FairPrice Foundation donates $500,000 to uplift digital literacy

This article is more than 12 months old

Dec 24, 2020 06:00 am

To help boost digital literacy and skills among disadvantaged groups, including vulnerable seniors and children from low-income families, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the FairPrice Group is donating $500,000 to NTUC First Campus' (NFC) Bright Horizons Fund and NTUC Health's Eldercare Trust through its charity arm FairPrice Foundation.

Half of the donation amount will support NFC's Digital Kampung Programme, which seeks to enhance digital access and strengthen digital literacy for low-income families and their children from 2021 to 2023.

As NFC continues to embrace an omni-channel model that leverages both physical and digital platforms to enhance children's learning and parent engagement, it will lease Apple iPads on a short-term basis of up to three months to eligible families with children attending My First Skool. It will also provide SIM cards for those without Wi-Fi access.

The other half of the donation will go towards upgrading NTUC Health's IT infrastructure to benefit more than 5,000 seniors across centre-based services including nursing homes, day centres for seniors, senior activity centres and active ageing hubs.

This will entail the expansion of two-way virtual interactions between seniors and facilitators through activities such as art and craft sessions, exercise workouts and digital befriending where seniors can interact with volunteer befrienders online.

Since the launch of FairPrice Foundation in 2008, it has donated about $138.5 million to sponsor various causes benefiting the poor and needy, the community, and caring for workers' welfare.