SInterCom interviews Mr Samuel Lock, Public Relations Assistant Director (Research & Development) at The Salvation Army headquarters for Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar.

The Salvation Army first arrived in Singapore in 1935 when Brigadier Herbert Lord established the first headquarters and hall in Singapore at an old Chinese house in Killiney Road. Today, on its 60th anniversary, The Salvation Army commands a considerable presence with its 16 homes and service centres and its new premises at Bisban, The Army continues to provide social services and invaluable material, spiritual and emotional support for the poor and the needy in Singapore.

What are The Salvation Army's objectives in Singapore?

There are two basic arms of our service; the spiritual ministry and the social ministry. We believe that our faith must not just remain at the doctrine level and it should translate into tangible actions.

Our founder, Williams Booth, first started the movement in the mid 19th century. The context is set in the industrial revolution when a lot of the poor in England moved out of the countryside into East London. He felt that the rich were exploiting the poor who were living in abject conditions. He wanted to bring the gospel to these people but he realized that it is useless to talk about religion to a hungry man. Hence evolved a dual social and spiritual ministry. This initiative was first called the Christian mission and this eventually became The Salvation Army.

Our mission is to spread the gospel of Christ and to help the needy in very practical ways.

Singapore is a visibly affluent society enjoying a high standard of living. How do these objectives translate into the Singapore context?

It is a misnomer to think that affluence eradicates poverty. ln most societies, the distribution of wealth is uneven. The difference is in the extent. Poverty is relative; it is relative to the existing living standard and cost of living. Even in the US, I think that about 30% of the population are classified as being poor. According to l990 statistics, there are 38,000 families who were living below the poverty line in Singapore. The poverty line in 1990 was defined to be at $510 income for a four person family living in a one room flat or $127 per person per month (this figure has since been adjusted). Another 22,000 families were at the verge of poverty. This translates to about 155,000 people living below the poverty line.

I think that the kind of poverty in Singapore is "urban poverty". The poor are not literally starving but they are struggling to make ends meet. They have to pay for rent, utilities and food. They may not be aware of available sources of help. For example, the Singapore government have a rent and utilities assistance scheme where the government will pay for rents and utilities in arrears for qualifying needy individuals. Because some of them are illiterate, they may not know that these schemes exist, or even if they do know, they might not know how to apply for the schemes.

I went to Indonesia once and I was wondering how the poor there could survive on a few dollars a month whereas our poor were struggling with over S$100 per month. The people in Indonesia could live off the land and their cost of living is low. What can you pluck in our housing estates in Singapore to defray your food costs?

We actually go down to the basics of distributing supplementary food supplies. Many of the poor may be caught in a poverty trap; If you are poor, you may not place a high priority on education for your young under pressure of circumstances. Your children may need to leave school early to help support the family. Thus, they miss out on education and this may perpetuate through the generations. One of Salvation Army' s key emphasis is education. We try our best to get disadvantaged children to stay in schools for as long as possible.

Apart from the poor, we also focus on those with less direct needs. An emerging role is to help preserve families. With the pressure of work and the pace of life, families come under pressure. We try to keep families together and form support groups for mothers.

The ageing population is growing area of concern. We are running an old folks home at Lee Kuo Chuan, and we plan to double the capacity. Sending the elderly to an old folks home is really the last resort. We want family ties to be intact as far as possible. An alternative is for the children to send their parents to day care centres and fetch them back again in the evening. We will be providing some secondary health care for the aged in the neat future.

How do you get funding for these schemes and facilities?

We are supported mainly by the public; that is, individual donors. We approach the public twice a year through direct mail. We run 16 homes and service centres in Singapore. Our total social work programmes cost us S$5 million a year. We are not part of the Community Chest, that is why we have to raise the funds ourselves.

If fees are charged for our services they are always below the national average. For example, we charge S$400 to S$500 for care at the old folks home compared to the average S$1000 charged elsewhere. Needy public assistance cases are exempted from such fees at our home for the aged.

To give a feel of our services; for the elderly, we have a residential home, a day care centre and we are going to set up a rehabilitative centre for stroke and arthritis patients. For the young,, there is a children's home, six child care centres for preschool and three before-after school centres for primary children. Besides that, we have a mobile family support service that distributes food parcels mainly to the aged. The Salvation Army also runs a half way house for prison releases and those with a history of drug addiction.

What is the scale of your food distribution operation and what problems are these families facing?

