New community project to encourage more acts of kindness By Rita Zahara, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Can one good deed lead to another and another?

Channel NewsAsia and the Cold Storage Group believe good deeds can have a snowballing effect, and they are working together on a new community project to encourage even more acts of kindness.

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With a confident stroke of the brush, another creative product is made.

Zhou Shuying, who suffers from physical and intellectual disabilities, got a boost when an anonymous benefactor sponsored her training fees at Studio You.

It is a business set-up for people with disabilities.

Ms Zhou said: "If I dont have a sponsor, I will be staying at home. Now the sponsor and Ms Louis is helping me to find a job for me, so I am very happy that they helped me a lot. Otherwise when I go find a job, nobody will employ me because I'm a disabled person."

Interestingly, the studio itself was the result of a good deed.

Ms Lois Ng, Social Entrepreneur of Studio You, said: "I went to a few places asking if these people could give me a place and charged me at a lower rent but nobody responded except this church.

"I benefited from the church's good deed and now I am able to take in more disabled people to work with me to learn a niche skill."

Such a cycle of good deeds will be featured in a new six-part series coming on Channel NewsAsia.

Ong Hee Yah, Senior Vice President of Network Programming and Promotions at Channel NewsAsia, said: "So we came up with this 'One Deed, One Lifetime, One Singapore Project', loosely based on the movie "Pay It Forward", the idea of doing one good to one person and that person instead of paying it back, pays it forward to another person. So we hope to create a kind of cycle of goodness and kindness around."

Endorsing this project is the Cold Storage Group.

Mr Lester Quah, Chairman of Community of Hearts at The Cold Storage Group, said: "With the reality TV programme, we hope to be able to get everyone to reflect on themselves on the joys of being able to do good deeds and making someone else's day brighter and more cheerful."

Good deeds are done everyday, however, many go unnoticed.

With these six-part documentary series, good deeds will be documented from the recipients' perspectives.

The movement begins on May 8. - CNA