AETOS CEO Alfred Fox (seated in front) with the underprivileged children that AETOS volunteers hosted.
Building cities and shaping lives are what Surban Jurong does. And its people also seek to help the disadvantaged and spread joy during the decade-end festive season. Here’s what our colleagues across the globe were busy with:
Thrills and spills with underprivileged kids in Singapore
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AETOS partnered with Care Community Services Society (CCSS) and Community Chest to bring festive joy to underprivileged children with their inaugural edition of an event named Project Bake Smiles. The children learnt to bake Christmas gingerbread man cookies with volunteers from AETOS and they got to play a “Super Race” at the SuperPark Singapore; an exciting indoor playground at Suntec. AETOS employees bonded with the children and collectively raised a total of S$10,000 which will go towards paying for the children’s school uniforms, textbook and school fees. Well done!
Playing Santa Claus to orphans in Bangalore
Children of Angel’s Children’s Home had a great time with the team from Surbana Jurong-SMEC.
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Instead of playing secret Santa in the office, staff in Surbana Jurong-SMEC Bangalore took a collection among staff members and for 60 children of Angel’s Orphanage based in Central Bangalore. The orphanage administration was asked to provide a wish list by the children before the event. The Staff Welfare Committee, together with few Surbana Jurong-SMEC volunteers, raised the funds to buy all the necessary items requested by the children, and spent half a day filled with fun and games with the children at the orphanage.
Improving sanitation facilities in rural Indonesia
The community outreach activity aims to boost the living condition of people around an Indonesian village through the provision of basic sanitation activities. The SMEC team (in orange) are with villagers with a facility they had just built.
SMEC volunteers recently reached out to communities around the hamlet of Ncangga, Hu’u District, Dompu Regency in the province of West Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia, with the aim of providing decent and comfortable sanitation facilities for the rural poor. This initiative was carried out by the CSR team in Jakarta with the help of SMEC employees involved in an ongoing project located nearby. The head of Ncangga, as well as the carpenters in Ncangga, also supported this CSR effort.
Surbana Jurong China goes back to their roots in Suzhou in China
Surbana Jurong China staff spending time with the seniors at a home in the old city centre of Suzhou.
Staff from Surbana Jurong China spent a meaningful afternoon visiting a home for the elderly in the old city centre of Suzhou in November. This city was where Surbana Jurong China started their first project in Suzhou Industrial Park, more than 25 years ago. The staff members spent the afternoon chatting with the elderly residents. There was even an impromptu dance performance by 3-year-old Alisa Lim, daughter of Andrew Lim, a senior architect with Surbana Jurong’s China team. The event also included a charity walk for the Tencent Charity Programme to raise funds for the home.
Journeying with the unbreakable in Hong Kong…
Staff from SMEC and RBG helped to create upcycled walking sticks from trees felled by Typhoon Mangkut, by sanding and polishing wood in a workshop.
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Some 30 SMEC and RBG staff in Hong Kong recently took to using wood from trees that had been felled by Typhoon Mangkut in September 2018 to make over 30 walking sticks for the elderly in Hong Kong. The typhoon was one of the worst typhoons to hit Hong Kong in recent years – it caused winds of 250 km/h and felled 46,000 trees in Hong Kong. The team partnered with The Warehouse, sanding down and polishing the wood to assemble sturdy walking sticks – and gave new meaning to the phrase “down but not out”. The Warehouse gathers all walking sticks and passes them to the elderly as a gift.
In June, the staff had participated in another event with The Warehouse to transform wooden pallets into benches for use at bus stops in the Southern District. They found the event so meaningful they returned to the same workshop to help create the walking sticks.
And repainting traditional stilt houses in a village in Tai O…
The SMEC-RBG team went to Tai O fishing village to give a fresh coat of paint to homes of elderly villagers.
For the third community outreach effort, some 25 volunteers from SMEC and RBG in Hong Kong took time out in early December to visit Tai O fishing village, known for its traditional Chinese stilt-house community built over water. They helped to repaint three stilt houses for local elderly residents. The residents shared stories of Tai O and were very pleased with the bright and cheerful coat of paint their homes had received. The team hopes this will help sustain the heritage of stilt houses in the fishing village of Tai O for years to come. Well done, team!
