Project Dignity

28/11

We organised a class today on the legal requirements of hawkers and peddlers. It is rough based on the hawker and Peddlers Act 1985 and I got an experienced trainers to do the teaching. Not only do all the students attended the course but also staff of the other stalls wanted to attend. I guess everyone wants to learn just that they do not have the opportunities even the hawkers.

One of the key to successful implementation of any project is communication. and more so with your landlord. We rented this place from Banquet Group and though it is very spacious and has a classroom for what we want to do, it lacks the crowd.Frankly the landlord like any shopping mall's landlord in Singapore has to play a part to generate the crowd. Communicate, communicate and communicate and if fails ........

29/11

Need to form a team. I need a operation person who can help me manage the day to day operation of the three stalls. I need a marketing person who can help me market the school and carried out the events, so as to generate income for the school. Finally I need a trainer, someone who has the culinary skills to train my students. I recruited the final person to the team, a trainer who Nitec, WDA Abta qualification. The team is complete.

Business is about managing the people that manages the system/process

Christmas is coming and time to put up the Christmas trees......

Project Dignity

22/11

The lunch treat for the elderly is a challenged in itself. Inviting elderly to lunch is not a problem. For I realized that many of these home,for the elderly going out is a very special occasion for them. Actually many of them preferred to go out than to have visitors coming to their home and singing song and entertaining them.

One of lunch treats many challenges was to invite a group of blind to come for lunch. How do you feed a group of blind elderly. As usual we serve them on the table but after 5 minutes no one touches the food. All the blind elderly stood quietly and politely waiting. We realise we need to instruct them. We collect all the plates of food and standardise the location of the food item that is on the plate. Then we distribute them back to the blind elderly. This time we tell them what is on the plate, like 2 o'clock is the rice, 4 0'clock is the chilli, 6 o'clock is the chicken etc. This time they start eating their food. By the way we have to do the explanation in several dialects and languages.

There are also lunch treat where the demand is for certain type of food like low salt and no coconut on the rice just some examples. We tried to accommodate as much as possible after all, the objective of the Lunch Treat for the Elderly is to give them a decent meal. Unfortunately there are the odd case of elderly who keep ordering the different food, just taste it and reject it. Then there are the ones who complain about everything, from the chili being tasteless, to the coconut rice not fragrance enough. I guess you cannot pleased everyone even when the food is free.

24/11

Tonight I sat and watch the video clips. These clip was recorded when the first few trainees join the school. It shows their dream and wishes. very touching. Watch it on www.projectdignity.sg.

26/11

My plan for the next six months is as follows. Month One get the food right and I did that. Month Two gets the Process/System Right and today we received an envelope from National Environmental Agency.

We were graded "A" for the two stalls. For the first time since I started I really felt very good and happy. You see to achieve a grade "A" is very difficult and the assessment by the government agency was a sudden visit.

We were not inform of the assessment. Coming into our Dignity Kitchen you will be impressed by the cleanliness and also the orderliness of the workplace. (If you read the earlier blog I mentioned that we want Changi Prison standard as the prison cooks maintain a very clean and orderly workplace). Fortunately we have two very good students who are very disciplined. Achieving a Grade "A" for hawker is very slim especially so if it is a startup and actually cooking food. If you go around the food court and hawker center in Singapore, most of the Grade "A" is selling drinks and not actual cooking of food.

A good piece of news today, the Graduate's wife give birth to a baby girl :-)

Project Dignity

Week Beginning 7th Nov

Create a good environment, give the right tools and treat people with respect, I believe people even socially and physically challenged will do well.

After the first month, I can see the changes in the working environment. There are good sign and there are bad ones.

The good sign is ownership. Give the people the owner to manage the stall the way they see first. Let them create the stall identity. With ownership comes motivation. I went out to buy some plants from Ikea and decorate the stalls. For stall One, flowers and figurine decoration for the Nasi Lemak stall starts appearing. Ownership starts with installing physical entities but motivation comes with verbal recognition. I praise and encourage the students a lot. Some of them are even working longer hours

The bad sign is the disagreement between the abled and disabled. The concept of having abled to work with the disabled is the foundation of Dignity Kitchen and as such matching them and getting them to work is critical and paramount to the success of the school. I match the Mother (abled) with the blind son. I matched the polio with the elderly (abled) and I matched the hearing impaired with the ex-prisoner (abled). The issue is raised with the remuneration they get. If the abled who work at a faster pace and gets the same money, is it fair the disabled who is slow and at time clumsy gets the same amount of money. Quarrels ensued. Initially I ignored it. Furthermore these disabled and disadvantaged do come with their own personal problems. Eventually things got very bad and I have to sit them down and explain the consequences of their dispute.......

On 11 Nov, the government agency recommended a mentally challenged young man to the school today and he is younger than I thought. He has cancer at a young age and has been operated several time. he jovial and has very good attitude, only problem is due to his many operations, his memory retention is low and that is a major problem. What can he do behind a hawker stall. Let him do something that is simple and repetitive and keep training him to do the same thing over and over again. I have my operation manager to thank for helping the mentally challenged boy. every morning for the first week, he put him to the same task of setting up the dessert stall and simplifying the process every day till the mentally challenged boy can do with instructions. When the setting up of the stall and closing the stall routine is settled by my operation manager, my task for the following weeks is to train him to serve the customers. It is done is six word posted behind him - SMILE, GLOVE, SCOOP, CLEAN, SERVE, SMILE. Repeated the same task over and over again and guess what he passed his basic food hygiene based on this six words.....

On 12/11 the first stall hits $100.

Today 15/11, we have full training force. Total 11 trainees - the ex-prisoner, the old man, the polio man, two deaf men, two blind, single mother, the graduate, one machinist and one mentally challenged