Social Dimension Singapore

Tea Talk Café: A Social Enterprise in Hanoi, Vietnam

by Dr Ng Guat Tin

 

Tea Talk Café, is a social enterprise, initiated by Michael Ong, an alumni of the National University of Singapore and Washington University in St Louis, USA. He worked for a number of years as a social worker in Singapore before migrating to Hanoi to volunteer as a social work lecturer in the University of Labour and Social Affairs in 2001. When studying for his Master of Social work in America, he worked on an assignment for a social entrepreneur course and was challenged by it to develop a cozy café in Hanoi[1], where café staff and customers can express their soul, over cups of coffee.

Social enterprises that aim to provide employment for more vulnerable groups usually target older persons, people with disabilities, youth, women or the poor. Tea Talk Café is a social enterprise with a difference. It creates employment opportunities for young social workers in Hanoi, where availability of social work jobs is limited, despite the immense social needs. The vision of the Café management is that the customers and staff who pass through the doors of the Café can be transformed by their experiences and in turn, make an impact on their families, communities, future generations, and that some would use their encounters with Tea Talk to influence other cities and villages in Vietnam, and to neighbouring and faraway countries.

Read on for an interview with Michael Ong, conducted by Dr Ng Guat Tin, on 17 November 2014, at Tea Talk Café, Hanoi[2], Vietnam. The Café opened in 2012 and is managed by two Vietnamese, with Michael providing consultancy to them. As the Café focused on the food business it set up CoRE (Centre for Counseling, Research and Empowering Community) as a NGO to provide social services targeting young people, especially those with mental health, pre-marital, marital and family issues. Most of the CoRE Community activities are sponsored by and conducted at the Café[3], which becomes a hub for building up a community.

State Perspectives on Poverty & Welfare in Singapore: The Case for Low Income Families With Long Term Medical Conditions

By: Arvinder Kaur

    “Self-reliance” and “family as the first line of defense” might sound like foreign terms to some but they tug deeply at the hearts of all Singaporeans. These ideologies have been well internalized by Singaporeans, rich and poor alike, reflecting the success of the government in nurturing an ideological consensus amongst its citizens. However, when such ideologies move beyond political rhetoric to actively shape the states’ perspective on poverty and welfare, it spells significant consequences for social groups who are unable to live up to the dominant discourse of self-reliance.

    One such social group would be low-income families with member(s) suffering from long-term medial conditions. In the recent years we have often heard the saying “If you’re sick in Singapore, you better be rich, If you’re poor, you better not fall sick”. It is one thing to hear and utter statements such as these; it is quite another thing altogether to be living and experiencing poverty and sickness in Singapore. Over a period of 4 months, I had the opportunity to be connected to 12 such families through two welfare organizations; the Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centres & the Singapore Sikh Welfare Council. In an attempt to study the impact of the current welfare policies on low-income families with long-term medical conditions, I had requested the organizations to link me up to families with:

(a) At least one member in the family suffering from a chronic disease, immobility or any other medical conditions

(b) The family member is currently on or has applied for Medifund or any other medical or non-medical assistance scheme

(c) Combined Household Income of less than $1,500

 

Social Work as "Net" Work

Dr Vincent Chua

National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology, [email protected]

‘Social’ work is essentially, ‘net’work. Helping others often means connecting with them, asking simply: “how can I help?” Mention ‘social networks’ today, and images of the Internet and Facebook come to mind. Yet, people have networked since the beginning of time. And the practice has not stopped. If anything, tsunamis, earthquakes and other crises, have brought man to helping one another through high water and low valley.

More than technological artifacts, ‘networks’ are the everyday connections made between family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers. Whether online or offline, networks are real and consequential, they are the concrete channels through which resources, whether money, emotional aid or creative ideas, flow between people. Social workers are well acquainted with the power of connect and contact in crisis. Networks are indispensable and we all need them.

Understanding Oppression in Mental Health

 By Koh Li Lian

 

 

 

What is Oppression?

             Mary Rogers (1997), in sharing on feminist ideas, defines oppression as “an experiential notion” and referred to “how people in the lower reaches of social hierarchies react over time by way of their identities and emotions”; and a measure of “the toil of social hierarchies and systems of domination on the more dominated”. The concept of the dichotomy of men and women parallels the concept of abnormality and sanity. The ‘sane’ persons often dominate persons who are deemed to be ‘abnormal’ due to their mental states.

             Adam Podgórecki’s (1993) definition of oppression as “an external or internal man-made limitation of the available options of human behaviour of an individual or a group” strikes a chord with me. Oppression can be experienced publicly or privately, does not exist naturally and may be directed to an individual or a collective group. He speaks of false consciousness, which indicates that oppression could appear in covert and implicit forms and may not be explicit to the public’s eyes, such as in racial domination and oppression of females.

 

SASW NEWS: Commentary on TODAYonline by SASW President Dr Kalyani K Mehta

from TODAYonline May 25 2011:

 

 

Wanted: More Safety Nets and Bridges

When it comes to the elderly poor, has the message of self-reliance been overstretched?

Ageing trends occurring worldwide are accentuated in the Asia Pacific region, which is where the majority of older people will be found in this century.

Policies on development and economic growth have increased the adverse effects of population ageing - by, for instance, reinforcing urbanisation trends, labour migration from underdeveloped/developing nations to more developed nations, and changing retirement patterns.