Community Heroes: We visit tissue paper vendors weekly to offer support. Their stories changed our lives

The most important thing is that our organization is a reliable source of support for the peddlers.

While I would like to believe that we changed their lives, in reality, they changed our lives too.

So, ‘Uncle Ben’ told us about his struggles as the sole breadwinner.

He had to support his school-age children and his wife, who was laid off during the Covid-19 pandemic. My mind was already racing through the various support schemes available when he turned to me and said, “You’re one of the few friends I can talk to about this.”

At that moment I realized how important it is to just listen.

I, Augustine, met Aunt Lim early in my journey with The Signpost Project.

I spoke to her in Mandarin and could only ask her if she had eaten.

But thanks to the help of a teammate who spoke Hokkien, we heard how she had lost her siblings one by one and the difficulties she faced being in a wheelchair.

Ensuring linguistic diversity is one of the reasons why we travel in a team of four.

Aunt Lim’s resilience and quiet strength to face her own challenges showed me the universality of struggle and the importance of empathy.

I began to realize that my journey was not just about my own story, but also about nurturing the different forms of strength and courage that lie within the most vulnerable.

Just by being present and listening to them, we become a small but important part of their stories, and they become part of ours.

ABOUT THE WRITERS:

Hazeem Nasser, 25, is the founder of The Signpost Project and previously worked at Yale-NUS College. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public policy and a master of science in sociology at the University of Oxford. He started The Signpost Project in 2019 to focus on providing care and support to tissue paper sellers in Singapore. He is passionate about building communities where people of all ages can feel supported. In his free time, he enjoys listening to music from Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.

Augustine Chan, 19, is the vice-chair of The Signpost Project. He is currently serving National Service and is an alumnus of Raffles Institution. He is passionate about helping people in difficult circumstances and wants to create a more compassionate society by empowering young people to serve others. He also has a strange addiction to Microsoft Excel software.

If you have an experience you would like to share or know someone who would like to contribute to this series, please write to to vote (bee) mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and telephone number.