Friday, October 25, 2013

Anti-poverty groups in Singapore: One too many or the more the merrier?

For those who did not know yet, Caritas Singapore, "the official social and community arm of the Catholic Church in Singapore", had launched "Singaporeans Against Poverty", a social project "to raise awareness about the poor in Singapore".

Although I am somewhat concerned that this new initiative may end up duplicating the efforts (or worse, eat away at the existing resource pool) of other anti-poverty groups in Singapore such as One Singapore and World Vision, it will hopefully be a case of the more the merrier with regards to fighting poverty in Singapore.

Hopefully, all these different groups would coalesce together into an anti-poverty alliance - pooling together resources (instead of competing with one another for them) and leverage upon one another's efforts & expertise. After all, although there may be differences in their philosophies and approaches, the common goal of these groups is to fight poverty; this commonality should over-ride any differences.


"387,000 low-income Singaporeans would gladly swap their problems with yours because they can barely afford a roof over their heads."
Other similar videos here.

"I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil." -- Robert F. Kennedy

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