THE BANK BOOK -February 2016A NEWSLETTER BY THE FOOD BANK SINGAPORE
MESSAGE FROM OUR CHIEF FOOD OFFICERs
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
Hello Everyone, Thank you for your support over the last three years since our founding in 2012. We are glad to say that we have indeed grown strength to strength from our starting days. 2015 ended on a good note with donations, food bundles, volunteers, corporate tie ups, and other activities on an all time high. We are also very heartened to know that awareness of food wastage and food insecurity issues has been increasing in the past year and many corporates have chosen to campaign against food wastage while helping those in need. But sadly to say, in 2015 we also bided farewell to our original food banker and team member Ms Pea Shermain who has left us to pursue other dreams in her life journey. We would like to take the opportunity to thank her for all her hard work and effort in helping us to establish the food bank that we are today and we wish her all the best! 2016 should be another exciting year for us and we are looking forward to working more closely with everyone. If you have any ideas or areas of need, please do share them with us. Thanks once again for your support. Have an excellent year ahead! Nichol Ng & Nicholas Ng Chief Food Officers & Co-Founders
Greetings from The Food Bank Singapore! We are bringing you a review of 2015 and highlight of what is up and coming! A big thank you to those who have supported us all these while! Rest assured that 2016 will be as exciting or even better with our many upcoming plans and activities! We hope that you will continue to enjoy your journey with us.
CONTENT PAGE Announcements
03
Food Collections
04-05
Programmes
06-07
Campaigns
08
Events
09 - 10
Media Exposure
11
What’s Happening in 2016
12
Announcements
THE BANK BOOK  
-February 2016-
Tax Deduction for donors
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IPC Status! The Food Bank Singapore received approval as an Institution of a Public Character (IPC) by the Singapore Government's Charities Unit on May 2015!
With the IPC status, The Food Bank Singapore is able to issue tax deductible receipts for qualifying donations to donors. Donors can claim tax relief from their assessable income based on the amount donated at prevailing deduction rate. We hope that this status will help us to bring in more donations to support our mission to feed the hungry.
giving.sg
The Food Bank Singapore is proud to be a new member of giving.sg, an online portal that allows the public to donate, volunteer and create campaigns to fund raise for charities that they are passionate about. We hope that through giving.sg, more individuals will find it easier to come forward in the spirit of giving.
New Membership
Total food collected
157,400kg! Salvaged & redistributed in 2015!
Do not bin it when you can still eat it!
Food Collection projects
THE BANK BOOK  
-February 2016-
04
Food Rescue Project
In efforts to salvage perishable food from F&B establishments, the Food Rescue Project was launched in April and since then, it has received great response! To ensure that hygiene standards are met and that the food collected from the various F&B partners are safe for consumption, The Food Bank Singapore collaborated with Gourmet Food Safety Consultancy to conduct a series of lab tests and the results were all positive!
Rescue Cooked Food!
Almost daily, our beneficiaries receive donations from food establishments, hotels and grocers such as Redmart, Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre, Flor Patisserie, and Hilton Hotel. We are still looking out for more F&B partners to jump on the bandwagon to reduce food wastage because, Why Bin It When You Can Still Eat It!
Festive Drive
In February, we hosted a Festive Drive for Chinese New Year to encouraged the public to donate their excess goodies to us. The festive drive turned out to be a great success with more than 4,200 tubs of goodies collected! We hosted another two Festive Drives for Hari Raya and Lantern Festival, and collected a total of 1,500 tubs of Hari Raya goodies and a total of 11,312 mooncakes! Though we are glad that we have managed to salvaged so much food through our Festive Drive Campaign, it also serves as a reminder to everyone to pay closer attention to the amount of food we are purchasing during festive occasions. Remember, buy only what you can consume.
Buy only what you can consume
Food Collection projects
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
05
Bank Box The Food Bank Singapore launched the Bank Box programme with a mission to encourage food recycling. Our Bank Box is a container used to collect unwanted, unopened nonperishable food items with at least four weeks of shelf-life.
JLT Asia
In 2015, we introduced two different adoption schemes – Deposit and Sponsorship. Organisations, schools and even individuals can adopt our Bank Box for a minimum of six months to collect food donations by simply contributing either a small refundable deposit or a nonTo make food refundable fee where the organisation’s logo will be featured on donation more our Bank Boxes convenient in recognition of their contribution. Currently, there are more than 50 Bank Boxes island-wide in office pantries, schools, shopping malls, and even condominiums! That’s a 150-percent increase from 20 corporate adoptions in 2014! Giant hypermarket is a huge contributor to our Bank Box Campaign! Thanks to their support, we have our Bank Box located at convenient places such as The Grandstand,Vivocity and Parkway Parade. Do visit our website (www.foodbank.sg) to check out the full list of our Bank Box location!
