By Chandrasekaran Shreya (24S06A) and Jermaine Lee (24A01A)
“I like that I get to make different types of impact on people,” Mr Lim Jingzhou (15A01B) shares when we ask him what he loves most about his job as a Community Worker. “Generally, people appreciate what you do.”
“I think people are interested in trying to marry what they do as a job with something that they feel is meaningful enough, which is where the social impact and contribution to society aspect [of my work] comes in. I get to marry that combination of things together, and I think that has to be a good job.”
As you might have already guessed, Mr Lim works in the social sector. He serves as an Assistant Director at the South Central Community Family Service Centre. He also leads the Home Ownership and Livelihood teams to support families living in rental housing to achieve home ownership, while working on a collective approach to supporting low-wage workers on realising their Livelihood aspirations and improving their employment circumstances.
He is also a Co-Founder of the Cassia-Merpati Resettlement Team (CRT). CRT does social, community, and advocacy work regarding inter-connected social issues including housing, poverty, health, care, and ageing; with a focus on supporting public rental housing residents through involuntary relocations.
To raise awareness and advocate for better policies for housing relocations, he co-edited a book titled ‘They Told Us to Move: Dakota-Cassia’ and is part of a research team conducting an on-going study on the impacts of relocation. Since 2017, he has supported the relocations of the Dakota, Tanglin Halt, and Merpati communities.
He has also worked with Tak Takut Kids Club, the Mental Health Advocacy Workgroup formed to advocate for mental health in Budget 2020, the first nationwide homelessness street count, the Mind the Gap Fund and Engineering Good’s Computer’s Against COVID project.
Getting Into It
“One of the good things about the social sector is that this thing called volunteering exists,” Mr Lim explains, “It’s a low-cost, low-commitment and high-returns way of trying to understand what this work looks like. In the other sectors, you probably need to get an internship or a job to be able to have a peek into what the work or the career [entails]. But for the social sector, you don’t need an internship or a job. You have volunteering as an easy way to step into it. That was how my journey started.”
While he was still in school, Mr Lim actively volunteered in many different causes. “I [have been]volunteering [since] the end of O Levels. In JC, I was part of ISLE, so that was a good mix of local and regional volunteering experiences. Local service learning was mandatory and ISLE did it with MINDS [Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore], which was my learning opportunity about how the differently-abled cause of work in the social sector was like. We went to one of the Disability Homes, [and] did some engagement with the residents there.”
Mr Lim eventually settled into the Dakota-Cassia cause. “It married a good combination of community work, health and housing. I think that was what made me sure that this was what I wanted to do. Maybe not forever—I don’t think people easily decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. But for a good amount of time, it was enough for me to say, ‘Well I want to try this as a career’, and it just grew from there.”
“Every step of the way was conscious, intentional and informed.”
So, What Does Social Sector Work Consist Of?
When we ask him to sum up his work with three words, Mr Lim is quick to respond with “Listening, supporting and advocacy.”
For him, the foundation of his work is creating human relationships with the communities he’s supporting—and that starts with listening. “A lot of our work is in listening and relationship-building. We are in an area of work that is in human services and working with human beings. That is the prominent focus of most of the causes in the social sector.”
“For me, the goal is to support and help that human being in front of me, whether it is for their needs or for them to thrive.“
“Even if you have no needs, how can I help? How do we journey with you so that your life is thriving fully? The core of it will have to go back to building a relationship with the person you are working with. The relationship may not always be very deep—some of it may be slightly more transactional since we are working together towards a common goal—and that’s also fine.”
“Building a relationship also means that I don’t just see you as a passing stranger in my life. There is that trust and willingness to share more honestly and vulnerably. That relationship is the bedrock of change for both parties and should always be two-sided.”
The second aspect of his work is supporting. “Support can be in many ways. It can be their financial needs, their health needs, their food needs, their housing needs—whatever needs that exist.”
“It can also be going beyond needs and asking, ‘How is it that you can thrive in an under-resourced setting?’ For example, when we’re not looking at the tangible needs, it can be helping you feel less alone or progressing in social mobility.
