Milk and Diapers
The Need
Parents of poor and needy families struggle to work, take care of their children and provide for their basic needs. Some of these families receive regular food rations for daily sustenance and can scarcely afford diapers and milk powder for their children. Many such mothers are malnourished themselves or are medically unwell, and so are unable to breastfeed their children.
Milk and Diapers
Since 2018, we have partnered with Prison Fellowship Singapore (PFS) to provide milk and diapers to the families supported by PFS.
Besides relieving the tight financial situation of these families, the milk provided supports the physical growth of their children, many who are undernourished. With PFS, we extended the support to provide UHT milk to children older than 3 years old. PFS shared that there are families whose main meal consists of porridge, ikan bilis and vegetables, and these children often skipped breakfast and were hungry in school.
Furthermore, we found out that by providing milk to school-going children, their school attendance and performance improved – they were no longer constantly hungry and their bodies received the nutrients they needed for optimal physiological development.
Past Milk and Diapers Partners
Milk and Diapers 2017
In 2017, we started a project with Babes, a charity that supports teenage parents, and Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVDP), a Catholic society which had its own Milk and Diapers programme.
Babes set up processes for nominating infants for support, as well as purchasing and distributing milk powder and diapers. The volunteers not only delivered the items to the teenage parents each month, they also monitored the growth of the babies and provide emotional support to the caregivers. By working together, we learnt about the challenges faced by this group of parents, their aspirations and their needs.
Babes evolved this project into a full fledged programme called “Happy Stork” which is open to donor support.
First “Milk and Diapers” Pilot
We started our first “Milk and Diapers” pilot with Care Corner Family Service Center (Queenstown) from March 2014- March 2015. During this period, a monthly donation of milk powder and diapers were provided to the neediest families in the community served by the Centre. These donations were provided for 3-6 months, with extensions approved on a case by case basis for up to a maximum of 12 months total support.
Care Corner FSC (Queenstown) set-up detailed processes for social workers to nominate needy families, keep track of duration of support and formally extend support for families that needed it.
Each month, our donations benefited about 60 children – they were aged 3 and below, or were older than 3 but suffer from chronic diseases like cerebral palsy. A volunteer-based, multi-module nutritional education programme was also developed in partnership with A*STAR’s Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences to educate the families on how they could feed themselves and their children healthily, even on a limited budget.
The Milk and Diapers pilot successfully ran for one year from March 2014 – March 2015, and was transitioned to another corporate sponsor, Zendesk.
