Giving back to Jalan Kukoh: S’porean who grew up in Jalan Kukoh rental flat neighbourhood now serves his childhood community

Sitting on top of a hill and overlooking iconic spots such as Chinatown and Clarke Quay, the HDB estate of Jalan Kukoh is home to a number of lower-income families living in public rental flats.

For Lim Kay Yong, 31, Jalan Kukoh - is close to his heart as he grew up in the estate, and attended the nearby Outram Secondary School.

He has fond memories of playing basketball after school with his schoolmates who live in the same area.

Lim tells us how Jalan Kukoh has built up a sense of community over the years, as the residents living there look out for one another and take ownership in building up their community.

“[Having residents whom you do not know coming up to chat with you] is a sign of the bonds and trust within the community. Isn’t it nice to have someone exchange simple greetings with you while you are on your way home?”

Besides the residents, multiple community partners have also been active in Jalan Kukoh over the years, including community agencies, food charities and volunteers.

They support the families in different ways, such as providing food rations and running enrichment programmes for children and parents. 

It is this power of community which inspired Lim himself to start doing his part to give back to society when he was a teenager.

As a student leader during his polytechnic and university days, he contributed actively to initiatives aimed at improving his peers’ welfare and learning environment.

During his time in the army, Lim was part of “Happy Friends Club”, a volunteer group which organised and ran camps for persons with disabilities.

Since 2013, he has been a grassroots volunteer in Jalan Kukoh.

Lim credits these experiences for steering him towards a career in the social service sector. 

So was it a coincidence or a conscious choice that he is now giving back to the same community that he grew up in? 

“I think it is always good to go back to our roots,” Lim shares.

“There’s a Chinese saying, ‘饮水思源’, which is to remember your roots and where you came from. Part of it is certainly a conscious choice, but I am thankful that an opportunity presented itself for me to continue giving back to my community.”

Community Link (ComLink)

Incidentally, Jalan Kukoh is one of the first four pilot locations for ComLink, started in 2019 by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF).

ComLink provides Comprehensive, Convenient and Coordinated support to empower families with children living in rental housing to improve their circumstances and achieve their aspirations. 

As an SSO officer, Lim is part of the team that implements ComLink in Kreta Ayer and Bukit Merah. 

Reaching out to understand families 

As part of ComLink, Lim and his colleagues reach out to the families to understand their needs, strengths, worries, and aspirations. 

“It gives us a clearer picture of each family, where they need support, and what their hopes and dreams are.”

ComLink’s goal is to understand each family holistically and journey with them over time, and partner them to achieve their dreams and aspirations.

Here, Lim’s lifelong familiarity with the community has helped him to foster relationships and relate to the families’ perspectives and challenges more easily.

Having grown up in the neighbourhood, he is a familiar face to some of the older residents, who welcome him like an old friend.

As Lim and his team go door-to-door to engage residents, he is able to break the ice and establish rapport with ease. 

Involving the family

After building a better understanding of the families, Lim, together with volunteer befrienders, works with the families to set out plans to address their needs, and achieve their aspirations.

This is not a short-term endeavour, but a sustained journey that has to be customised to each family’s circumstances.

Befrienders spend time building rapport and trust, in order to engage the family more deeply on their longer-term goals, and set out concrete steps that the family needs to take to get there. Lim shares an example: 

“Sometimes, we may think that a family will have greater financial stability if the mother were to take on a job to supplement the father’s income. But the family may not be ready to do so as they may have young children who need care. We will need to first help the family to place their children in childcare, before encouraging the mother to look for a job. It’s about taking the right course of action at the right time.”

The families are active participants in this process of setting goals and charting their future.

The befrienders are there to journey with the family, connect them to the necessary resources and services, and provide a listening ear and encouragement when needed.

In short, to truly be their friend, and to empower them as they work towards a brighter future. 

Involving the community

Growing up in Jalan Kukoh has shown Lim how the community steps up during times of need, particularly families supporting one another.

ComLink builds on this community spirit by bringing government agencies, social service agencies, and community partners together to support the families. 

After understanding the families’ needs, Lim works closely with community agencies to curate and coordinate programmes that meet their needs, and ensures support is provided holistically across the community.

“If we look at just one family, the tendency is to see how to gather all available resources to support the family. But if you have an overview of all the families within the community, then the considerations would be very different. You would have to think about how to organise community resources as a whole and direct them to those in need in a sustainable manner.”

For example, volunteers can provide mentoring or educational support to children from these families, help to organise family-bonding activities or engage at-risk youth through sports, depending on the families’ areas of interest or needs. 

What more should be done for these communities, you might ask? Lim feels framing the question as such was limiting and disempowering.

“The use of the word “should” is problematic. We could well be projecting our ideals onto these families, failing to realise that each family is unique.”

Instead, Lim posits that a more useful word would be “how”.

“I believe that there are valuable resources available and these families are resilient and capable of achieving much more with the right resources and support. Rather than framing it as what families ‘should’ have and ‘should’ do, it would be more helpful to focus our efforts on ‘how’ we can connect them to the right resources, support them in achieving small successes, and enable them to eventually achieve their dreams and aspirations.”

While Lim is heartened to see more people caring about the community and seeking to contribute, he believes empowering these communities is a long-term effort that all Singaporeans can play a part in.

He shares: “I think that there is potential for the volunteering landscape to evolve. Beyond something one-off, it can be a sustained process to walk with families in their journey to achieve stability, build capacity to be self-reliant, and ultimately achieve social mobility.”

This is a sponsored article by MSF.

Be a part of this meaningful effort to uplift families in need – sign up to be a ComLink volunteer at: go.gov.sg/comlinkvolunteering. For other opportunities, start your volunteering journey with us at the MSFCare Network on msf.gov.sg/volunteer.