“You can have no needs and live somewhat comfortably but still be living in a rental flat. You’re still putting food on the table and may not be in poverty in the strict sense but you are still not thriving like how you deserve to, how you can and how you should. There’s various sorts of support that we’re looking at.”
Lastly, advocacy allows social sector workers to empower communities to make their voices heard. “Advocacy means seeing our work as an intermediary where we can bring together different sides of the house. You have the people who are the most directly affected by [the issue], you have the policymakers, you have philanthropic funders and other different stakeholders. In the usual context, when the community is able to advocate for themselves, that’s always the best.
“But when they need support to facilitate that or when they need someone to help put it together or speak on their behalf, that’s where the role of advocacy comes into place. We traverse between different languages, different stakeholders, different priorities, different interests and different frames of mind to bring them together to see what is common in between all that.”
Making–and Recognising–a Tangible Impact
When asked about the most memorable part of his job, he flusters, “They’re all memorable—cannot choose, cannot choose. Skip.”
While his work has been memorable in different ways, he feels most closely anchored to the work he does with CRT. He joined them seven years ago, but didn’t start out with the idea that he’d continue doing it after so long. Serving their beneficiaries on a weekly basis, for months on end, is “not a simple commitment to make,” Mr Lim says. It’s precisely what makes his work there so striking though, he believes. Over the years, they’ve grown real, substantial relationships with the communities they serve.
“We receive as much as we give to the community.“
How often do you find yourself warmly welcomed into a stranger’s home and listening to all their life stories? But this is exactly what Mr Lim and his team at CRT find themselves experiencing. It’s the everyday moments lithese that speak to the impact they’ve made on the people they serve.
With the Home Ownership Programme, there’s a unique sense of fulfilment that comes from helping families realise their aspirations. These aspirations don’t just include owning a physical home to spend their lives in—underneath them, lie the universal experience of wanting something, and working hard to get it.
The gratification that beneficiaries get from realising home ownership really matters. “That kind of boost to the self—beyond the actual, tangible outcome of having a house—is important. Because, [it’s often difficult for their aspirations] to be met or realised; so realising this one aspiration hopefully [gets the ball rolling], where other aspirations can also be realised with the right support, determination, effort, and encouragement.”
Ultimately, success comes when Mr Lim and his team can stand by the sidelines, and watch families pursue their dreams, empowered and emboldened.
“[The families’ efforts] are the success factor. We’re just the supporting factor.” – For Mr Lim, empowering families with the agency to chart their own paths is key.
At the Heart of It All: Emotional Labour
Mr Lim’s work—no matter how gratifying it may be—is not without its hardships, though. Emotional labour, in particular, is what he believes is the most difficult part of it.
Emotional labour is intimately intertwined with the service sector as a whole, given that most of the work is done on the basis of human relationships. Take the Home Ownership Programme, for instance.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone working there. You’re walking alongside these families, on a path towards attaining these very real, very substantial goals of theirs: goals that greatly impact their well-being, goals that they might have invested their lives into achieving.
Ultimately, though, the success of your joint efforts isn’t entirely within your control. Failure is an omnipresent reality and possibility, and confronting that in the face of these families’ aspirations and dreams? Emotionally, it makes sense that it’s a lot to handle.
This is precisely why having a realistic outlook on things is important. “[We’re] not able to solve all their problems or meet all their needs; there are realistic constraints. We’re also as human as the people we’re working with.”
Maintaining a healthy emotional distance is also crucial. Take the example from earlier: what happens when a family doesn’t go forth with what had been discussed? What if they end up doing something you don’t agree with? “[It’s] in recognising that I’m not responsible for those choices, [and that] they have autonomy in their lives,” Mr Lim says.
And if they come back, upset and regretful, questioning why you didn’t tell them otherwise, or why you allowed them to do what they did? “[It’s] in knowing that you’ve done your part, and not being emotionally affected by that. […] The family that’s made the choice will have to follow through with it, including [accepting] the consequences that come from making that choice.”
