By: 
With tighter COVID-19 safety management measures, we sometimes aren’t able to dine out or are recommended to dine at home.
Dapao all the way!
While takeaway is super convenient with food delivery apps like GrabFood and Foodpanda, there’s actually a group of people who are having trouble keeping their food businesses afloat.
It’s the digitally disadvantaged elderly hawkers in Singapore.
That’s right, it’s the uncle that sells your favourite Wonton Mee or that auntie with the best Fishball Noodles.
While extended help by the government has been given, it is truly a challenge especially for the elderly. Without getting help, some of the elderly might have to shut down their stalls.
Many of these are traditional food stalls serving delicious and wonderful food. It is a waste for them to be gone!
If you’re a food lover, one of the things you probably miss during this time is going to Hawker Centres, where you fall in line and wait in a long queue just to eat the famous Char Kway Teow or the stir-fried noodle dish. It has probably been such a long time that merely thinking about it makes you sad and nostalgic at the same time.
Good thing, people did not give up on them and there is something YOU can do as well!
With their compassion towards these hawkers, they have found a way to help them through platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google Maps Layer.
These platforms allow other potential buyers and customers to see and have access even to the hawkers who don’t know how to go online and sell their food.
Aside from watching videos and memes, there’s a lot that we can do on Facebook.
Facebook connects people.
Facebook can reach a large number of people and it’s a great platform to help and support the hawkers. Here, you can see many Facebook Groups where members are listing and posting their favorite food stalls.
Source: Cheap and Good food in Singapore Facebook Page
The 15.8k members of this group share the recommended cheap and good food that you can find in the country. There are many amazing suggestions here that you will surely love to try.
Source: Dapao Makan 2020 Facebook Page
This group has 5.2K members, and they share deliveries and takeaway promos of many restaurants in Singapore.
Source: Singapore Hawkers United 打包外卖 Facebook Page
This group has 11.3K members who share updates about food from hawkers that you can order and have delivered.
Source: Pasar United – Dabao 2020 Facebook Page
With 45.7K members, they allow and invite sellers and their home based-businesses to be posted to the group. They can do a live selling of their products to a large number of potential customers
Aside from Facebook, another great platform that you can use to help disadvantaged elderly hawkers is Instagram. There are pages here that bring awareness to locals about elderly hawkers who have no access to online communities. You can aslo send them a message to suggest a hawker that they can feature.
Here are the account names that you can follow:
Source: @savetheelderlyhawkers Instagram
Source: @wheretodapao Instagram
It is a digital map that you can use to locate the disadvantaged hawkers who have no access online.
You can even link it to your Google map for easier access and add more of your favorite stalls.
How to access: Simply go to https://bit.ly/hawker-help-map and you can see many different stores, their address, and stall descriptions.
And if you want to add your favorite stall, you can do so by filling out this form https://bit.ly/hawker-help-form.
Teamwork and technology!
In this fast-paced world where almost everything is done digitally and through the internet, it’s such a great feeling to see that we have these kinds of platforms that help those who are less tech-savvy and don’t have any access online at all.
These three platforms that help the elderly hawkers only prove that humanity still exists and there are a lot of people who are always willing to lend a hand and support others.
If you’re feeling hungry, check out the above platforms to browse the amazing food choices!
This tough time is only temporary.
Be understanding of other’s situations, be empathetic and be there for each other.
