Warmer Welcome: Singaporeans help foreign workers integrate

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Foreigners make up more than a quarter of Singapore's population, and more than half hold labor-intensive jobs such as construction and domestic work. Traditionally local and migrant workers live parallel lives, but young Singaporeans have organized social movements to help integrate migrant workers into the community. Our correspondent Miro Lu has the story.

Migrant workers in Singapore work on construction sites by day, but at night they do a different sort of construction. At SDI Academy, these workers must build a structure together, and can only converse in English while d oing so. This is one of the practical ways English is taught at SDI Academy, a social enterprise run by Singaporean Sazzad Hossain.

SAZZAD HOSSAIN CO-FOUNDER, SDI ACADEMY "It is very industry specific. If they are from construction that is one kind of lesson they are going through, and if they are from shipping or manufacturing it is doing to be different. "

There are over 1.3 million migrant workers in Singapore, more than a quarter of the population. Many of them come from Bangladesh, China and the Philippines, doing labor-intensive but essential work. For these migrant workers, adapting to city life can be tough. That's why some Singaporeans want to help them integrate into the community.

MIRO LU SINGAPORE "While SDI Academy teaches conversational English to migrant workers, others create ways for Singaporeans to understand them as equals, through poetry competitions and panel discussions where these transient workers share their hopes, dreams and stories. "

ROLINDA ESPANOLA FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKER "In Singapore you look at me like a domestic worker, but in my home country I am a hero."

SHIVAJI DAS FOUNDER, MIGRANT WORKER POETRY COMPETITION "They have this strong urge to be on par with the local community on some occasions. When the artists here, or people in the artistic community treat them as their equals, as poets, they receive empowerment and sense of belonging to this place. "

MICHELLE SIM UNDERGRADUATE "Even when I was telling my friends that most of them write poems and they have a degree back in their hometown, they are all very surprised because I think we have a misconception that they are all low-class workers who don't know better. "

Besides panel discussions and poetry competitions, an exhibition at the National Arts Centre displays personal items belonging to migrant workers. Singaporeans and migrant workers enjoy these events, where they get to know each other better.

ZAKIR HOSSEIN KHOKAN FOREIGN CONSTRUCTION WORKER "This is about my poem, A Pocket II. It was the winning poem in the migrant worker poetry competition 2014. This poem is about my wife, how we miss each other. "

Miro Lu, CGTN, Singapore.