Coping with poverty

It is the school holidays.

But instead of playing at the nearby playground, the four siblings are in the living room huddled over a Dragon Ball Z jigsaw puzzle.

They piece it together quickly because they have been piecing the same puzzle every day that week.

Their mother, who wanted to be known only as Madam Salmiah, conceded: "I don't let them go out to play.

I always tell them to play with their siblings at home. No football, no badminton downstairs."

This is her way of keeping them safe from danger in the Lengkok Bahru neighbourhood.

The 31-year-old housewife and her family have been living in a two-room rental flat there for the past eight years.

This neighbourhood is one of the areas of focus in Under The Hood, a ground-up initiative started by social enterprise Syinc to tackle the urban poverty issue.

"At night, there are drunkards around. Sometimes there are fights and blood everywhere," she said.

Madam Salmiah and her family have also been victims of loan shark harassment.

So far, they have received hell money and threatening letters in their letter box, and also had their unit number scribbled on the walls at the lift landing. Her neighbour's wall was recently splashed with paint.

She found out that her eldest son, seven, picked up vulgarities and even used them on a classmate at a Mendaki tuition class.

"His friend's mother was very angry. She told me that her son did not go for tuition classes to learn vulgarities," Madam Salmiah said, sounding frustrated.

The mother is eager for the family to move to a safer neighbourhood.

But she knows that with her 50-yearold husband Hashim's monthly salary of $1,400 as a cleaner, this is not a dream within reach.

"Frankly speaking, it's not enough. After paying off the utilities and miscellaneous fees like books and stationery and transport, we don't have much left," she said.

SLEEP ON COLD FLOOR

Their finances are so tight that they would rather sleep on the cold, hard floor than replace the bedbug-infested mattresses they have thrown out. At the dining table, there is only one chair.

"The other five were broken by the children over the years. Once this is gone, we will have no more chairs," Madam Salmiah said, laughing.

Applying for assistance schemes is another headache for her.

She knows there is help available, but she finds the process long-drawn and a hassle, so she has given up.

"A lot of these applications require copies of the most recent pay slips. My husband's workplace sometimes issues the pay slips late.

"By the time I finish collating these documents, they are dated again," she said, shaking her head.

The only financial assistance scheme she has applied for is The Straits Times Pocket Money Fund for her son, who will enter Primary 2 next year.

"The money will be very useful for stationery and transport," she said.

Flatmate flees moneylenders

When her elderly Singaporean husband died from Parkinson's disease four years ago, Madam Poon Sai Hee, 73, was left homeless.

As a permanent resident, the Malaysian was not allowed to continue living in the Lengkok Bahru flat which was registered under her husband's name.

She said it was a social worker from Heart to Heart service centre who helped her settle down in a one-room rental flat at Redhill Close.

"I met him when I was working. When he found out why I was still working and was losing my home, he arranged for me to live with his elder brother," the cleaner said.

She was glad of the companionship, but Madam Poon now lives alone again.

Her flatmate stopped returning home after licensed moneylenders turned up at their doorstep.

"Look at those letters," Madam Poon said, referring to the stack of papers wedged between the door grilles.

"They are chasing him to settle his debts." She rattled off her expenses like clockwork.

Holding a box of medicated plasters, she said: "I can use only this brand. There are three pieces inside. C. K. Tang sells it for $4.20, while Watsons sells it for $4.80. I use up 20 boxes a month. That alone costs $84."

Working six days a week is taking a toll on her frail body, but she does not plan to quit.

"I have no choice. I have to work to survive," she said.

His cab was his home

After securing a job as a private bus driver, he is finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

But Mr Ganesh Ganesan Veerasamy, 41, will never forget how bitter life once was after his wife walked out on their 13-year marriage in 2009.

He said: "I tried listing out all the cons of a divorce. But no point, she didn't listen." He took custody of his son, then seven, and daughter, then 12.

"They are my life, you know," he said. With no roof over their heads, the single father left his children in his sister's care while he made the taxi he was driving then his home.

To get by, he showered at public swimming pools, and his friends helped him wash his clothes. Things started to look up early this year when Mr Ganesh began earning a stable income of $2,000 as a bus driver.

He moved his family into a two-room rental flat at Lengkok Bahru shortly after, and he opted out of a financial assistance scheme.

"Enough lah, so I don't misuse," he said. Looking at his children fondly, his otherwise stoic expression softened into a smile.

"Actually they are the ones who motivated me all this while. They are very well-behaved, so I never had to worry about them. "They never demand. What they want, they will get it if I can afford it," he said.

His next goal is to move into a three-room flat, so his daughter can have a room of her own.

Syinc's Under The Hood experiment

Under The Hood is a civic experiment that attempts to tackle the problem of urban poverty in Singapore's neighbourhoods, with Bukit Ho Swee as the test bed for this ground-up initiative.

Spearheading the experiment is Syinc, a network of youth in Singapore who organise events to instil civic consciousness in others.

Founded by Ms Bernise Ang, 32, the non-profit group is made up of a team of volunteers, each with their own day jobs.

It works on the basis of crowdsourcing for ideas from people with diverse backgrounds.

Social entrepreneur Ang, one of three who won the Singapore Woman Award in 2011, was one of the 50 who applied to be a nominated Member of parliament that year.

the volunteers who have been helping range from software developers to economists.

the project started with interviews to see what the people needed.

they recently held sessions with those interested in helping to discuss how to assist the poor.

Some of the solutions to be built on include mentoring programmes to occupy children left alone at home in the day, and tapping on the strengths of stay-home mums, like sewing, in the neighbourhood.

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