when I was driving home from the gym one
day in in a pouring thunderstorm and as
I pulled into my little road I noticed
two workers two wrote cleaners migrant
workers crouched under a really small
cardboard sheet trying not successfully
at all to remain dry and I drove past
and thinking oh that’s so sad and then I
stopped my car put it into reverse and
came back and I can speak Tamil so I
rolled down the windows and asked them
if you know they’d get into my car I’d
take them home which was just down the
road and they could stay dry there till
the rain stopped so they said no you
know we’re really wet and muddy and
we’ll soil your car I said never mind I
can wash my car just get in so I didn’t
I refused to budge till they did so they
got into my car I took them home they
sat in a front porch we gave them some
hot coffee something to eat I gave them
my husband’s dry clothes to change into
gave them some money as well and when
the rain stopped and they were about to
go I decided to take a photograph to put
it on Facebook to say that if employers
of road cleaner send them out then given
that it can rain in Singapore at any
time they should at least give them a
raincoat or an umbrella so they said you
know will we get into trouble because
you’re gonna put this up I said I don’t
even know your names I don’t know the
name of the company you work for but if
you think you’re gonna get into trouble
here’s my number I’m a lawyer
call me if anything happens so they took
my number and off they went and I didn’t
hear from them for months until a Sunday
several weeks later I was at NTUC
shopping for groceries and I got a call
from the police to say that one of the
two guys had tried to commit suicide the
night before and the only number he had
with him was mine and would I be willing
to go to the police station and post
bail of $2,000 for him so I dropped the
grocery cart and ran to the Jurong
police station where they told me they’d
moved him to the mental hospital so I
had to go to the mental
which was very disturbing and to see
this man among you know all those
patients so his it’s a crime in
Singapore if you’ve you know attempted
to commit suicide I mean if you’re
successful you’re you’re no longer
around but so they were police guarding
the ward and I went in and they allowed
me to speak to this man and I said what
happened and he said he hadn’t been paid
his wages for three months he had loan
sharks hounding his family back home and
he didn’t know what else to do so I said
look I’m here I’m gonna take care of it
don’t do anything else foolish so I came
back out and spoke to those policemen
guarding the ward and said look this guy
is just a victim he’s not a criminal and
I said you and I don’t know what it’s
like to live on the edge of desperation
we’re taking your life is a very real
option but this guy does so you need to
you know go after the employer and not
you know be hounding this guy so those
police officers were you know maybe
young NS men I mean they couldn’t
understand what I was talking about so I
came back home and started I sent an
email to the Commissioner of Police for
the whole of Singapore and I kept
sending that email every day for a week
and you wouldn’t believe it
it worked a week later they dropped all
charges against him they got his
employer to pay him all his back wages
and a month later he was at my doorstep
again sort of a new man thanking me for
everything I’d done his wife called me
from India to thank me and it was it was
a moment that made me realise that I
invested all of maybe about 2 or 3 hours
in this entire episode and but for this
man it had changed his life I mean
you’ve heard the saying you know you
can’t change the world but you can
change the world for one person and this
was was a very real demonstration of
that to me so I sort of kept going from
there and this picture you see over here
was was the next thing that happened
which also involved rain I was dropping
my son off at a tennis match tennis
training
and as I was driving out I saw the men
in the top picture and you can guess
what they’re wearing in the rain it was
garbage bags and I thought that was
really sad and meantime their supervisor
was standing far away with an umbrella
in a shelter area he wasn’t doing any
work but he was you know dry twice over
and these men were with these black
garbage bags so I stopped my car and
said can you tell me the name of your
company
they were cars already honking behind me
but I didn’t you know at that moment
care too much about that so they just
lifted their their bags and I could tell
the name of the company from the
t-shirts that were wearing said just
took a quick photo of it came back home
google the name of the company and call
them and I said to them I have photos
and I have videos of your people working
in the rain wearing garbage bags I
didn’t have any videos but that was just
a white lie I told them and I said I’m
gonna send this to the Straits Times I’m
gonna post this on social media and I’m
gonna send it to the mo em if you don’t
give them raincoats so the guy at the
other end of the phone did a very