Giant Parkway Parade
We are still looking out for more partners to adopt our Bank Boxes to help encourage and make food donation more convenient for everyone.
programmes  
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
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Joy in every bundle A total of 10,080 food bundles was donated by organisations and individuals, packed and distributed to our member beneficiaries in 2015. That’s triple from what was donated in 2014! Besides pledging the food bundles, many corporates such as Sysmex, Bosch, and Food Bundles Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific took time out to physically pack and packing & distribute the food bundles door-todistributions door to our beneficiaries. On October 16, Caterpillar Asia Pte Ltd packed 1,200 food bundles, the biggest number of food bundles donation we have received to date! The food bundles were distributed to the underprivileged families under three different beneficiary centres! We would like to extend our gratitude to Caterpillar Asia Pte Ltd for their kind donation. Electrolux initiated an interesting social media campaign (#happyplatesg) to raise awareness of food wastage by encouraging the public to finish up their food and capture their empty plate as an accomplishment. For every empty plate picture posted on Instagram, Electrolux would donate a food bundle to the underprivileged. The #happyplatesg campaign helped raise more than 1,000 food bundles for families in need! In 2016, The Food Bank Singapore will be focusing more towards Healthy Food Bundles, to raise awareness of healthier food donations and to provide our beneficiaries with a healthier option. Besides the regular canned goods, our Healthy Food Bundles consist of oatmeal, wholemeal cream crackers, dried apples, and even soy rice. We seek for your continuous support!
Caterpillar Asia Pte Ltd
Scientec Personel Ptd Ltd
Electrolux
programmes
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07
Celebrate with Food Bank
The Food Bank Singapore initiated Celebrate with Food Bank programme to encourage the public to put a meaningful twist on their special occasion. Instead of having a big hotel party, why not gather your friends and family to support The Food Bank Singapore? Meaningful Since our launch in 2015, we have conducted three birthday celebration celebrations! We hope to organise more of such activities to raise the awareness of food banking.
Mansi’s Family & Friends
Juniors club
The Food Bank Singapore launched The Juniors Club in the 3rd quarter of 2015 with an aim of encouraging volunteerism from a young age. Children aged five to 12 are welcome to join our Juniors Club for free! In December, we had our first Juniors Club gathering at The Food Bank Singapore’s warehouse with a turnout of more than 100 juniors! The juniors got a chance to tour our warehouse, learn more about our operations Encourage and make their own masterpieces out of volunteerism coloured expired rice! from young In 2016, we plan to conduct more activities to educate the juniors about food wastage. Besides getting involved in our food bundles activities, arts and crafts sessions as well as food jarring classes, there will also be excursion opportunities to visit places such as the incineration plants, vegetable farms, animal farms and others. If you are interested in getting your little ones involved in the upcoming activities, do register them on our website to receive more updates!
Campaigns
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
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fresh food truck Project The Food Bank Singapore is raising funds for our Food Truck Project! Our objective is to reduce food wastage by collecting excess fresh food and redistributing them to the needy in Singapore through a fresh food truck.We aim to set up a fully equipped mobile fresh food truck to assist with the redistribution.We are hoping to get a funding of S$130,000 to purchase a chiller truck and convert it to a fully equipped fresh food pantry. Over the last four months of 2015, we collaborated with AugustMan Magazine to raise funds for our Fresh Food Truck Project. A total of $32,333.10 was raised through events such as Pig Out, Wondersday, the Fire Bucket Challenge, and the A-list cook out! Besides raising monetary donations, the Augustman A-listers swung by our warehouse to help with food sorting and inventory To make taking of the food donations! fresh food
more accessible
In November 2015, Salesforce also supported our Fresh Food Truck Project by initiating Cloud Run, an annual fund raising event consisting of a 5km obstacle course.A total of $50,180 was raised through that event!
Till date, we have managed to raise a total of $120,000, A big thank you to Augustman Magazine, Salesforce Foundation, Khoo Chwee Neo Foundation and several other individual donors your support! of 2016, so stay tuned!
