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We set a record of sorts recently.

During the week of the National Day (week ending August 9th), more than 90 volunteers from Singapore Life Church came together to build 8 houses in Batam, a record number of houses for a one-time build in Batam.

It was a culmination of months of effort on multiple fronts. For the volunteers from Singapore Life Church, they spent many months preparing and promoting the trip, raising funds via a funfair in church, selling food items, going to get corporate sponsorship. For Habitat Singapore and Indonesia, lots of planning had to be done to conduct such a build, spread over a 2 km square area. Habitat Indonesia brought in staff from their other locations like Jogjakarta and Surabaya just to assist in this grand project.

Singapore Life Church members building with the home partner.

I must say that this was a rather ambitious undertaking, for the largest number of houses built at a time prior to this was only 2. But we were determined to see if we can bring our work in Batam to the next level, by engaging more volunteers. If we are really serious about helping the tens of thousands of people in Batam without decent permanent housing, then we really need to step up to the game. Our Indonesian colleagues were very encouraged by this experience, and now their National Director is talking to us about really ramping up the numbers! I fear we may have 'over-encouraged' them... but it is like they say, a good problem to solve. Thanks to this project, we are now able to have the confidence to look into greater tasks ahead.

Passing cement blocks as part of the build.

This volunteer group from Singapore Life Church consisted mainly of Christians and their friends. One fascinating aspect of this build was to witness this group of Christians building for a Muslim home partner, Mr Moonas. The volunteers were working on Mr Moonas' new house, while his old rented house stood about 50 meters down the road. The volunteers were able to see for themselves the terrible state of the old house, which Mr Moonas rented for a monthly rent of about S$8. The whole group of people, Christians and Muslims, worked in perfect harmony for the few days.

I have always appreciated this great blessing in the work we do in Habitat, i.e. our ability to focus on the commonality among people of all race, language and religion. We have had teams of Christians building for a Muslim, Taoist and Buddhists building with the Christians, Muslim folks joining the Christians in a build... you name it, we probably had a combination that had it. We may have our very real differences, but we can still focus on the common desire to do good for the downtrodden among us all. We really don't have to blow each other up over our differences.

So why don't you join us, and help bring harmony to this broken world?

Blessings.



Yong Teck Meng, National Director, August 26th 2008

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