The P.104 office had our first experimental urban poor forum focusing on:
(a) how to save money
(b) reduce electric bills
(c) fire safety
The event was a half day event held at block 5 Desa Mentari on Saturday.
We had in total 55 registered adults and a small army of kids. My officers had bought 80 coin/saving boxes from Mr. DIY (cheaper than Daiso). I am particularly proud that my officers are very careful with money and appear to be more cheapskate than me! These coin boxes were given free to encourage kids to save money, and these went pretty fast. For the next forum, we will need to double up on the coin boxes.
We had 3 expert speakers, Trish from Malaysian Care, En. Azlan from Firefighter and Anthony Tan from Cetdem. The Firefighter company also donated 3 fire extinguishers which we distributed by way of a lucky draw. The planning took about 3 weeks to organise and execute. We had several people asking if we can do the same program for their blocks too.
The office will have a post mortem study on Tuesday and see what aspects of the forum can be improved. One thing is clear, there is a real need for financial planning advice. This idea originated after I had a chat with Dr. Suparno in Jakarta about the need for the poor to do financial planning.