gracious thing he slammed the phone down
on me so I didn’t have time that day to
carry out all my threats but the next
day when I went back to drop my son
again for training that’s what I saw so
they’d given all the men brand new
yellow raincoats and rain boots and when
they saw who it was in the car they all
came running to the car to thank me and
it was fantastic so it sort of began
that way you know this whole session is
about you know the domino effect it
began that way and a couple of these
stories went viral on social media and
the Singapore kindness movement reached
out to me and said you know why don’t
you start something and we’ll support
you and we met for coffee and I had to
come up with the name right then and I’d
heard the song it’s raining men I guess
some time back so you know hence the
name it’s raining raincoats it’s a bit
of a tongue twister but it’s stuck and
we’ve come a long way since then so so
basically the idea is I mean if you know
a little bit about migrant workers
Singapore there are about three quarters
of a million migrant workers and I only
do work for the male migrant workers not
the female domestic workers and there
are about 700,000 of them and they are
you know paid most of them are paid less
than $800 a month they live cramped in
dormitories they have to often wake up
at 5:00 a.m. to make their trucks which
leave their dormitories at around 6:00
because about 50 of them share one
toilet so they have to queue up two just
to share a toilet and to have a shower
and then they are packed into trucks
you’ve seen them on the roads with no
seat belts no cover sometimes and then
they get to work where their food
packets are left for them at six o’clock
in the morning and they often go putrid
by the time they eat them at lunch and
this is not me saying it this has been
documented in a study done by NUS and
published in The Straits Times so
they’re they’re fed putrid food they’re
transported without safety you know
regulations that apply to the rest of us
their cramped in dormitories that
sometimes breach all safety regulations
and they’re very often underpaid or not
paid at all and the reason is that they
are paid by cash usually and if they’re
not given a salary it’s up to them to
prove that they were underpaid now how
do you go and prove you want paid if
it’s a cash transaction so there’s a
whole host of issues that that apply to
this whole constituency of men in
Singapore and about 200 of them die
every year building these fabulous
buildings that we go to eat in and work
in and live in so you know a little
compassion towards them goes a long ways
so anyway so the idea is also what we do
is we try and integrate we find bridges
to build between our community and
theirs so in the international schools
this was a cricket match at UWC where we
had a team of migrant workers come and
play with the school kids and you can
guess who won although the migrant
workers told me that send their beat
because I didn’t want to take somebody’s
head off with the cricket ball and you
know all the parents came we had a
picnic and it was it was fantastic and a
few I’ll just show you a few other
examples of things we’ve done and it’ll
be round sort of lots of initiatives
throughout the year so this one was a
shoe shop who called us and they said
they had about 500 pairs of men’s shoes
to give to the migrant workers but there
was just a little problem they were all
not in pairs so I said no problem
send it over and I had my kids come over
and bring their friends on a Sunday
morning they all sat around in our
garage sorted the shoes out and we
loaded them back up into the car and we
you know drove out and gave it to the
migrant workers and this is another
initiative that we run with schools and
if you know those of you who are here at
Tanglin trust if you can take it up with
your Lost & Found department as well so
a lot of the school started with UWC
again that’s where my son’s go you know
I’m usually in the lost-and-found
rummaging for something that they’ve
lost you know in the last week and I
noticed all these water bottles and I
said what do you do with these water
bottles at the end of the school year
and they said oh you know I mean they
weren’t really sure so I said why don’t
you donate them to me and I’ll pass them
to the migrant workers and he said yeah
that’ll be great so we’ve been
collecting these water bottles every
year and one year it was really funny
because they were building a new high
school block at UWC during the summer
and so when I went to collect the water
bottles they loaded my car with four
cartons
I drove 10 feet stopped at the
construction site and they were
delighted to have it so you know you
take it from where it’s excess and you
give it to where it’s needed it was
perfect
and very sustainable but we do this all
year round and now we’ve got lots of
schools I’m donating water bottles to us
and this is the Starbucks food
redistribution which we run now year
round twice a week 52 weeks of the year
it’s been going on for two years this
again started with a tennis story I was
at at my son’s school for a tennis
tournament and it was four
