much appreciated by FFTH to fulfill these missions.

The 8th month in the Lunar calendar is noted as the season of mooncakes and lanterns. With the help of various donors, FFTH shared this season with our beneficiaries. Between 27 September and 12 October, Food From The Heart was fortunate to receive about 13,000 mooncakes. This was 5000 more than the previous year. Not only were the donations from various bakeries but hotels had contributed as well.

The donor bakeries included Kyo Cake House, Pau Dian Pte Ltd, BreadTalk, K&K (Sin-HK), Prima Deli and First Food Industries while the donor hotels were Raffles Hotel, Marriott Hotel and Raffles the Plaza Hotel. Raffles International had donated most generously with more than 4000 mooncakes.

Our staff and volunteers carefully re-packed the mooncakes and sent them to our collection centres, elderly homes and halfway houses. This is an attempt to 'bring in' the festivities of the season into the various homes. This had indeed been one of the sweetest donations.

Food From The Heart was delighted when Shangri-La Hotel Singapore expressed an interest to be part of our daily collection programme. We welcomed their offer with open arms and currently their donations are collected by our volunteers on a daily basis. Their delicious bread is sent to self-collection centers around the island, which open in the evening at around 8pm.

Shangri-La is the second hotel to join our programme with Grand Hyatt Hotel being the forerunner. Food From the Heart is in the process of welcoming more hotels into our daily collection scheme. For instance, we are presently negotiating with Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore.

We certainly hope to welcome more hotels to join our noble cause in the near future. Their donations would really help us in our aim of giving more food to our beneficiaries.

Another successful food drive was held from 11 to 15 October 2004 and this time it was kindly organized by Qi Fa Primary School for Food From the Heart. Food with a total retail value of $2845 was collected and this has certainly contributed to our pool of food items for self-collection centers. Qi Fa Primary School had encouraged their students and staff to “Buy an extra item when they go shopping” so that they could collect more food and more needy families could be helped.

Qi Fa Primary is one of the schools that have approached FFTH after an article was published in the press. Organizations that are interested in helping with our cause, may wish to refer to our Standard Food List.

General Food Items
Rice
Cooking Oil
Instant noodles
Biscuits
Coffee/Tea
Milo/Cereal
Milk Fruits

Canned Food
Sardines
Curry Chicken
Button mushrooms
Baked beans
Green Peas
Luncheon Meat

The Presidents' Challenge at Ju Eng Home, held on 18 September 2004, was a joint effort by the Singapore Kindness Movement and Food From The Heart.

The Grand Hyatt, Bengawan Solo and Prima Food had kindly donated a total of 780 pieces of delicious blueberry muffins, mooncakes, assorted kuehs as well as savoury laksa buns.

On this fruitful Saturday morning, our volunteers chose to spread joy by serving and feeding the residents of Ju Eng Home. Our volunteers engaged in conversations with the old folks, making them smile, making them laugh and most importantly making them feel that they are not forgotten by society.

To liven up the event, there were also performances, putting even more smiles on the faces of the residents A group of boys had entertained the old folks at Ju Eng with scottish music while some ladies performed line dancing.

On 2 and 3rd October 2004, a group of NTU students and Food From The Heart co-organized a food drive at Junction 8. The project 'Buy a Slice. Help Feed a Needy Family' was kindly supported by Secret Recipe which matched a dollar for every cake that was bought by customers.

In addition to that we sought donations from our wish list. Our wish list contains general food items such as rice, and cooking oil as well as canned food items.

We asked for donations to be brought to the donation booth in exchange of a complimentary beverage voucher. The event was extremely successful as we received food items from our wish list totaling a retail value of $1000.

The student organization that called themselves Seraph Communications had approached Food From the Heart prior to the event. These 3rd year NTU students had dutifully handed out brochures from house-to-house and also put up posters to advertise the event.

To say a Big 'Thank You' to all volunteers right from the Heart, Food from the Heart organizes gatherings in small groups. These gatherings allow us to interact with our volunteers, get to know more about them and above all, show them our appreciation for all their invaluable help.

On 30 October 2004, 50 volunteers attended the Food From The Heart Volunteer Appreciation High Tea that was co-sponsored by Hyatt Hotel. This event was held to appreciate our standby volunteers who have been active for at least 3 months. Gold and Diamond Volunteer awards were presented to the volunteers at the mini-gathering.

The Gold Volunteer Awards are based on how long they have volunteered while the Diamond Volunteer Awards are presented in recognition of those with outstanding contributions in addition to their long service. We would like to congratulate Ms. Angie Lim, Ms. Christina Tan, Ms. Lim Sun Sun and Mr. Lengson Chiu for receiving the Diamond Volunteer Awards. To all volunteers, a big 'Thank you' right from the heart.