Help wanted: Charity groups struggle to spread festive cheer amid dwindling support

SINGAPORE: Charity groups are calling for more help to spread festive cheer this year, amid lack of support for their causes.

They have less volunteers and are getting less donations, they said.

Among the organisations affected is The Boys' Brigade Singapore. Its executive director Desmond Koh said that of the nearly 650 slots it has for volunteers to deliver goodie bags to families in need, only about a third are taken up.

At around the same time last year, more than 40 per cent of the slots had been taken up, he said. The organisation has so far managed to reach around 60 per cent of its target of 43,000 beneficiaries.

ItsRainingRaincoats, an initiative that helps migrant workers, has also experienced a 20 per cent drop in the number of volunteers compared to the past two years, when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were stricter.

At this time of the year, volunteers are needed to pack gift bags containing practical items such as toothpaste, medicated oil and shampoo.

"In the last two years, there was a huge outpouring of support for migrant workers," the non-profit’s founder Ms Dipa Swaminathan said.

"Now, maybe with opening up and travel, and people getting back to work and other issues taking centre stage, maybe migrant workers are not front and centre, and on everybody's radar screens."

To make up for the shortfall, the organisation is engaging schools and companies in hope that students and employees can lend their hands and time as part of corporate social responsibility.

DROP IN DONATIONS

Club Rainbow, which specialises in therapy and education programmes for children suffering from chronic illnesses, is also having trouble getting support in terms of donations.

Mr Teo Siang Loong, its executive director, said there has been a “substantial” drop of more than 30 per cent in monetary donations.

A fund-raising event in November also failed to reach the organisation’s targets for the year.

However, Mr Teo is not surprised.

“When you have rising costs, rising interest rates, I think that's when individuals and corporates, they prioritise their bills, their bottom lines and typically charitable giving will take a backseat,” he said.

In a last-ditch effort to tap the festive season, the organisation has turned to giving.sg, an online platform for donations, volunteering and fundraising.

The platform could help with the much-needed donations.

Various Christmas fundraising campaigns on the platform collectively raised about S$300,000 in November alone, more than double the same time last year. Charities expect to see even more donations in December, given that the month typically brings in the highest amount in the year.

HOLDING OUT HOPE

The organisations are holding out hope that more volunteers will also come forward.

Mr Koh said: “The call out has only just started and engines are only getting just warmed up in terms of the volunteering and the packing. So, I still think they may turn up during the later part of the project. We hope they do.”

Ms Dipa also said she hopes more people can come forward because “there's always the need for more volunteers” given that her charity runs on one staff member and interns. Other than volunteers, her charity needs more gift donations, she said.

“There's close to 1 million migrant workers in Singapore and we'd like to reach as many of them as possible. So there's always the need for more gifts and we're hoping that since it's another two weeks to go to Christmas, we'll be able to bridge that gap a little bit better,” she said.

Her organisation is not the only one trying to bring festive cheer to migrant workers.

Westlite Dormitory has put in effort to bring joy to where these workers live. There are activities for them like crafting snowmen out of papier-mache and putting up Christmas decorations.

The residents told CNA that they are grateful for the festive cheer.

One resident, Mr Nagaraj Chandra Sekar, said: "These decorations actually give me the 'home' vibes. In our homes, we also do like this. So these decorations actually remind me of my childhood."