Couple behind Food From The Heart will move back to Vienna
By Jennani Durai, The Straits Times, 3 Nov 2011
THE Austrian couple who started a charity here to collect unsold bread from bakeries, hotels and restaurants for distribution to the needy are leaving Singapore.
It is with sadness that Henry and Christine Laimer leave their nine- year-old 'baby' Food From The Heart.
Mrs Laimer, 50, in an interview with The Straits Times, described the charity as one that was born in a fateful moment and grew over the years into an outfit that today gives out an average of 28,000kg of bread every month to 8,000 needy individuals, aside from spawning other programmes along the way.
The Laimers, permanent residents here who run a logistics firm, are moving back to Vienna with their daughter in two weeks for private 'family reasons'.
On Tuesday, the reins at Food From The Heart were handed over smoothly to new hands: Businessman Anson Quek, who was on its board from the start, took over Mrs Laimer's post as executive director, while Mr Ronald Stride, president of the American Association of Singapore, succeeded Mr Laimer as chairman.
Recounting the birth of the charity, Mrs Laimer said it was in late 2002 that she read a report in The Sunday Times about bakeries dumping unsold bread at the end of the day, and just could not shake from her mind the thought of all that going to waste when it could feed the hungry. She said: 'It was one of those moments when I had to decide: Do I just keep my mouth shut and not act on it? Or do I put into action what's already forming in my mind?'
She chose to act. She called her husband, who was then away on a business trip, to tell him her idea.
The feeling the couple had - that the charity was 'meant to be' - was cemented by how quickly everything just fell into place, she said. She wrote to The Sunday Times offering to distribute the bread to the needy, gave her telephone number and appealed for volunteers.
That weekend, her cellphone rang almost non-stop, and she amassed the names of 300 willing helpers for a charity that had not even got off the ground.
'I didn't have lunch or dinner that weekend and my baby was crying,' she recalled with a laugh, referring to her daughter Mercedes, now nine.
Mr Laimer, 61, said business associates, bakeries, welfare homes and a lawyer friend all came on board; the volunteers put them in touch with residents' committees and welfare homes.
Mrs Laimer said: 'I didn't even know where the poor were. The volunteers took us to the one-room flats and showed us how much need there really was.'
The beneficiaries are typically from households struggling on less than $200 a month per head, but Food From The Heart especially wanted to reach families plunged suddenly into difficulties.
The charity now also runs 23 'self-collection centres', where bread and non-perishable food are given out to the needy weekly; it hands out bags of food every month in 16 schools to 50 of the neediest families from each school.
Its other programmes include monthly birthday bashes at children's homes and the yearly 'Toys From The Heart' event, which treats 1,000 children to a carnival with games and food and gives each child two toys to take home from a pile donated by better-off families.
The charity with almost 2,000 active volunteers has never had a problem recruiting or keeping them, said Mr Laimer.
'Singaporeans are special - very kind and generous. Many of our pioneer volunteers are still with us,' he said. Saying goodbye to the staff and volunteers is the hardest part of leaving, said the couple.
Mrs Laimer said the charity is ready for the leadership transition, and has expanded its board.
The new leaders are not newcomers, she added, noting Mr Quek's and Mr Stride's long involvement in the work.
The couple have no plans to start an aid agency in Austria. Mrs Laimer said, laughing: 'I'm not sure if we still have the energy for that. Something like this - you do only once in a lifetime.'
Describing herself and her husband as 'incidental' volunteers, she said: 'We never dreamed Food From The Heart would become so big. All we wanted to do was save the bread from the incinerator.'
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