By Phase III students Aw En Yi Avelyn, Lim Li He Shaun, Phase II students Ong Hui Juan and Sabharwal Sachi, with Dr Tam Wai Jia, NUS Medicine Deputy Lead of Global Health & Community Service
My Brother SG is a community service initiative that aims to empower our migrant brothers. It was launched in June 2020 by non-profit organisation Kitesong Global in partnership with NUS Medicine students, as well as Singapore’s three regional health systems (National University Health System, National Healthcare Group and SingHealth) and another local non-profit organisation, Healthserve, as a novel way to engage our migrant worker community in Singapore digitally.
Under the leadership and guidance of our mentor Dr Tam Wai Jia, NUS Deputy Lead of Global Health & Community Service and the Founder of Kitesong Global, our team has been working on developing a series of initiatives since June 2020 that aim to empower and engage Singapore’s migrant workers, through risk communication and community engagement (RCCE), which is one of the core pillars of an outbreak response.
We have been publishing various healthcare tips in the form of comics and other educational resources on the “My Brother SG” Facebook page throughout the past few months, in an effort to provide the migrant worker community with information about health and personal hygiene. To ensure that we remain culturally relevant to the migrant worker community, these comics are carefully thought through and co-developed with input from experienced non-profit organisations working on the ground, and more importantly—from migrant workers themselves.
Reached out to almost
45,000
people through the “My Brother SG” initiative
“My Brother SG” leadership team. Top row from left: Avelyn, Sachi, Dr Tam, NUS Medicine Deputy Lead of Global Health & Community Service; Second row from left: Hui Juan, Shaun, Jodie; Third row: Lydia, Creative Exec Director at Kitesong Global.
Our very first initiative was an online contest which was initially launched as a way to encourage our migrant brothers to share creative artwork, poems, songs and videos regarding health information and education, which could help their friends pull through this difficult time. Since then, we have been posting these submissions regularly on our Facebook page. These have received heart-warming comments and feedback from viewers.
More recently, we launched a new series of Facebook Live sessions named “Keep Hope Alive!” co-hosted by Dr Tam, Dr Muntasir Mannan Choudhury from Sengkang General Hospital and Mr Omar Faruque Shipon, who is a well-known social media influencer in the Bangladeshi community. During these interactive sessions with guest speakers such as NUS Medicine’s Professor Dale Fisher and Associate Professor Zubair Amin, participants were able to engage speakers on COVID-19 related issues. These sessions also helped participants to build connections with one another.
Our social media initiatives have garnered close to 13,824 engagements since we launched our page and we have been able to reach out to almost 45,000 people online through various modes and across our different social media platforms.
The initiatives carried out so far are just a small segment of a larger picture that make up our multimodal engagement with migrant worker communities. As we hope to expand our community and reach out to even more migrant workers, we aim to engage them in even more meaningful initiatives and better equip them with the knowledge and skills required to be health ambassadors. Above all, we hope that these migrant brothers will be able to pursue their dreams of a better life for their loved ones and themselves.