A new revolution is growing slowly in Singapore – and it’s for a good cause.
A Facebook page called “CHOPE FOOD for the NEEDY – ‘Suspended Food Revolution’ to Pay It Forward” is encouraging netizens to help the needy have food to eat.
https://www.facebook.com/chopefoodfortheneedy
The steps are simple: Go to your favourite hawker, pre-pay for packet/s of food, and ask the hawker to give these out to needy people when they see them.
Over 1,500 people have liked the page so far.
A post by the administrator of the page says, “The beauty of this system is there is in effect no need to get awareness out to the needy. We are harnessing the supply side of things, not the demand side – We are delegating the part of finding needy people to the hawkers who will have an idea of who’s needy in their area.”
The concept likely came about from a meme, or an Internet trend, going around on Facebook and other social media on ‘suspended coffee’.
As the meme goes, a person observed two people ordering 5 coffees – two for themselves, and three suspended. A few moments later, a man dressed shabbily comes in, asks for the suspended coffee, and gets it.
According to an AFP report, the tradition was born in the cafes of Italy’s southern city of Naples and is known as “caffe soppreso”, which literally means suspended coffee.
In Singapore, while some have also expressed doubts, about the practice, some people have already started doing it.
At least two people have shared their experience in approaching a hawker about it, and they have said the hawkers approached have been receptive to the idea.
A member of the page, Bobby Liu, commented: “While we’d like to have our contribution going to the right channel, we can’t prevent or worry about it too much. Once it’s given, it’s gone out. We can only hope for altruism in people. This is paying forward…performing a good deed not for returns but hoping this good deed will inspire others to do likewise.”
Source: AsiaOne