o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and I
went over to Starbucks to get some cool
coffees for the other parents and I
noticed a huge tray of pastries and
muffins and things kept outside the
freezer and I said are you gonna throw
that away it was closing time at 4:00
because it was University Starbucks so
they said yes so I said why don’t you
you know give it to me I just saw some
road workers some migrant workers
outside doing roadworks so they said
fine very sweetly put it in Tobias gave
it to me took it over gave it to the
workers they just sat down on the road
they must have been so hungry you know
they were munching you know they were
eating these things and I took some
photos of that and put it on Facebook
and again it went viral and you know it
was picked up by The Straits Times and
seen by hundreds of thousands of people
some people thought it was Starbucks
that had done this so they said Orbitz
stop patronizing Starbucks but we’re
gonna go back now
so I got an idea so I wrote to Starbucks
saying you got so much goodwill out of
this it cost you zero dollars you were
going to throw that food away why don’t
you do this on a regular basis
Starbucks Singapore no response so I
wrote to the worldwide CEO Howard
Schultz and I said you know this is what
has happened this is the reaction why
don’t you do something I’d actually
broken my foot at that time you know a
few days after that I was laid up in bed
the very next Monday a Starbucks team
lands up at my house with Starbucks
coffees to discuss this with me and
today we do it with about 50 Starbucks
outlets every week so that’s an ongoing
initiative that we’ve got and these are
things we did very recently we organized
a giant potluck in Singapore earlier on
this year one of the ministers came with
food as well to give to the migrant
workers
we had people baking pastries and making
pesto pasta and chicken rice and all
kinds of things and it was a nationwide
potluck for the migrant workers was a
huge success we fed about 5,000 migrant
workers and alongside we also did a sort
of a free cycling so we had people
donate clothes and backpacks and
caps and sunglasses and things from the
house that were you know not needed or
not used anymore and we distributed all
of that free to the migrant workers it
was a huge success and just two weeks
ago or last week I guess for Deepavali
we did lots and lots of different
initiatives but one of it went viral and
you know I was on the radio earlier on
this week and on Channel NewsAsia and so
on but it was a pizza distribution so we
had people donate pizzas and we drove
around Singapore distributing about 200
pizzas to migrant workers and it was
just so well received and it’s you know
it’s something we do every year during
this festive time and oh yeah so I I was
saying that we’ve come a long way you
know when I started this I was a PRI
I’ve just become a Singaporean as of two
days ago but people said you know you’re
going to get kicked out of Singapore for
doing this because you know this is not
a glamorous cause and you know little
india riots had happened and you know so
i said well if they do kick me out i’ll
go because i’m not gonna live in a place
where you have to be scared to do
something compassionate and you know
fast forward to three years later last
year we won the President’s Award for
philanthropy and volunteerism we’ve won
a lot of other awards from different
ministries I have a fantastic working
relationship with the M om and different
ministers and you know there’s a
Minister grace foo who was who gave me
an awards in three years ago had invited
me to a gala dinner you know last year
and it was it was at you know that I
think the International Women’s Forum
gala dinner at the Fullerton and you
know when you receive an invite from a
minister you show up so that’s what I
did
and during that’s the talk she told my
story about how things had started so
you know the message I guess I want to
convey is that if you believe in
something good and you do it you know
there’s really no need to sometimes we
sort of go into paralysis by analysis so
it’s it’s you know just do it and as
long as you’re not harming anyone
Singapore is definitely not a place
where you need
to be scared to do something good I’m
almost running out of time so I’ll end
with this which we launched yesterday
and we’re talking about you know a
domino effect so I’d like to see that in
action so this is be a santa claus for
our migrant workers this christmas so
we’re calling for people to Pat little
gifts it could be a tiger bomb it could
be a cap it could be anything small that
they can use and if you PM the page the
Facebook page of it’s raining raincoats
will send you drop-off locations you can
drop off the gifts and our dream you
know Martin Luther King said I have a
dream our dream is that all of the
700,000 migrant workers will have a
little gift this Christmas so thank you
for listening look up the page connect
with us and please let me see this
domino effect in action so I hope you’ll
you’ll see this poster on our Facebook
page and and and take it away and do more with it thank you so much