We are currently looking after about 300 families. Besides giving out food parcels, we also help with job placements if there is a healthy able-bodied member in the household. Sometimes, the problems faced by these families are multifaceted. We may have a case where the husband may be an alcoholic, the wife may want to go to work, but she has to stay home to look after the children. We use our network to help them. We bring the child to one of our child care centres, help the wife to get a job and then try to "dry' the father out from his drinking habit.

How much emphasis does your movement place on the spiritual aspect in everyday operations?

We help people regardless of their race or religion. That is very important. We have to respect the sensitivities of other religions. We do provide opportunities of exposure without compulsion. For example, a child in a children's home would be invited to a Sunday School. He can say "yes" or "no" without fear of any repercussion to himself. If he goes, and is keen, then we'll continue bringing him back to Sunday School. If he or his parents object, then we'll respect their wishes.

We believe that we should help a person both in this material world and beyond this temporal world. We want to give a person both physical and spiritual salvation without bulldozing our beliefs on others.

Could you further describe the section of the population that you are reaching out to?

Increasingly, we are reaching out to the lower middle and middle income groups. Salvation Army's services are organised more by type of need than by income groups. This is necessary to stay relevant in today's society. But our core focus remains to help the needy.

On demographics:

1. The people in the needy category can be found in the older housing estates, Kallang Bahru, Circuit Road, Tiong Bahru. Many of those we help are staying alone, past retirement age but may be working as hawker assistants, etc.

2. The other category are those in the verge of poverty. These people live in 2-3 room flats. Although they live in flats, they have their own financial problems.

3. The next category is the lower middle/below average income category. They have children who come to our child care centres. Of course we have children from relatively better off backgrounds at our child care centres too. We also conduct tuition classes for primary school children from below average income families at Kallang Bahru.

There are still a few isolated pockets of children that miss out on education. I have met a 13 year old boy who left school after Primary 4. He did not go back to school for fear of threats from secret societies. Now, he's coming back to us for remedial help. We are trying to help him graduate with a PSLE within a year to go on to secondary school. Whilst he may be an exception, there are other children we have come across who are under pressure to leave school to help support the family.

4. Next we come to the middle class. Some of the children may be referred to us from principals. They may be very weak in certain subjects. We will give them tuition classes. For them, we usually charge them a nominal fee of S$20 to ensure that they will attend the classes. Others from this category may use our childcare services or attend our church services.

What are the major problems that these people face in their lives?

I think that one major obstacle, among others, is self doubt. For example, guys at our prisons ministry may lack confidence in making it. 'Making it" for them means going through rehabilitation successfully and going straight. They have a need to feel accepted, to feel useful. Many drug abusers took to drugs in the first place because they were withdrawn from society because of some disappointment or setback or just looking for kicks. I met a 30 year old man who has never worked for more than two years in his life. He joined secret societies, floated in and out of jobs, ant took drugs. He is fighting very hard to change. He is fighting very hard to feel accepted. He has doubts about whether the public would accept him. He has a very strong need for acceptance. These people do not need our pity, they need our empathy.

What is lacking the Singapore society today in terms of providing support for people in need?

I think there is a lack of social workers, and psychologists. When we move away from bread and butter issues, we will start dealing with emotional needs in today's modern society. People come to us with deep emotional scars. They do not come to us in torn and tattered clothes. What is torn is their emotions, and their self-esteem. We have come across some parents who think it is the responsibility of the teachers or the home to teach moral values and discipline the child. Such children often lack emotional security and a sense of self worth.

ln schools, we have students with behavioural problems who need guidance. There are pilot projects to attach social workers to schools. The teacher can try their best to teach and counsel, but social work trained personnel are needed to identify the root problems of errant students and provide appropriate counselling. lf the trauma is deep, we may need a psychologist or even a psychiatrist. To provide therapy, I would think that a larger pool of social workers is needed to network with the schools.

Our society is economically driven. Our educational system is geared chiefly and rightly towards academic/intellectual development, but more could be done in the area of emotional development of children.

I think that the faster paced higher stress and more competitive society in the turn of the century will place heavy demands on emotional stability. We are living in an increasing borderless world. We need a strong sense of values to carry us through the multi-cultural exposure resulting for greater media penetration and wider travelling. You may lose a part of your identity when you cross cultural borders and national boundaries towards a global culture Hence the preservation of core cultural and family values will be an increasing need in our society.

Why do you think that we get so few volunteers for social work?

It boils down to a matter of perception. How often does the public see poverty or the needs of the disadvantaged up close in real life? Poverty is tucked away in the public housing estates. You don't see the physical signs of poverty. Poverty is not seen in the form of torn and tattered clothes or bloated stomachs as in Third World countries. Therefore many people assume that everything is OK.

If the people do not know enough about relative poverty in Singapore, how do we get more people involved in social work lf you are to be more involved, you must be more informed. People judge and act by what they see and what they don't see.

Our level of volunteerism is lower than in Japan or in the US. It has probably to do with the fast pace of life among other things. However, this is not the only reason. The Japanese pace of life is also very fast. It could be due to the state of evolution of social culture. The Japanese have a very strong family culture. They have a very strong sense of cohesiveness in society despite presence of factions although, this too is changing. We don't have that same degree of cohesiveness. Wives of Japanese expatriates in Singapore have come to us to bathe the old folks at our home for the aged. Not many of the Singaporeans will do that, but the few who do, do so with dedication and commitment.

Do you think that the situation is improving?

Yes, the situation is improving. The National Council of Social Services is active in campaigns like the volunteer month. They have the volunteer action development committee and its networks cultivating volunteers from the community. lt is a long term process and fruits are clearly showing.

You mentioned that your organisation provides botb physical and emotional support. Which of these are taking up more of your resources?

Generally, it is moving more and more into providing emotional support. We have a small core of about 300 families which need our physical support. Only a small minority of the children who come to us are compassionate or needy cases ie. disadvantaged.

Other children fall under abuse cases, and juvenile delinquent cases. The court may decide that they should not be sent to remand institutions They then come to our homes and are subject to some disciplinary parameters, but they still do attend school There are also children beyond parental control who are also referred to us. Problems often are multifaceted and mutually related. Problems may ocur with different members in the family and across generations. People often come to us with a mix of needs. There aro few purely needy cases that do not require "emotional help". However the gut feel is that emotional needs are on the rise.

How easy is it for an organization like yours to operate in Singapore?

We need to tread carefully in Singapore. We are not just a charity organisation. We do have a need to project the fact that we are a Christian organisation. That sometimes works against us; people may think that we use public funds for religious purposes. Let me emphasize that we do NOT do this. We keep separate accounts for social work funds and funds for religious purposes.

Being a Christian organisation also means that we have a ready source of volunteers from our church congregations. We are trying to get more of our church members to help do some charity/social work.

We prefer to stay independent as a voluntary welfare organisation because social work requires us to be responsive. This however puts an onus for us to raise sufficient funds to finalize on-going and future services. We would like to do more for the community but more public support would be needed for us to do so.

How did you manage to collect funds to build this new building?

I have to make this very clear. We did not use any public funds to build this. Our old building at Clemenceau Avenue was on prime land, and we got a good return from it. That building had to be sold for two main reasons. It was getting too small for us. Also it was gazetted as a national monument. We were legally obliged to maintain the building in good condition at our own cost. We felt that instead of spending on maintaining a building, the money could be better used to serve the disadvantaged.

The funds will also go into developing other social services besides this building. We have to stretch every dollar to the maximum to benefit those in our care.

What can the ordinary concerned Singsporean citizen do to help ?

The public can help by contributing financially or volunteering their services. They can make donations via cheque or through GlRO contributions. Just call tel: 450 4133, fax: 552 8541 or write to Ang Mo Kio Central, PO Box 640 S'pore 915605 for more information. Some of our donors evon request for additional brochures to encourage friends to support The Salvation Army. It would be wonderful if some members of the public would be interested to do likewise.

I would encourage people to keep tabs on community service news to identify specific areas which they would be interested to volunteer help eg. care for children, the elderly or needy families, etc. Volunteers can provide tuition for disadvantaged children, befriend the elderly, help in fund raising projects or a host of other activities. Serving in one's area of interest can be a very enriching experience as many of our volunteers have discovered.

Those wishing to dispose of used but serviceable furniture and household appliances can call up our Home Collection Service at tel: 5455 722. Items collected will be sold to generate funds for our community work.

What message do you have for Singaporeans in general ?

Since affluence cannot eradicate poverty, there will always be a segment of people who are less fortunate than ourselves. Learning to share something of what we have with these people can be a rewarding experience. When lives are touched and changed for the better, we reach into a part of ourselves that recognises our bond with fellow beings. A bond that derives joy out of seeing our fellow men helped. A bond that keeps our society together and gives us a broader sense of shared identity in humanity. For there is more to life than just ourselves and our families.

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