Working with our cultural insider (HOME)

Following last week's dialogue with various NGOs, our team has subsequently decided to work with Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) in gaining access to the migrant worker community and in examining their general well-being while being employed in Singapore.

About HOME

HOME was consciously chosen due to its enduring expertise and insider know-how in understanding issues faced by the migrant worker community and its persistent focus on advocacy, where the organisation seeks to increase awareness of the situation of the migrant community through public education, campaigns and the publication of position papers.

Beyond Advocacy, HOME also actively engages the migrant worker community through safeguarding their welfare and advocating for the empowerment of migrant workers in communal spaces. Some of the services that HOME operates under the welfare pillar include a helpdesk (where trained caseworkers and volunteers offer advice to workers unsure of their rights and options), a shelter that provides social support to all vulnerable domestic workers in Singapore and the provision of free medical and legal aid to those in need.

Through the establishment of an educational and vocational training programme, otherwise known as HOME Academy, HOME aims to further empower domestic workers with specialised skills such as computer literacy, cooking, caregiving and financial literacy.

Project Progress and Meeting Minutes

In preparing for the production of our video collaterals, week 6 was a period of consolidation as we translated our creatives into a tangible written product (in the form of a proposal) and discussed possible cinematographic directions that our video could undertake to best exemplify our intended objective of humanising the migrant workers and the retelling of their personal stories through an unbiased lens.

a. Overview of Meetings on 19/2 and 21/2

The following issues were broadly discussed:

• Video proposal for HOME - creative direction adopted that would both communicate HOME's mission and ongoing programmes as well as humanise the migrant workers through personal narratives

• Reviewing and finalising interview questions for the two stakeholders: HOME staff and the migrant workers (male workers involved in the construction industry and female domestic workers)

• Finalising administrative filming details i.e. Filming dates, availability of filming equipment and the availability of stakeholders

• Creation of Participant Information Sheet consent forms

b. Video outline and creatives

Summary: Dual objective of presenting HOME's role in empowering and supporting migrant workers (in projects that encompass their 3 key pillars of welfare, empowerment and advocacy) and introducing key problems faced by the migrant worker population in Singapore through the use of humanised narratives. Through the use of a distinct call-to-action, we hope that the increased awareness of such issues will translate to attitudinal shifts in the way which migrant workers are perceived and tangible actions undertaken by members of the public in the form of increased volunteerism or monetary donations.

Duration: Approximately 3 minutes

c. Interview questions

Our team has formulated a list of open-ended questions in exploring the personal experiences of our cultural insiders and target migrant community as well as the ongoing circumstances that challenge the physical, social and emotional well-being of migrant workers in employment and communal spaces. In doing so, we intend to conduct 10 interviews with various stakeholders in the coming weeks, 2 with our cultural insiders and the remaining 8 with our target migrant community (4 with male construction migrant workers and the remaining others with foreign domestic workers).

Drafted questions for our cultural insiders i.e. HOME directors encompassed the key prevailing challenges faced by migrant workers in gaining employment, the state of awareness of the issues faced by migrant workers among the general public, the general public's attitude towards migrant workers and the impact of HOME's past outreach and advocacy efforts.

Questions prepared for the migrant workers were subsumed into 2 distinct sub-sections, the former targeting personal stories of migrant workers in general while the latter exploring the experiences of migrant workers that volunteer at HOME's Helpdesk.

Proposed questions for the general migrant worker interviewee consisted of demographic and personal questions that would explore their motivations in seeking employment in Singapore, work-related questions that would delve into employment welfare benefits (or accordingly the lackof) and the degree of social acceptance and types of prevailing societal perceptions of migrant workers employed in Singapore. The second category (targeted towards helpdesk volunteers) examines their motivation for volunteering at the helpdesk, some of the difficulties faced by volunteers in assisting migrant workers with their problems and the nature of cases managed by the helpdesk.

What we will be working on next:

• Video production -- filming of interviews with HOME directors and migrant worker respondents and capturing of appropriate visuals (snippets of migrant workers in their employment and leisure spaces)

• Transcription and analysis of interviews and the identification of key themes