Koh Seng Choon He lost $1,000 daily on foodcourt that hires people with disabilities

For four years, he was losing $1,000 a day to prop up the social enterprise he started in 2010 to employ the disabled and disadvantaged.

- Shermaine Ang

Mr Koh Seng Choon, 65, did not pay himself a salary in the first four years of running Dignity Kitchen, a foodcourt that employs people with disabilities as cooks, cashiers and other staff.

He remortgaged his office in Manhattan House for $200,000, and instead of buying a property or a car, as his wife suggested, he put the money into Dignity Kitchen.

To make up for the losses and to support his two teenage sons, he juggled five jobs, including teaching and consultancy work.

The former management consultant had wanted to give back to society after he saw the plight of poor and disabled people while working in India, China and Britain.

In 1984, Mr Koh was in Britain, where coal miners had started a strike in an attempt to prevent closures of pits that the government deemed unprofitable in the coal industry.

"I saw a society in crisis," he said.

When he returned to Singapore in 1994, he came to a realisation.

"I didn't see beggars in Singapore, I didn't see homeless people, and I didn't see disabled people in shopping centres.

"So I went to find the answer."

He made a promise to himself to do good once a month on his days off.

He started with taking lonely seniors living near his flat in Spottiswoode Park on outings, and went on to volunteer with Yellow Ribbon, which helps prisoners rehabilitate and reintegrate with society, before coming up with the idea for Dignity Kitchen in 2006.