Inspiring Stories

She often got into fights and paid little attention to her studies in school.

Miss Diyanah Sharif, 17, freely admits to having skipped lessons so she could hang out with her friends.

“I misbehaved a lot in school and often played truant,” recounts the former Bedok Town Secondary School student, who left school after completing her N levels last year.

“I was often involved in fights over silly things and it happened so often that my friends called me immature,” says Diyanah, the eldest of six children.

She drifted along after dropping out of school, supplementing her allowance from her parents by working as a part-time waitress at Hyatt Hotel and earning $1,000 a month.

But four months ago, Diyanah found a new life.

And it’s all thanks to coffee.

In May, the teenager was inducted into a unique 12-week programme with the Bettr Barista Coffee Academy.

The social enterprise, located on Burn Road in MacPherson, was formed last year and is dedicated towards improving the lives of disadvantaged women.

Social enterprises are for-profit companies with a social mission. They include firms that offer job opportunities to former convicts or the disabled.

The Bettr Barista programme combines training and internship opportunities as a barista with speciality coffee joints like 40 Hands in Tiong Bahru, as well as life and emotional management training led by a New York-trained clinical psychologist.

There is even physical training incorporating self-defence, yoga and canoeing.

Bettr Barista founder Pamela Chng told The New Paper on Sunday that the academy has enrolled six people between the ages of 17 and 34 since the programme was introduced in January.

Said Ms Chng, 36, who sold her stake in a lucrative web consultancy firm last year to start Bettr Barista: “I never had any time to do any social work previously, but after working for a company for over 10 years, I decided I wanted to work on something that would incorporate my passion for coffee while helping people in the process.”

The company offers professional barista coffee training and coffee appreciation classes. Bettr Barista also provides coffee brew bars at events.

Change, one woman at a time

A percentage of the profits goes towards funding the education of the women it helps, Ms Chng adds. “Bettr Barista was a substantial investment, but I did it to help women because I believe if you change a woman’s life, she can change the lives of those around her,” she maintains.

She declines to reveal exactly how much she has pumped into her new venture.

There are no fewer than 40 cafes serving artisanal coffee in Singapore, “so our programmes serve the industry while providing opportunities to those who are interested, and hopefully offer them a decent wage,” Ms Chng says.

Potential students are referred to the programme by social services organisations such as Beyond Social Services, Lakeside Family Service Centre and the Malay Youth Literary Association.

Diyanah, who first heard of the programme through Beyond Social Services, is Bettr Barista’s star pupil.

“To be honest, I never even had a cup of coffee before the programme, but now, I have found a new passion and hopefully a career as a professional barista,” she says with a smile.

“At first, my parents were very sceptical about this programme, but I convinced them that this was my future.

“And I’m glad I stuck with it. I’m much more confident dealing with customers and the people I meet at our corporate events.”

Bettr Barista will be presenting coffee-themed workshops and events till Tuesday, which are aimed at appreciating speciality coffee while giving back to the community at the same time. For more information, visit http://www.bettrbarista.com/#60d/wordpress

While doing housework one day, she got a phone call that changed her life.

She was given only five minutes to decide whether to accept a kidney from a brain-dead donor.

Former kidney dialysis patient June Yew, 55, grabbed the opportunity.

Since then, the retired statistical assistant has been able to have a life free from dialysis.

Miss Yew has now become a volunteer with the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and helps out in its Grains of Hope programme.

She distributes food items – 5kg of rice, 3kg of beehoon, 2 litres of cooking oil and a S$60 supermarket voucher – to needy kidney patients once every two months under the programme.

She will also be helping out at the NKF’s first ever fund-raising carnival at Marina Barrage this Sunday.

She said: “I’m happy that I can help now that I’ve retired. At least I’m doing something, even though it is just a small contribution.”

Fifteen years have passed since the life-changing call on May 11, 1997 – a day that remains etched in Miss Yew’s memory.

It was Mother’s Day.

Twist of fate

As fate would have it, a mother had been killed in a traffic accident.