McDonald’s Happy meal food voucher were encouraged to pledge their unwanted happy meals to The Food Bank Singapore during the Minions and SG50 Hello Kitty Collectibles promotion period.The pledged meals were converted into happy ! Our of them rarely have the chance to pamper themselves with such people we serve.
No food should go to waste
events
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
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high-tea get together Over the years,The Food Bank Singapore has been providing food rations to a growing number of charity organisations.We have progressed from providing for 120 organisations in 2014, to 150 charity organisations in 2015!
Feedback session
In March 2015,The Food Bank Singapore organised a high-tea session with our member
gather feedback on how we can better serve them. We were fortunate to have Singapore Pools sponsoring us the venue. It was a fruitful session with the representatives
Foodbankers gathering Connect Senior Activity Centre. Besides mingling around, getting to know one another and the roles each volunteer plays at The Food Bank Singapore, we also packed food bundles and had lunch with the elderly. As the volunteering roles at The Food Bank Singapore are more towards the backend duties, we felt that having our gathering at our
Thank you Foodbankers!
them to have a better understanding of how their efforts have contributed to bringing smiles to the faces of the people we served. you have given us! You have made it possible for us to bring food to the table of many people.We look forward to more fun and exciting time together!
events
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CDL E-Generation Challenge CDL E-Generation Challenge is an annual youth competition organised by City Developments Limited. The theme for last year was “Trace your footprint”, with a primary objective to foster greater consciousness about the environmental impact of food waste. More than 400 youth participated in this event. The Food Bank Singapore is proud to partner CDL in this eco-initiative that helps youths understand the magnitude of food wastage issue.
Project X-pired Project X-pired is an initiative to raise awareness of food wastage in Singapore. Instead of dumping expired food, The Food Bank Singapore collects them and collaborate with artists to convert them into art pieces for a fund raising auction
Converting expired food into art
For our second year running, we converted Project X-pired into a competition-based event where all artists regardless of age could join to showcase their talent.
Participants were given a frame to produce a 2D art piece using expired food items. Selected art pieces were displayed during Project X-pired on October 10 & 11, at City Square Mall, B1 Fountain Square, as well as at ITB Asia 2015 on November 21 to 23. Besides the art exhibition, there were also performances by our beneficiaries, photobooth, food & beverage corner, mini-bazaar, as well as information booths on site! Our 2016 theme for Project Xpired is Fashion where we are planning to work with artist to convert expired food into clothes and accessories! Stay tuned to find out more!
Media Exposure  
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
NEWS & Shows! In 2015, The Food Bank Singapore has managed to garner the attention of the media with regards to food wastage and food insecurity issues in Singapore. The Straits Times featured Food Bank’s Chinese New Year food drive; Channel News Asia and Channel 8 News interviewed our Co-founders about our food rescue project; 98.3FM also invited our co-founders to share their opinions on food waste. In addition, various TV programmes such as The 5 Search, Frontline, Junk Converters, and Get Social filmed and featured an episode on The Food Bank Singapore, which have helped us tremendously in spreading the word about our activities and programmes! We are heartened to see the increasing interest and concerns that the media has towards food wastage and food insecurity issues. With their support, The Food Bank Singapore's awareness has increased significantly!
Increase awareness
In 2016, we hope to be the adopted charity of commercial media company so that more people can know about our work.
Get Social - Okto
The 5 Search - Channel 5
11
What’s happening in 2016
THE BANK BOOK -February 2016-
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Food pantry
families and even the public can purchase food items and bundles a only $2. Do keep a look out for more news about our food pantry which will be located at Sims Avenue. Drop us an email at enquiries@foodbank.sg to be a part of this exciting project!
Project Eat Better Honestly Good Jars Food & Hotel Asia
An initiative to encourage the public to change their eating habits.A cook book on cheap and healthy recipes will be published and shared with our they can prepare healthiermeals.
We are hoping to partner with culinary schools and restaurants to organise workshops to educate the public on food jarring techniques which help to extend the shelf life of easily perishable food items.
charity partner once again! We look forward to spreading the word about foodbanking to the food industry players while we collect and
LET THE FEEDING BEGIN! The Food Bank Singapore’s Team The Food Bank Singapore Ltd Contact: 68315395 Email: enquiries@foodbank.sg Add: 39 Keppel Road #01-02/04,Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065 Website: www.foodbank.sg
Jo-an Choo Margarita Management Management Associate Associate Trainee
Nicholas Ng Co-founder
Nichol Ng Co-founder
Goh Chong Meng Executive Director
Thank you!