Student-led startup made cookies, held baking tutorial to spread cheer to migrant workers over Chinese New Year

• The 10-member team behind Savour! prepared and gave out 1,500 cookies
• They worked with community project Bakers Beyond who helped with the baking
• The team also made a video tutorial so that migrant workers can recreate the cookies

SINGAPORE — When approached with the opportunity to bring cheer to migrant workers unable to return to their home countries over Chinese New Year, one student-led social enterprise rallied its 10-member team to bake 1,500 cookies to give to the workers.

The initiative was a proposal from one of the group’s partners, financial services firm Western Union, which came up with the idea of distributing Chinese New Year goodies to the migrant workers living in the recreation centres and dormitories.

The students behind Savour!, a youth-led tech social enterprise that aims to reduce food wastage and tackle food insecurity, then partnered with one of its beneficiaries Bakers Beyond to bake the cookies.

Bakers Beyond is a community project under non-profit organisation Beyond Social Services, which empowers low-income mothers by teaching them baking skills to earn a side income.

Speaking to TODAY in a recent interview, Ms Katrina Lee, 23, who co-founded Savour!, said that the group wanted to also explore ways of taking the project one step further by giving the migrant workers an opportunity to learn a new skill.

That is how they landed on the idea of creating a baking tutorial video for the Chinese New Year shortbread cookies so that the migrant workers could make more of the goodies in their own time.

They put the link to the video, as well as the recipe, on a pamphlet that was distributed, along with the cookies, to the migrant workers, Ms Lee said.

Though they are not able to bake the cookies in the dormitories, Ms Lee said that as of Wednesday (March 3), the baking tutorial video had around 1,000 views.

It took two weeks to conceptualise and execute the initiative. The team then distributed the cookies to four migrant worker non-profit organisations on Feb 7 and Feb 14. The organisations were: Singapore Migrant Friends, Migrant Worker Centre, Crisis Relief Alliance, and the Alliance of Guest Workers Outreach (AGWO).

“With the whole Covid-19 restrictions going on, we still managed to distribute the cookies physically to the migrant workers, just that we could only distribute it at the gate. We could not go into the dormitories to distribute,” Ms Lee said.

The team distributed cookies to workers at engineering contractor Koh Kock Leong Enterprise, and Sembawang Quick Build Dorm.

Some of the cookies were also given out at Chinese New Year celebration events for the migrant workers.

One such event took place on Feb 14 at the Terusan Recreation Centre near Jurong Port Road. There, the team gave out the goodies to 250 migrant workers.

The group also distributed 400 cookies at the JTC Tuas Chinese New Year Festival held at the Tuas South Recreation Centre.

When asked what was a highlight of taking part in the project, Ms Lee said that a standout moment was when the team was distributing the cookies to the migrant workers.

“The (non-profit organisation representatives) told us that the initiative is really good, especially during this season because many of the migrant workers are not able to go back to their home countries during the festive season. 

“So just showing them that we care and want them to celebrate with some new year cookies made us see that all our efforts planning this initiative was worth it. Seeing them enjoy it and be happy to get it.”

Mr Samuel G Lee, 31, the head of AGWO, said that it was not so much the cookies themselves, but the gesture of reaching out to the migrant workers and caring for them that “you can see the joy in their eyes”.

“I’m just heartened to see so many Singaporeans stepping up and wanting to pursue deeper relationships with migrant workers in Singapore and that’s one step forward towards equality,” he said.