"Vertical Kampong" to promote volunteerism was the title of the report and it is a rather interesting concept to describe this volunteerism initiative. Most Singaporeans live in high-rise flats but the kampong spirit of helping each other is comparatively lesser than the olden days where the neighbours' doors are always open to anyone who needs help.

The National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) has launched this programme recently to promote sharing and volunteering spirit.

If you are in the mood to volunteer your time and services to the community, you can also go to SG Cares to search for volunteering opportunities and the best thing is, SG Cares has created a OneMap service to facilitate the search! 3 cheers for SG Cares!

You can access this service here: http://www.sgcares.org/onemap/index.html

Let's just see how we can use this service :)

Under the Volunteerism Opportunities widget, you can key in your volunteering preferences. In this example, we want to do some volunteering work after Chinese New Year until the end of March and our interest is perhaps trying to chat and befriend people.

Upon selecting all your preferences, click the search button and if there are any volunteerism opportunities that suit your preferences, you will be able to view them on the map. You can also click on the flashing circle icons to receive more information about the place and nature of the volunteer work.


In this example, we clicked on one of the icons and we can see some information of the place. You must be wondering, "Ok, so how do I get to that place if I am interested to do volunteer work there?" OneMap has the answer too!

Click on 'Get Directions' and the 2nd widget will come to life. The destination form is already filled for you (the location that you clicked previously) and you have to enter your starting location. Once you are done, click the 'Get Directions' button.


Pan the map if you wish to and you would be able to see the route from your starting location to the destination, coupled with driving directions to get there!


We hope with the implementation of such services from OneMap, finding volunteerism opportunities in Singapore will be able to get a boost! :)