In the month of May, we made our first attempt at using schools as a distribution platform to reach needy families. We further improved on the idea by conducting food drives at well-to-do schools and distributed the food collected at neighborhood schools with a high proportion of needy families.

Our very first food drive was launched with a bang at Maris Stella Primary School. This collection was spearheaded by Miss Chua Shuan Kwee. Her class of primary six boys very enthusiastically helped her run the collection on 27 and 28 May, the last 2 days of the term. The boys and their parents showed their generosity by bringing large quantities of canned food, rice, noodles, biscuits and beverages into the school on both days.

At the end of the exercise, the school operations manager had to get a pickup truck to run 2 trips before all the food could be successfully delivered to Food From The Heart storage centre at Jalan Redop.

A total of 1139 cans of canned food, 270kg of rice, 321kg of instant noodles along with numerous other food items were collected during this exercise. The total value of all the food collected was some S$4,500!

Following the wildly successful food drive at Maris Stella Primary School in May, we launched our pilot school distribution program at Lakeside Primary School in June.

The school selected a total of 40 needy families to participate in this program. Food From The Heart packed goodie bags for each family and had our volunteers deliver them to the school. The school in turn, distributed these goodie bags to the families with the help of their teachers and parent volunteers.

The aim of this program is to render assistance to these needy families, thereby encouraging the children to stay in school and eventually complete their education.

We want to thank Grand Hyatt Singapore for being the first hotel to respond to our plea for fresh excess bread. The wastage of this bread is prevented through our bread distribution network.

The delicious bread from Grand Hyatt is now delivered to a Senior Activity Centre (SAC) in Toa Payoh 7 days a week! The Grand Hyatt kitchen consolidates bread, scones and muffins from 5 different serving outlets within the hotel. The chefs then pack the goodies into cake boxes for our volunteers to collect every afternoon. Many of these elderly at the SAC have never had the chance to taste such hotel delicacies so it is indeed a treat for them!

We hope that more hotels will come forward to join our program to feed the needy and help make a difference in our society!

For our second school food drive attempt, we set our sights on Maris Stella High School . Given the short preparation time, the boys did a great job in collecting almost $1200 worth of food items over the course of 2 days.

The student councilors were entrusted with the job of sorting and packing all the food items collected

At the same time, FFTH had a camera crew from Hallion Productions at the school to film the collection. It was heartwarming to hear directly from the the boys what this exercise meant to them and how they believed they could make a difference to the less fortunate in the community.