Gazing at you with a pair of the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen, 50-year old Thanabalam Rajagopal cuts a pitiful figure as the gaunt, tired-looking gentleman hunches over his walking frame in the dingy, dimly lit corridor outside his one-room flat. A deep tracheotomy scar is nestles in the folds of his weathered neck as he struggles to speak. His speech, though laboured, is at best slurred and hardly decipherable.
Getting the keys to your new home is usually reason for celebration, but for single mother Punita Devi, the joy of finally getting a place of her own comes a sobering realisation. “We had been living on rental for the past year or so, and had no furniture to bring over to our new home,” she says.
Families appreciate the free mattress all the more because it’s brand new and not just an old, used donation. Indeed, Hamdan and his family treasure this mattress so much that they have yet to remove the plastic wrapping that it came in.
When this needy family received a second-hand Queen-size bed frame and mattress donation, they thought they’d been given the kind gift of a good night’s rest. But the mattress was infested with bedbugs that left painful bites on her daughters’ every night.
We have just given away our 10th mattress under the “Free Mattress Program” to a single parent of 2 teenage kids, whose mattress are infected by bedbugs and could not afford to buy one.
Below, is the story of the applicant
Below is the story of this week’s applicant :
i just came out of prison on 29 July 2009 after serving 3 year 5 months jail term for drug related offences.I am 25 yrs old and just got employed as an admin.I have changed since then and have become a christian.
We have just given away the 3rd mattress under Beds.sg Free Mattress program which was launched 3 weeks ago.
If you are not sure what this program is about, you could read this post Free Mattress Program, The Story Behind. In short, we give away 1 mattress every week to the less fortunate or less privileged in Singapore.
Below is the story of the successful applicant this week. In her own words….