(Homemade meals prepared by kind cooks, with love. Photo credit: Splash Productions) 

Who do you turn to when you need help in a pinch?

Goodhood.SG is a platform that allows neighbours to offer or ask each other for a helping hand. In the old days, it was common for people living in kampung communities to look out for one another. With Goodhood.SG, Nigel hopes to rekindle the same kampung spirit and foster a greater sense of neighbourliness and community in our housing estates. Armed with a wealth of experience in running tech ventures, Nigel leveraged the power of digital technology to create the Goodhood.SG app.

Through the app, neighbours can request for or render help for various day-to-day issues. For instance, you can offer to do a grocery run for a housebound neighbour, change a lightbulb for the elderly next door, or ask a neighbour to feed your goldfish when you are out of town. Users just need to log in to the app to post, comment, and chat with neighbours.

When COVID-19 struck, Singapore hunkered down and went into circuit breaker mode. Many families, especially low-income households, were hard hit by job and income losses. To help struggling families get three square meals a day, Nigel and his team launched a new feature called #KindCooks on Goodhood.SG. #KindCooks allows those in need to make anonymous requests for meals that are fulfilled by a neighbour.

“Our best-served target audience are people who fall between the cracks – those who are not needy enough to qualify for governmental assistance but are struggling as they are displaced due to COVID-19, and for people with transient needs.” — Nigel Teo, Founder, GoodHood.SG

Winner of MasterChef Singapore, Zander Ng, was stoked to be part of the initial phase of #KindCooks. Together with 20 cooks, he whipped up piping hot meals for 200 beneficiaries. Buoyed by the launch success, the GoodHood.SG team decided to expand their reach even further. With pivotal support from the oscar@sg fund, #KindCooks was able to bridge requests for more than 400 meals.

To help more households, GoodHood.SG partnered Kampung Kakis, a buddy system that matches people-in-need with volunteers from the same neighbourhood, and My Friend Next Door – a ground-up initiative that encourages individuals to be good neighbours.

In the next phase, #KindCooks plans to galvanise more Singaporean home cooks to provide 1,000 free meals by the end of August. This is possible because of continued support from the oscar@sg fund, which helps volunteer home cooks cover the cost of ingredients and enables more people to pitch in to serve the community.

The success of #KindCooks has led to an upcoming collaboration between GoodHood.SG and the People’s Association in Tampines. Together, they will create Singapore’s first-ever Digital Kampung. Residents in Tampines can use the GoodHood.SG app to get the latest news about activities in their Community Centre, connect with neighbours, and forge new friendships. Nigel hopes that similar collaborations will spring up in other estates soon, so more people can use GoodHood.SG to bring the kampung spirit roaring back in their neighbourhoods.