The 50-year-old housewife’s son was taking her on his motorcycle to see a doctor when they were knocked down. The son was slightly hurt, but his mother died from serious injuries, Miss Yew recalled.

A Lianhe Wanbao report, dated May 10, 1998, said that the victim’s husband, then 52, and son, then 21, gave consent for the removal of all organs from her for donation. And one of her kidneys went to Miss Yew.

“I’m very touched that I got this kidney. The day I received the transplant was the day my life changed. I got a second chance at life. I’m eternally grateful to my donor,” said Miss Yew.

“I asked the transplant coordinator whether I could meet the donor’s family. The answer was ‘no’.”

She found out who her donor was only a year later from the reporter who had interviewed her, she said.

Miss Yew knew something was wrong with her body when she was in her early 20s.

“I was very active in school, playing sports. But on and off, I would get blood in my urine. When I went for a check-up, they told me that it was renal tuberculosis.”

Her kidneys were functioning at 80 per cent at the time, but they started deteriorating rapidly when she was 34.

She thought she could have caught the bug from her grandmother, who had lung tuberculosis (TB).

Renal physician Akira Wu, 62, said that renal TB is usually associated with either active lung TB due to germs spreading in the blood stream or a reactivation of old TB in the lungs.

He said that it is extremely rare for someone to contract renal TB from the environment and that it usually affects people with immunity deficiencies.
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By the time Miss Yew was 37, her kidneys had failed completely and she had to go on dialysis.

She said: “Those were dark days. It was very demoralising because every other day, you were reminded that you were sick.

“When you go to the toilet and you hear the sound of someone peeing, it can make you cry because you can’t do it.”

She could take only a certain amount of fluids each day.

“If you take more – even if it’s just a small cup – you can’t even breathe,” she said.

Having experienced first-hand what a kidney patient has to endure, Miss Yew said she could understand why “kidney patients are so grouchy”.

She hopes that kidney patients who are waiting for a donor will be able to get one and advises them to stay healthy in the meantime.

“If I wasn’t fit at the time, I wouldn’t have got this kidney. So you must keep yourself healthy. Even if there’s a (kidney) for you, you must be healthy to receive it,” Miss Yew said.

“Look on the bright side – the day will come for you.”

This article was first published in The New Paper

He watched as the two cyclists lay on the ground, in pain and unable to get up.

Standing helplessly by the sidelines was enough to convince him that it was something he never wanted to experience again.

So Mr Ong Wee Chee, 21, decided to learn first aid.

Mr Ong, who now works as a paramedic, is a Singapore Red Cross Society (SRC) volunteer and a First Aider on Wheels.

He said: “Every weekend, we cycle around East Coast Park and see if there are people who need help. “We give them plasters or bandage them up if they fall off their bikes.”

Saturday was World First Aid Day.

For Mr Ong, it all started six years ago, when he was volunteering as a road marshal for a triathlon.

When the two cyclists collided, all Mr Ong could do was direct the other cyclists away from the casualties while he waited for the ambulance.

He said: “I wish I could have done more, but I didn’t know what else to do.

“At that point, I had never felt so useless in my life.”

So when his friend told him that the SRC needed volunteers for an upcoming event a couple of weeks later, he jumped at the opportunity.

He said: “I decided to give it a try as I really wanted to help people.”

Mr Ong went for Standard First Aid and Automated External Defibrillator (AED) courses, which took about a week.

The courses were free for volunteers, but they had to fulfil a minimum number of duty hours.

Not medically trained

“It was tough as I’m not medically trained,” he said.

“I had no idea what the instructors were talking about, and it took me a while to understand it all.”

Thankfully, the walk-a-jog event went off without a hitch.

But several weeks later, his skills were called into action.

He was heading home from Marine Parade when he noticed a crowd gathering at the nearby junction.

Mr Ong was curious and went closer to see what had happened.

He found that there had been an accident involving a car and a motorcycle.

Mr Ong said: “Two kids had smashed glass on their faces, while their mother had a large bruise.