day in in a pouring thunderstorm and as
I pulled into my little road I noticed
two workers two wrote cleaners migrant
workers crouched under a really small
cardboard sheet trying not successfully
at all to remain dry and I drove past
and thinking oh that’s so sad and then I
stopped my car put it into reverse and
came back and I can speak Tamil so I
rolled down the windows and asked them
if you know they’d get into my car I’d
take them home which was just down the
road and they could stay dry there till
the rain stopped so they said no you
know we’re really wet and muddy and
we’ll soil your car I said never mind I
can wash my car just get in so I didn’t
I refused to budge till they did so they
got into my car I took them home they
sat in a front porch we gave them some
hot coffee something to eat I gave them
my husband’s dry clothes to change into
gave them some money as well and when
the rain stopped and they were about to
go I decided to take a photograph to put
it on Facebook to say that if employers
of road cleaner send them out then given
that it can rain in Singapore at any
time they should at least give them a
raincoat or an umbrella so they said you
know will we get into trouble because
you’re gonna put this up I said I don’t
even know your names I don’t know the
name of the company you work for but if
you think you’re gonna get into trouble
here’s my number I’m a lawyer
call me if anything happens so they took
my number and off they went and I didn’t
hear from them for months until a Sunday
several weeks later I was at NTUC
shopping for groceries and I got a call
from the police to say that one of the
two guys had tried to commit suicide the
night before and the only number he had
with him was mine and would I be willing
to go to the police station and post
bail of $2,000 for him so I dropped the
grocery cart and ran to the Jurong
police station where they told me they’d
moved him to the mental hospital so I
had to go to the mental
which was very disturbing and to see
this man among you know all those
patients so his it’s a crime in
Singapore if you’ve you know attempted
to commit suicide I mean if you’re
successful you’re you’re no longer
around but so they were police guarding
the ward and I went in and they allowed
me to speak to this man and I said what
happened and he said he hadn’t been paid
his wages for three months he had loan
sharks hounding his family back home and
he didn’t know what else to do so I said
look I’m here I’m gonna take care of it
don’t do anything else foolish so I came
back out and spoke to those policemen
guarding the ward and said look this guy
is just a victim he’s not a criminal and
I said you and I don’t know what it’s
like to live on the edge of desperation
we’re taking your life is a very real
option but this guy does so you need to
you know go after the employer and not
you know be hounding this guy so those
police officers were you know maybe
young NS men I mean they couldn’t
understand what I was talking about so I
came back home and started I sent an
email to the Commissioner of Police for
the whole of Singapore and I kept
sending that email every day for a week
and you wouldn’t believe it
it worked a week later they dropped all
charges against him they got his
employer to pay him all his back wages
and a month later he was at my doorstep
again sort of a new man thanking me for
everything I’d done his wife called me
from India to thank me and it was it was
a moment that made me realise that I
invested all of maybe about 2 or 3 hours
in this entire episode and but for this
man it had changed his life I mean
you’ve heard the saying you know you
can’t change the world but you can
change the world for one person and this
was was a very real demonstration of
that to me so I sort of kept going from
there and this picture you see over here
was was the next thing that happened
which also involved rain I was dropping
my son off at a tennis match tennis
training
and as I was driving out I saw the men
in the top picture and you can guess
what they’re wearing in the rain it was
garbage bags and I thought that was
really sad and meantime their supervisor
was standing far away with an umbrella
in a shelter area he wasn’t doing any
work but he was you know dry twice over
and these men were with these black
garbage bags so I stopped my car and
said can you tell me the name of your
company
they were cars already honking behind me
but I didn’t you know at that moment
care too much about that so they just
lifted their their bags and I could tell
the name of the company from the
t-shirts that were wearing said just
took a quick photo of it came back home
google the name of the company and call
them and I said to them I have photos
and I have videos of your people working
in the rain wearing garbage bags I
didn’t have any videos but that was just
a white lie I told them and I said I’m
gonna send this to the Straits Times I’m
gonna post this on social media and I’m
gonna send it to the mo em if you don’t
give them raincoats so the guy at the
other end of the phone did a very
gracious thing he slammed the phone down
