A network of social support groups for low income Malay/Muslim families will be strengthened to further help them look out for and take care of one another.
The Family Excellence Circle (FEC), which bring together self help groups of 12 to 15 families in similar circumstances to build resilience and reduce social isolation, will be bolstered in three ways, Minister in charge of Muslim Affairs Yaccaob Ibrahim said yesterday.
First, a structured training programme will be developed to train leaders for FECs, which were founded by Malay/Muslim community group Yayasan Mendaki in 2005. This is aimed at giving more FEC members opportunities to become leaders of the circiles.
Mendaki will also review and improve on its oversight of the FECs. It will regularly supervise these social support groups and help their sessions become more fruitful by creating a reference manual and revised curriculum plan for groups' facilitators.
Lastly, Mendaki hopes to expand the benefits of the FEC by creating more such groups. Here, the FEC leaders can help by acting as ambassadors to promote the scheme to other families.
There are currently 45 FEC groups with more than 600 members, up from 16 groups with 200 members when the initiative was first launched 10 years ago. Among other things, the FECs enable the pooling of resources, such as after-school care, for these families.
Thoughts:
- Having support groups of the same demographics and profile of people is useful as experiences can be shared and learnt by similar people.
- I think we should all spread the knowledge of improving the level of support groups as the social service sector might not have sufficient staff to run every programs. Guiding members to be leaders, this is a viable and sustainable route to maintain support groups in the long run.
Thoughts anyone?
Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big
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