COVID-19 • Members
Food Delivery Rider For Charity: When Business Relationships Deal With CSR Commitments
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Jerome Ah-Soon, Alliance Director at Nokia and an active member of the Chamber, shares about the food delivery initiative that raises funds for the Children's Cancer Foundation.
As the COVID-19 lockdown has given us plenty of time to do things we always make excuses to put aside, I found no reason for not joining my ex-colleague Anthony Houlahan in his www.fooddeliveryriderforcharity.com initiative.
Anthony had the idea and courage of enrolling as a food delivery rider to raise funds for the Children’s Cancer Foundation during his off-work hours. I found the idea brilliant and decided to enroll as it would also motivate me to spend time exercising on a bike.
Anthony and I both work in the telecom industry and used to be colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent. We shared a desire to create something positive out of the COVID-19 lockdown situation - keeping fit and contributing to charity were part of our to-do list. Both being PR foreigners here in Singapore, it was normal for us to find ways to give back to the community. Anthony started this initiative in late April and has since been running it for nearly 60 days. When I heard about it couple of weeks ago, I really felt that it was a cause that I wanted to support as well, and I had no excuse for not being able to do it !
It took me almost 2 weeks to get registered, get the equipment from Foodpanda, and I had to borrow a mountain bike from a friend. But I am all set now and have already been delivering food for 4 days. It is more complex as it looks like as you really get the stress of being on time for the delivery, and finding the right address is particularly challenging, especially in food courts or HDB areas.
The experience really teaches me how thankful we should be to all the hardworking people fulfilling the deliveries we usually take for granted.
The campaign so far has raised over 110k SGD from delivery charges, donations and pledges, which is very impressive ! Anthony himself has collected over 4,000 SGD in delivery fees while I am only able to earn 30 SGD for a 2 hour shift per day… I am still learning about the best places where I should be on standby to maximize the number of orders…
I really admire Anthony’s idea of collecting funds from the food delivery demand surge out of a real need, while raising awareness about the campaign at the same time, drawing the attention of media such as Kiss 92 FM, The Straits Times, ChannelNewsAsia and even BBC News.
The totality of the earnings, tips, sponsorships and donations as food delivery rider will go 100% to the Children's Cancer Foundation (CCF).
The CCF is a social service agency with a mission to improve the quality of life of children with cancer and their families through enhancing their emotional, social and medical well-being. They provide the much needed support in their battle against the life threatening illness. Over the years, CCF has helped more than 3,000 children and their families at different stages of the illness and recovery.
The lives of several people around me have been highly affected by cancer diagnostic recently, so being able to support the CCF is a cause for which I feel very close, especially when it concerns children.
The campaign, originally intended to last the duration of the Circuit Breaker, has been extended to June 28th , until which we will continue our food delivery rides. A big thanks for those who have already supported the campaign financially.
You can continue doing so by donating via the give.asia platform : https://www.giving.sg/campaigns/fooddeliveryriderforcharity