“And the motorcyclist was coughing up a lot of blood.”

He looked around, and didn’t see any ambulance.

“Police officers were there and had cordoned off the area, but I told them that I knew first aid, and I could help,” he said.

Together with the help of another passer-by, Mr Ong removed the motorcyclist’s helmet, and tilted his head to drain the blood out of his mouth.

The passer-by stayed with the motorcyclist, while Mr Ong checked on the other three casualties.

He said: “The atmosphere was tense. There were more than 50 people around, so there was a lot of murmuring.”

But Mr Ong didn’t let the commotion – or his nerves – get to him.

“I was really scared as it was my first time,” he said. “But if I don’t help them, who will?”

He was able to use his skills again just three months ago.

He was involved in team-building games at a sports company when he heard that one of the participants had fainted and was lying on a sofa.

Mr Ong and his colleague rushed to the man, and found that he was not breathing. They also could not feel his pulse.. So they administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

After about 10 minutes, they grew exhausted and asked onlookers if any of them knew CPR.

He said: “The response was disappointing, so we just carried on while we waited for the ambulance.

“His heart wasn’t beating when he was sent to the hospital, and later, I found out that the guy didn’t survive.”

Despite such experiences, Mr Ong was thankful that he decided to pick up first aid.

He said: “You’ll never know when a situation might arise.

“I’m glad I can do something to help, and not just watch on while people suffer.”

Learning first aid had an added bonus – he decided to take his knowledge one step further in 2009.

He enrolled in Nursing at ITE College East and qualified as a nurse last year.

Said Ms Serene Chia, SRC’s head of community services: “It is vital for us to have more volunteers like him.

“We are grateful to have such committed and knowledgeable volunteers, but we could always use more.”

This article was first published in The New Paper

After spending eight years behind bars, Mr David King Thorairajan had barely two weeks to reintegrate into society before starting life as an undergraduate in 2008.

With the world having moved on since he last experienced life outside prison, Mr Thorairajan, now 30, recalled having to figure out how to use a stored value card for public transport and how to get from his MacPherson home to the Singapore Management University (SMU) campus in Bras Basah to settle administrative matters before the university term started. He ended up at Bedok Reservoir that day.

And things did not get any easier on the first day of school. Mr Thorairajan, who was among the batch of SMU graduates this year, said: “Everyone was asking one another ‘which school were you from’ … How I do explain where I was from? I can only say I was a private candidate.”

Awkward social conversations aside, Mr Thorairajan – who had dropped out of school in Secondary 3 before he went to jail for voluntarily causing hurt – said he found it hard to adjust to how wired-up society had become. He added: “Everyone was typing away … while listening to lectures. For me, I was so slow, typing each letter, using one finger at a time.”

On the third day of school, the then 26-year-old broke down.

“I was crying the whole day and have never cried like this before,” he recalled.

He called his brother, a friend and his counsellor. But it was only when he had time to reflect alone at home that he decided to give himself another shot at university – having come so far by acing the “N”, “O” and “A” levels while in jail as well as getting selected for university admission after the SMU professors interviewed him in prison.

Today, it is hard to tell that Mr Thorairajan was once struggling to come to terms with a society whose changes had passed him by, as he sought to pursue a ticket to a better life.

He took only three-and-a-half years to complete his degree in social sciences.

Mr Thorairajan, who tied the knot in May, credits his Christian faith for the turnaround in his life, as well as the remorse he felt towards his mother for letting her down.

After completing his studies, he applied to be a teacher with the Ministry of Education. However, he did not make it through the interview.

With the experience of working with youths during his undergraduate days, Mr Thorairajan started a social enterprise mentoring at-risk youths in November last year. According to him, more than five schools are engaging his services currently.

He has also embarked on starting another social enterprise – seeking mentors and investors – which aims to help ex-offenders become entrepreneurs.

He said: “Out of the many out there who fall, I am just one of the few who eventually got out of it. It is not always the case. A dream I have … is for all youths to stay away from gangs, especially those from dysfunctional families.”

This story was first published in TODAY