A story of Local Response by Wanyi of Beyond Social Services
I started this job 2 years ago as a youth worker. I’d get cases and start work with the youths individually, with their friends and family. These youths were seen as at-risk of dropping out from school, having strained relationships with their family and sometimes getting into trouble with the law. I was good at this work, being able to build a good relationship with the kids and their families and slowly seeing the progress they made with the issues.
About 1 year ago, my organisation shifted the focus much more on the community. There was a reshuffle of teams and each team had to work with people from a specific residential area. It was extremely frustrating. I was unsure about how to work with communities even though I had the job title ‘community worker’ for a year. At that time some people had learned about SALT and CLCP and they were sharing with the rest of their colleagues about the approach. But I still didn’t get it.
The area that we were supposed to work in consists of some ‘interim housing’ residents. They are supposedly the very poor in Singapore. After grappling with the resistance of entering the community with SALT, I started to approach this block of residents with the purpose of reaching out to them and getting to know them more. But by this time, the residents were about to move away in a few months’ time because the apartment blocks would be demolished to clear the land for other purposes. Just when I had started to engage people in the community and to see that there is actually a community of people living in this concrete jungle, the people had to relocate. I felt really bad that the couple of families who are really struggling were there for us to work with previously but we hadn't done that in time to reach out to them. I felt I wasn’t contributing to help. I was still feeling lost about what the SALT approach was and was wondering if I had affected some people negatively when I was not exactly sure what I was doing.
The residents moved off a few months ago. They are all living in different parts of Singapore but most of them remain without stable housing. It’s a shame that we didn't get to apply much of CLCP with this community. I’m sure that people would have something to say about their struggle as well as their strengths and would come up with something that will be helpful for themselves. I’ve seen that neighbours with not enough money for food for their children give $5 or $10 to someone next door who is in a more urgent situation. If they could come together as a bigger group they would probably have had even better support for each other.
In the course of the past year, I've learned more about the value of community work. I’ve learned more about the concept of CLCP and how to apply it meaningfully in the community. I've also learned that although Singapore’s environment is very different from village communities, the people can still come together. We have the additional barriers of closed doors but when people get the chance to come face-to-face to meet, they will want to do it more. I can’t turn back time and try to reach out to the people we've missed out. But my colleagues and I can definitely apply CLCP more on the work with the other families who are still living in the area.