Money, or rather, the lack of it, complicates everything. 

Maizy, Manager in Beyond Social Services shares, when one is poor, everything becomes about not having enough. Residents tell us about having to budget carefully; there are many family members to feed and many other things that need money. So eating becomes just a means to get by; healthy eating hardly comes into the picture, not because they are irresponsible parents who don’t want to, but because they do not have that option. 

Ranga, Deputy Executive Director of Beyond, adds that even the way charities and donations work also go against the promotion of health in low-income communities. For example, food donations tend to be high in sugar and calories. But the recipients feel like they have no right to question what they get. So again, this is an issue that needs rethinking at the systems level.  

Beyond Social Services believes in social justice and activating communities to help themselves. Ranga says, “we all deserve a place in this world where we need not suffer alone”. Her sense of hope comes from her own experience growing up; while her family was low-income and the finances were always stretched, what she recalls is the sense of support and care from her family and even the extended family, even if they were physically far away since her family had migrated to Singapore.  

Beyond believes that communities contain within them, both their own issues and superpowers. In 2019, they started a research study on health in the public rental flats at Lengkok Bahru. While it was known that low-income families have poorer health outcomes, they wanted to understand the experiences and many barriers to health that residents faced, particularly when they came across residents who were themselves passionate about this issue. 

One of their community members and leaders, Elisa, a single mother of 2 young children, had a terrible health scare one day. “I suddenly started bleeding and something solid came out of my body. I was very frightened!” She went to Singapore General Hospital but because she was not a Singaporean Citizen or Permanent Resident, the bill would have come up to $7000. She could not afford it.

She was stuck. She could not afford the surgery in Singapore, and because of COVID-19 restrictions, she could not even go back to her country, Malaysia, to seek medical help. In constant pain and bleeding, she had to quit her job. 

As part of the research study on health, she shared what she was going through. One of the doctors present advised that she could go for surgery and “just get it done”. Her reply, “I need to pay a downpayment of $5000 before I can even go for the surgery. Where am I to go for the $5000? It is not just me, one of my friends is in the same boat. Where can people like us go to?” There was dead silence after she spoke. You could hear a pin drop. She worried that she had spoken too rudely but then, they told her someone might be able to help. She was later connected to a doctor who was willing to do the surgery at a nominal fee. 

“Because of that,” she said, I saw with my very own eyes how a group that speaks in one voice can lift one another up. Today, she is part of Healthy You & Me, a community-run local hotline that connects residents in need to advice and resources and advocates for support.  She says, “There are many others who are in situations like myself. If we do not help one another, who will?” 

This is the hope that drives the work of Beyond Social Services. Community members start to feel hope when they share stories and their own ways of coping with the problems among themselves. They do not feel like they have to ‘resign themselves to fate’. 

Again, people should not have to ‘suffer alone’. Ranga says, we connect them so there is a sense of community among them. And we connect them with the wider community outside of Lengkok Bahru so they can be supported with the resources for what they need.  

Ranga shared that what matters is not what’s different: those who have, giving to those who do not have. Rather it is about what is common- the experience of being supported by a community who cares, is an experience that transcends income divides.   

As such, Beyond shares that they are intentional even in how they accept donations from the wider community. When they received a donation of several blood pressure machines recently, instead of distributing them, a group of mothers were trained to use the machines, and they in turn, helped the others in the community with the use of the machines. While this is a route that requires more effort, it is about co-creation and a powerful way to strengthen the sense of community. 

In Lengkok Bahru, there are many who are facing health challenges. Eliza observes that this is the case, whether for the young and old. Many of her neighbours are suffering from chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and eczema. But, she says, they are unsure or afraid to voice out the pains they are experiencing. Sometimes the paperwork and administrative hurdles to go through also mean that many of them end up giving up before getting the help they need. 

In a low-income community such as Lengkok Bahru, many families are stretched at home and at work and they think twice before seeing a doctor because of how scary and expensive it may be. Eliza, herself a grateful member who has experienced the support of a community who cares, says that “Healthy You and Me wants to be there for our fellow residents. If there’s anything challenging you face at all, you know who we are, you can come to us, through our hotline.”