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Breaking poverty cycle with early intervention
By Cai Haoxiang
A TEDDY bear-shaped container is helping to drive home a key message to children of low-income families: the value of savings and building a nest egg.
This project, a two-year programme by the National University of Singapore and community organisations that are the first point of call for such families, has spawned interesting results.
Currently involving some 100 children from families with a monthly household income of $1,800 and below, the programme encourages them to save and provides matching funds from businesses and grassroots organisations.
It is an early intervention programme that will help families and individuals break out of the poverty cycle, said Dr Sudha Nair, a social work assistant professor in charge of the project that involves the use of 'teddy banks'.
'The role models that many such children have are parents who are continuously in financial distress. They see their parents borrowing money or seeking help from social services. One way of breaking the cycle of dysfunction is to show them that self-reliance can start young and can be inculcated if there is a structured way of doing so.'
The encouraging findings since the project's implementation in February last year, underscored a key point made by Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports Yu-Foo Yee Shoon at a seminar yesterday.
This was the importance of early intervention as a way to help families and individuals break out of the poverty cycle.
'We need to provide early intervention to families in need so that they will not become tomorrow's dysfunctional families,' she said.
Dr Nair's project encourages children to save and gives them a bonus of $100 once they have $200 in their accounts.
Children put in $2 a month, their parents $3 a month and volunteers match this with a monthly contribution of $5.
What the programme found is that even when the children were allowed to withdraw money on their birthdays and a festive occasion, few opted to do so.
Their siblings also followed their example and started saving as well. And even when parents dipped into their children's accounts for emergencies, Dr Nair said their children would remind them to replace what they had borrowed.
'The kids learnt the value of money, and didn't ask their parents to buy clothes and toys for them,' she added.
The seminar yesterday also saw other presentations on volunteerism and social workers relating experiences about equipping families with the information and skills to help them become self-reliant and break out of the poverty cycle.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Maliki Osman, a social worker by training, also highlighted the importance of early intervention.
He meets a group of 75 low-income families in his Admiralty ward of Sembawang GRC every month and offers them parenting workshops and tuition programmes: 'We connect with them early, even before it becomes a crisis. So by that time, they know we are there.'
Additional reporting by Teo Wan Gek
By Cai Haoxiang
A TEDDY bear-shaped container is helping to drive home a key message to children of low-income families: the value of savings and building a nest egg.
This project, a two-year programme by the National University of Singapore and community organisations that are the first point of call for such families, has spawned interesting results.
Currently involving some 100 children from families with a monthly household income of $1,800 and below, the programme encourages them to save and provides matching funds from businesses and grassroots organisations.
It is an early intervention programme that will help families and individuals break out of the poverty cycle, said Dr Sudha Nair, a social work assistant professor in charge of the project that involves the use of 'teddy banks'.
'The role models that many such children have are parents who are continuously in financial distress. They see their parents borrowing money or seeking help from social services. One way of breaking the cycle of dysfunction is to show them that self-reliance can start young and can be inculcated if there is a structured way of doing so.'
The encouraging findings since the project's implementation in February last year, underscored a key point made by Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports Yu-Foo Yee Shoon at a seminar yesterday.
This was the importance of early intervention as a way to help families and individuals break out of the poverty cycle.
'We need to provide early intervention to families in need so that they will not become tomorrow's dysfunctional families,' she said.
Dr Nair's project encourages children to save and gives them a bonus of $100 once they have $200 in their accounts.
Children put in $2 a month, their parents $3 a month and volunteers match this with a monthly contribution of $5.
What the programme found is that even when the children were allowed to withdraw money on their birthdays and a festive occasion, few opted to do so.
Their siblings also followed their example and started saving as well. And even when parents dipped into their children's accounts for emergencies, Dr Nair said their children would remind them to replace what they had borrowed.
'The kids learnt the value of money, and didn't ask their parents to buy clothes and toys for them,' she added.
The seminar yesterday also saw other presentations on volunteerism and social workers relating experiences about equipping families with the information and skills to help them become self-reliant and break out of the poverty cycle.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Maliki Osman, a social worker by training, also highlighted the importance of early intervention.
He meets a group of 75 low-income families in his Admiralty ward of Sembawang GRC every month and offers them parenting workshops and tuition programmes: 'We connect with them early, even before it becomes a crisis. So by that time, they know we are there.'
Additional reporting by Teo Wan Gek
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