on me so I didn’t have time that day to
carry out all my threats but the next
day when I went back to drop my son
again for training that’s what I saw so
they’d given all the men brand new
yellow raincoats and rain boots and when
they saw who it was in the car they all
came running to the car to thank me and
it was fantastic so it sort of began
that way you know this whole session is
about you know the domino effect it
began that way and a couple of these
stories went viral on social media and
the Singapore kindness movement reached
out to me and said you know why don’t
you start something and we’ll support
you and we met for coffee and I had to
come up with the name right then and I’d
heard the song it’s raining men I guess
some time back so you know hence the
name it’s raining raincoats it’s a bit
of a tongue twister but it’s stuck and
we’ve come a long way since then so so
basically the idea is I mean if you know
a little bit about migrant workers
Singapore there are about three quarters
of a million migrant workers and I only
do work for the male migrant workers not
the female domestic workers and there
are about 700,000 of them and they are
you know paid most of them are paid less
than $800 a month they live cramped in
dormitories they have to often wake up
at 5:00 a.m. to make their trucks which
leave their dormitories at around 6:00
because about 50 of them share one
toilet so they have to queue up two just
to share a toilet and to have a shower
and then they are packed into trucks
you’ve seen them on the roads with no
seat belts no cover sometimes and then
they get to work where their food
packets are left for them at six o’clock
in the morning and they often go putrid
by the time they eat them at lunch and
this is not me saying it this has been
documented in a study done by NUS and
published in The Straits Times so
they’re they’re fed putrid food they’re
transported without safety you know
regulations that apply to the rest of us
their cramped in dormitories that
sometimes breach all safety regulations
and they’re very often underpaid or not
paid at all and the reason is that they
are paid by cash usually and if they’re
not given a salary it’s up to them to
prove that they were underpaid now how
do you go and prove you want paid if
it’s a cash transaction so there’s a
whole host of issues that that apply to
this whole constituency of men in
Singapore and about 200 of them die
every year building these fabulous
buildings that we go to eat in and work
in and live in so you know a little
compassion towards them goes a long ways
so anyway so the idea is also what we do
is we try and integrate we find bridges
to build between our community and
theirs so in the international schools
this was a cricket match at UWC where we
had a team of migrant workers come and
play with the school kids and you can
guess who won although the migrant
workers told me that send their beat
because I didn’t want to take somebody’s
head off with the cricket ball and you
know all the parents came we had a
picnic and it was it was fantastic and a
few I’ll just show you a few other
examples of things we’ve done and it’ll
be round sort of lots of initiatives
throughout the year so this one was a
shoe shop who called us and they said
they had about 500 pairs of men’s shoes
to give to the migrant workers but there
was just a little problem they were all
not in pairs so I said no problem
send it over and I had my kids come over
and bring their friends on a Sunday
morning they all sat around in our
garage sorted the shoes out and we
loaded them back up into the car and we
you know drove out and gave it to the
migrant workers and this is another
initiative that we run with schools and
if you know those of you who are here at
Tanglin trust if you can take it up with
your Lost & Found department as well so
a lot of the school started with UWC
again that’s where my son’s go you know
I’m usually in the lost-and-found
rummaging for something that they’ve
lost you know in the last week and I
noticed all these water bottles and I
said what do you do with these water
bottles at the end of the school year
and they said oh you know I mean they
weren’t really sure so I said why don’t
you donate them to me and I’ll pass them
to the migrant workers and he said yeah
that’ll be great so we’ve been
collecting these water bottles every
year and one year it was really funny
because they were building a new high
school block at UWC during the summer
and so when I went to collect the water
bottles they loaded my car with four
cartons
I drove 10 feet stopped at the
construction site and they were
delighted to have it so you know you
take it from where it’s excess and you
give it to where it’s needed it was
perfect
and very sustainable but we do this all
year round and now we’ve got lots of
schools I’m donating water bottles to us
and this is the Starbucks food
redistribution which we run now year
round twice a week 52 weeks of the year
it’s been going on for two years this
again started with a tennis story I was
at at my son’s school for a tennis
tournament and it was four
o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and I
