In April 2020, when the number of Covid-19 cases started spiking, Singapore joined a whole host of other countries in imposing our very own version of a lockdown (read: Circuit Breaker).

While many were driven indoors, this was not the case for the staff and volunteers of TOUCH International (TI).

They were beckoned out of their homes – sometimes into full personal protective equipment (PPE) – as they stepped out to demonstrate love in action bringing hope and love to migrant worker communities in Singapore.

Stranded, not strangled

Loving and meeting the needs of migrant workers in Singapore was TI’s own “pandemic pivot”.

Founded in 1999, TI’s current and past projects were birthed from crisis relief efforts – whether it was the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, Typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines in 2013, the Nepal earthquakes of 2015, or the Kumamoto earthquakes in southern Japan in 2016.

The vision: To see a world of nations blessing other nations.

I saw this vision manifest itself last year in December, when my wife and I, along with six others, went with TI to bring some Christmas cheer and psychosocial support to the disaster victims of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes.

Chun Han (second from left) with members of the TI team visiting residents still living in temporary housing in Kumamoto, Japan.

We were the eighth volunteer team in three years commissioned to serve the needs of Japanese who had been displaced by the earthquakes and were still living in temporary housing (kasetsu juutaku).

Seeing the hearty reception of the Japanese people and the evident longstanding goodwill that had been built up over the years with TI’s local partner organisation, Kyushu Christ Disaster Relief Center, our hearts were warmed even in the cold Japanese winter.

TI volunteers and local Japanese residents engaged in a game of “broken telephone” involving Japanese and Singlish words/phrases.

But what would an organisation like TI do in the midst of a global pandemic, with stringent travel restrictions for the foreseeable future?

“All our overseas engagements and projects had to be deferred,” said Shawn Lim, director of TI.

“But at the same time, we were prompted to remember God’s heart for the foreigners in our land. So we started to seek out opportunities and initiatives to help meet the needs of the migrant worker communities here at home, especially after news broke of the major (Covid) outbreaks amongst them in Singapore.

“For a crisis of such a scale, we certainly cannot sit by and do nothing. It calls for a cohesive and collective effort from everyone, and no effort is too small or insignificant,” he added.

Partnering with SG Accident Help Centre, TI’s volunteers helped pack and distribute care packs to migrant workers, as well as deliver hot meals and snacks.

From March to May 2020, TI partnered with SG Accident Help Centre to prepare and deliver 10,000 care packs, 6,000 meals and 5,000 snack packs to various guest worker dormitories around Singapore.

When Circuit Breaker kicked in, a call was initiated for board games to be donated to the various dormitories to help our migrant worker friends stave off boredom.

Between June and July, volunteers went to dormitories to serve as digital ambassadors in partnership with Smart Nation Singapore.

The objective was to familiarise approximately 1,200 digitally-savvy migrant workers at over 60 dormitories with the three essential mobile apps they will need to use daily once they are cleared to resume work.

These digitally-savvy migrant workers would in turn help their peers with the onboarding and adoption of the essential apps required to facilitate contact tracing and the monitoring of every migrant worker’s daily health status.

As one of the volunteer digital ambassadors at the dormitories, I was thankful for this first-time experience serving the migrant worker communities here in Singapore.

Digitally-savvy guest workers were selected to help the larger community learn how to use mobile apps that would facilitate SafeEntry procedures after work resumed.

In between training sessions, it was heartening to hear them share candidly about their stories, experiences, and struggles.

But it was even more moving to see how grateful many of them are for all that Singapore is doing for them during this pandemic.

From our homeland

At the same time, the experience also taught me how faith and wisdom comes hand in hand.

Doing mission work at home taught Chun Han how faith and wisdom come hand in hand.

As we stepped out in faith and trusted in God’s protection, wisdom meant learning how to protect ourselves first before helping others. We had to learn how to don PPE, practise safe distancing, and conduct proper sanitisation before and after each training session.

By the end of the first training session, I was soaked in sweat, but filled with a newfound respect for all the frontline heroes, who have to take such painstaking precautions every single day.

Going forward, there is so much more that can, and needs to, be done. 

Despite the lack of international travel, TI is still fulfilling its mission of serving the nations – not just by serving the needs of migrant workers in Singapore, but also raising funds to deliver food relief to other countries under lockdown through its overseas partners.  

The only difference is that it is now serving the nations in and from our homeland, Singapore.

Some would simply say this is TI’s version of “working from home”.

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