HOME celebrates Chinese New Year with our migrant worker friends!

12 February 2020

On 7th Feb, HOME organised a Chinese New Year party at East Coast Park for the foreign workers, to show our appreciation for the garden city they had painstakingly built. Through this event, HOME also hope to give an opportunity for the workers to mingle and win some Ang Baos!

The celebration started with a sumptuous lunch where the workers were served by HOME staff and volunteers. After filling their tummies, the games started with a test of their nimble fingers to peel mandarin oranges and handicraft skills to build a balloon photo frame that would fit the entire team! It was hilarious watching grown men and women chase after colourful balloons. It was also unexpected that a team of 6 Bangladeshi workers won 7 Chinese workers in peeling mandarin oranges. Then, we sent the workers running around East Coast Park to take pictures with various landmarks and engaged them in a game of charades where they had to turn themselves in Bollywood stars, to act out the words from various themes such as animals, sports and action words. However, I think they enjoyed laughing at each other more.

The games concluded with each of the four teams walking away with attractive prizes - a bag of snacks and bananas. HOME’s Executive Director, Catherine, also presented a goodie bag and an Ang Bao to each worker, as a blessing in wishing them good health and best of luck in all their cases.

The team comprising of both HOME volunteers and staff, planned this day out with the workers, serving them food and bringing smiles to these forgotten individuals who underpin the progress of our economic growth. Many of them were beaming from ear to ear saying “I have never been here before!”. At the end of the event, the workers also did not hesitate to help us to pack up and dispose the trash, keeping the surrounding clean. It was heartwarming to see that the workers always try they very best to give back, despite what little they have.

It was a lovely afternoon with lots of games, music and amazing variety of prizes for them. The HOME team was thankful for the worker’s participation with great enthusiasm. Hopefully, these workers now have fun memories to bring home, other than the trauma of unpaid salary and ongoing work injury claims.