It has been weeks now since COVID-19 first hit us. As news of people taking pay cuts, going on furloughs, suffering business losses etc stream in, it is no wonder charities are seeing a drop in donations.
Number of people in need of help, on the other hand, has increased because of the current economic climate.
Food from the Heart's food donation wish list this month has many more "urgently needed" items compared to when we made our donation in December last year.
We purchased the required food on NTUC Fairprice but were limited to very small quantities for some items such as rice, noodles, and canned meats. Many food items were either out of stock or the store restricts the quantity each person can purchase. Food from the Heart works with NTUC Fairprice to consolidate online donations / orders to be delivered once every 2 weeks.
Willing Hearts is a soup kitchen that prepares, cooks and distributes 5,000 meals daily to people in need. The list of food items required by the team at Willing Hearts are listed on their website. Nonetheless, I decided to email their administrator, Lily, to enquire which items are low in stock. Lily shared that they are in need of Bee Hoon and canned sardines (an item not listed on the website). NTUC Fairprice did not have any more delivery slots for online purchases hence, we purchased the items needed by Willing Hearts from Kindness Mart.
Kindness Mart is a social enterprise founded by Mr Steven Goh. Profits from the online grocery are channeled to fund Helping Joy, a charitable organization that supports and cares for the elderly. Kindness Mart limits the quantity of food one can purchase online as well but a few calls to Mr Goh and his team to explain that we are actually bulk purchasing to donate to charity, the team assisted us with an offline purchase. A total of 20kg of Bee Hoon and 20 cans of sardines were then delivered to Willing Hearts on 17 April 2020, Friday.