went over to Starbucks to get some cool
coffees for the other parents and I
noticed a huge tray of pastries and
muffins and things kept outside the
freezer and I said are you gonna throw
that away it was closing time at 4:00
because it was University Starbucks so
they said yes so I said why don’t you
you know give it to me I just saw some
road workers some migrant workers
outside doing roadworks so they said
fine very sweetly put it in Tobias gave
it to me took it over gave it to the
workers they just sat down on the road
they must have been so hungry you know
they were munching you know they were
eating these things and I took some
photos of that and put it on Facebook
and again it went viral and you know it
was picked up by The Straits Times and
seen by hundreds of thousands of people
some people thought it was Starbucks
that had done this so they said Orbitz
stop patronizing Starbucks but we’re
gonna go back now
so I got an idea so I wrote to Starbucks
saying you got so much goodwill out of
this it cost you zero dollars you were
going to throw that food away why don’t
you do this on a regular basis
Starbucks Singapore no response so I
wrote to the worldwide CEO Howard
Schultz and I said you know this is what
has happened this is the reaction why
don’t you do something I’d actually
broken my foot at that time you know a
few days after that I was laid up in bed
the very next Monday a Starbucks team
lands up at my house with Starbucks
coffees to discuss this with me and
today we do it with about 50 Starbucks
outlets every week so that’s an ongoing
initiative that we’ve got and these are
things we did very recently we organized
a giant potluck in Singapore earlier on
this year one of the ministers came with
food as well to give to the migrant
workers
we had people baking pastries and making
pesto pasta and chicken rice and all
kinds of things and it was a nationwide
potluck for the migrant workers was a
huge success we fed about 5,000 migrant
workers and alongside we also did a sort
of a free cycling so we had people
donate clothes and backpacks and
caps and sunglasses and things from the
house that were you know not needed or
not used anymore and we distributed all
of that free to the migrant workers it
was a huge success and just two weeks
ago or last week I guess for Deepavali
we did lots and lots of different
initiatives but one of it went viral and
you know I was on the radio earlier on
this week and on Channel NewsAsia and so
on but it was a pizza distribution so we
had people donate pizzas and we drove
around Singapore distributing about 200
pizzas to migrant workers and it was
just so well received and it’s you know
it’s something we do every year during
this festive time and oh yeah so I I was
saying that we’ve come a long way you
know when I started this I was a PRI
I’ve just become a Singaporean as of two
days ago but people said you know you’re
going to get kicked out of Singapore for
doing this because you know this is not
a glamorous cause and you know little
india riots had happened and you know so
i said well if they do kick me out i’ll
go because i’m not gonna live in a place
where you have to be scared to do
something compassionate and you know
fast forward to three years later last
year we won the President’s Award for
philanthropy and volunteerism we’ve won
a lot of other awards from different
ministries I have a fantastic working
relationship with the M om and different
ministers and you know there’s a
Minister grace foo who was who gave me
an awards in three years ago had invited
me to a gala dinner you know last year
and it was it was at you know that I
think the International Women’s Forum
gala dinner at the Fullerton and you
know when you receive an invite from a
minister you show up so that’s what I
did
and during that’s the talk she told my
story about how things had started so
you know the message I guess I want to
convey is that if you believe in
something good and you do it you know
there’s really no need to sometimes we
sort of go into paralysis by analysis so
it’s it’s you know just do it and as
long as you’re not harming anyone
Singapore is definitely not a place
where you need
to be scared to do something good I’m
almost running out of time so I’ll end
with this which we launched yesterday
and we’re talking about you know a
domino effect so I’d like to see that in
action so this is be a santa claus for
our migrant workers this christmas so
we’re calling for people to Pat little
gifts it could be a tiger bomb it could
be a cap it could be anything small that
they can use and if you PM the page the
Facebook page of it’s raining raincoats
will send you drop-off locations you can
drop off the gifts and our dream you
know Martin Luther King said I have a
dream our dream is that all of the
700,000 migrant workers will have a
little gift this Christmas so thank you
for listening look up the page connect
with us and please let me see this
domino effect in action so I hope you’ll
you’ll see this poster on our Facebook
page and and and take it away and do more with it thank you so much
Please follow and like us: