Kids from lower-income homes get boost from OCBC-MSF volunteer initiative to pursue sports and other interests

SINGAPORE — Ms Myca Marla would like to give her two daughters, aged 11 and six, more opportunities to play and explore sports that interest them but as the family's sole breadwinner, she often lacks the time or money to do so.

“I didn’t have enough time, and also (for) a private tutor, when they join some of the sports, we need to pay quite a lot of money,” the 30-year-old said. She works part-time in the food-and-beverage industry.

Her family is one of 100 lower-income families that will be supported by the “Families100 Programme by OCBC”, launched by the bank in partnership with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) on Monday (May 22).

The programme aims to help families such as Ms Myca’s, by providing them with assistance beyond financial support.

This includes access to sports and creative avenues to help children and youth pursue their interests, and to motivate them to continue with their academic journey, OCBC said in a media release.

Ms Myca said that her girls are interested in badminton and swimming, and she hopes to give them opportunities to explore these sports through the programme.

GOING BEYOND FINANCIAL SUPPORT

The programme launched on Monday is designed to support MSF’s existing Community Link (ComLink) programme. The programme is the first of its kind from the private sector, OCBC said in its release.

Through this latest initiative, 200 of the bank's staff members will act as volunteers to contribute an estimated 10,000 volunteering hours to 100 lower-income families with children living in rental flats, over 12 months.

The 100 families were identified by MSF from its three newest ComLink communities in Clementi, Jurong East and Queenstown.

The 200 volunteers, supported by a ComLink officer, would be divided up into pairs, with one pair assigned to each family, OCBC said.

The volunteers have already started engaging 22 families. The remaining 78 will be progressively matched with volunteers over the next three months, the bank added.

Speaking at the launch on Monday, National Development Minister Desmond Lee said: “Let me say that what you’re doing here (with the) Families100 Programme, to me, is private banking relationship management of a different kind.

“Here, you're building relationships so that our ComLink club members can build up a bank of emotions, a bank of support, and build a long-term plan for their future and, more importantly, that of their children.”

Mr Lee is also Minister-in-charge of Social Services Integration at MSF.

In a welcome address on Monday, OCBC's group chief executive officer Helen Wong said that the idea for the programme arose from a casual conversation between some of her colleagues and Mr Lee in October last year, after the official launch of the OCBC Mangrove Park at Pulau Ubin.

Mr Lee had shared the story of a young boy who skipped school frequently, but later changed for the better with the support of a volunteer mentor. 

“Instead of nagging the young boy to attend classes more regularly, the volunteer noted the boy’s interest in drumming and offered to teach him,” Ms Wong said.

The drumming class later became the incentive for the boy to stay in school. 

Mr Lee then asked if OCBC would consider helping the community in similar ways, she added.

“We were intrigued. I think the example is brilliant. The idea fitted the bill of our #OCBCCares programme,” Ms Wong said.

“It is to go beyond financial support in helping lower-income families. We seek to understand their needs better and help address gaps. Only through this way, can we truly help to uplift these families,” she added. 

WHAT OCBC VOLUNTEERS SAY

Two OCBC volunteers told TODAY that they were drawn to the programme because of the opportunity for meaningful, long-term work with the beneficiary families.

Mr Keeve Tan, 40, a managing director at OCBC Group, said: “When the Families100 programme was launched, what really excited me was the personal time I would get with the beneficiaries.” 

He added that there was often a lack of continuity with other ad-hoc volunteering programmes, because volunteers get to meet the beneficiaries only once.

Therefore, the most attractive part of the Families100 initiative for him is that volunteers get to befriend the beneficiaries over the course of a year, find out more about their lives, and how they could help them achieve social mobility.

“So I think at this level... it really allows us to volunteer our time to see the kind of advice and counselling, the friendship we can give in exchange to the beneficiaries, so that’s attractive,” Mr Tan said.

For Ms Lynn Ng Hui, 35, an assistant relationship officer with OCBC's private banking arm Bank of Singapore, who has a young daughter herself, she hopes to “give back to society” and other families with young children.

She added that she is “very happy” to be able to contribute her time through the programme.

Ms Ng has already been matched to a beneficiary family, whom she met for the first time last week. She believes that they would be able to understand each other and share advice, since the family's children are around the same age as her daughter.

Mr K Achuthappa, general manager of MSF’s Social Service Office for Clementi, Jurong East and Queenstown, told TODAY that feedback from the OCBC volunteers so far has been positive.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm. They ask questions like, ‘Is it okay if I'm free, can I go together with my family and take their family out?’ These are the kinds of questions they have been asking,” he said. 

“To me, that’s a good development. When we have mainstream families mixing around with the ComLink families, we are normalising the experience for them, and they would be a good role model, these volunteer families, for these (ComLink) families.

“Basically what we want to do is, through this activity, to stabilise the (lower-income) family, improve the life situation, make them more self-reliant, and hopefully, we want them to experience social mobility.”

This mobility could take the form of the children’s education, adults in the beneficiary family taking up better-paying jobs, or the family ultimately transiting from living in a rental block unit to a purchased flat, Mr Achuthappa added.