However, none of this is to say that you should detach yourself from your feelings. Feeling what we feel—revelling in the joys of small victories, or letting the gravity of a loss set in—humanises us in the eyes of the people we serve, and is foundational to building strong relationships.
During a volunteering session, an elderly person may come up to you and say, “It’s a good time for me to go.” How do you handle such a bleak admission? Instead of desensitising yourself, Mr Lim says, understand the elderly’s perspective while recognising that you don’t need to align yourself with their feelings.
“I don’t need to feel like dying tomorrow is the best thing to happen to me, and I don’t need the other person to feel like they should want to live for the next twenty years. […] It’s about not letting what they feel carry into our lives in an unhealthy way.”
The Future of Caregiving
Mr Lim sees the social sector as an emerging field. In the future—due to our nation’s ageing population, and rising awareness about the importance of caregiving services—many in society will require greater care, such as the elderly, underprivileged, and the marginalised.
Chances are, this is the image that’ll come to mind when the term ‘social sector’ arises: a social worker, all smiles, doing a home visitation. It isn’t wrong, per se; social work is certainly a crucial part of the sector.
However, the sector is far more plentiful in the job opportunities it has to offer. “It’s quite diverse. There are many different areas of work, and it’s not as single-track, like ‘social work—fullstop’.” Volunteer managers, programme managers, researchers: these are just a few of the wealth of jobs available.
“It’s an interesting ecosystem that’s more than just social work or volunteering. I think it’s under-understood for all the interesting possibilities it could reap.”
Mr Lim, on the overlooked diversity of the social sector
Interested in the Social Sector?
For those looking to join the sector, Mr Lim has two words (of advice) to say: Volunteer extensively.
“Be committed to what you choose to volunteer with, and spend more than one or two sessions [with them].” Volunteering for an extended period of time—at least half a year—is when you really learn about the community you’re serving: things you can only learn from first-hand experience.
There’s value in learning extensively, too. As Mr Lim did when he was a student, you can try your hand at different causes, “There’s value in that, also: cross-cutting between different [sectors] and seeing how they relate to each other.”
No matter the nature of your volunteerism, make the most out of it. Be unafraid in reaching out to people in the sector and asking them what the sector’s like. Personal insights like these simply can’t be gleaned from online searches behind a desk. Instead, as Mr Lim puts it, just “ask for a coffee chat.”
Look beyond volunteering, too. When he first started out, Mr Lim looked out for various events, talks, and sharings about social issues where experts and volunteers were often invited to share their insights. It’s at such events that people invested in a specific cause come to convene in one location—what better place would there be to network at?
No Matter the Sector: Closing Advice
Social sector or not, Mr Lim believes that any young person who’s still deciding on their future career must be intentional in their actions. You might have a burning desire to learn about a specific sector of work, but if all you’re doing is desktop research, then you’ll never be doing enough.
Mr Lim recalls an instance when he’d met a youth deciding between the social and healthcare sector. He’d seen them genuinely invest effort into talking to individuals in both sectors, and it was in that moment that he knew he’d be happy for them no matter the decision they’d make. It’s because that decision to join whichever sector would’ve been an intentional one, something they’d made with clarity and could realistically see themselves committing to.
If there’s one thing you take away from this article, Mr Lim wants you to give social sector work an equal chance as other paths you’re considering.
“Every job is for public good,” He tells us, “A cleaner and a hawker contribute to as much public good as I do, but it’s not something that most people think about.
“Not many Raffles students graduate to join the social sector. Most would join civil service, law, medicine. I do think that a job or a career in social services or non-profit work in general can be equally as good, as meaningful and as rewarding as these jobs.”
So, what are you interested in? What do you love doing? What can you see yourself doing for work in the future? If ‘volunteering’ is the answer to these questions, it might just be time for you to dig deeper into the social sector and contribute your services to the community.
Looking for volunteering opportunities right now? Some of the causes Mr Lim works with, such as the Cassia-Merpati Resettlement Team, are looking for volunteers. If you’re interested in working with them, do check out the links in the introduction! Specific volunteering opportunities can also be found in the file below.