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Oct 23, 2009 Lauded for mission sparked by grief Wicare founder receives President's award for her efforts in helping widows By Jessica Jaganathan SHE was just 33 years old when a car accident claimed her husband's life and put her in a coma for days. Recovering in January 1985, Madam Joyce Lye was faced with the grim reality of not having life insurance to fall back on and having to bring up her two young children - then aged three and 14 months - without her husband, George, by her side. Singapore was also going through an economic downturn. She sold her flower shop, due to recurring double vision from the accident, and her four-room flat in Clementi to pay the salaries of the workers in her husband's carpentry business. 'I didn't know how to handle the grief. When anyone called me, I would bang down the phone. When my children cried, I would hit them,' said Madam Lye, now 57. At the time, she could not find any motivational books or resources to help cope with the loss of her loved one. The next few years were spent setting aside her pain and grief to focus on bringing home the bread and butter for the family. 'Eventually I turned to Christianity to help get through,' explained Madam Lye. It was at church that she met four other widows, and the idea of bringing them together was born. The first meeting in 1994 was in a hotel cafe at City Hall. The five who met shared an ice kachang and bonded over their common grief. Soon, word spread and more women who had lost their husbands joined the network. More meetings followed, and two years later, they formed a committee and a mailing list of the members. The Wicare support group was formally incorporated with the Registry of Societies in 1998 and moved to its current premises at the Junction 8 mall in Bishan three years ago. Under Madam Lye's guidance, membership for the support group has grown to 143, with 550 on the mailing list. For her efforts, Madam Lye was given the President's Social Service Award - the highest accolade in social service volunteerism - by President S R Nathan at the Istana yesterday. The award, now in its ninth year, recognises outstanding voluntary contributions. Five winners were picked out of 62 nominations. Madam Lye hopes the recognition will serve to remove the social stigma associated with widows. 'People still tend to shun or judge widows, especially if they remarry,' she said. Her friend and Wicare committee member Joan Swee said Madam Lye's positive spirit is inspiring to many women who are trying to put their lives back together. After her own husband died from cancer in 1994, Ms Swee spent 18 months wallowing in grief, till she met Madam Lye and Wicare. 'When I first met her, I was living in a condominium. She was struggling to put food on the table. I told myself, if she can manage to do it and smile through it, I can do it too,' said the 51-year-old training consultant. Madam Lye has since set up various programmes and services for widows and their children, including counselling sessions, talks on topics like widowhood, coping with grief, financial management and remarriage, legal advice and arts therapy for children. She is now planning to extend Wicare's services to fatherless teenagers in school, and help them by equipping them with coping skills as well as providing counselling. Eventually, her ambition is also to set up a dating agency for the women, not just for them to meet new people, but to encourage them to 'take a risk'. The other award winners were Ms Fatimah Azimullah, the immediate past president of PPIS, or the Young Women Muslim Association; Kidz Horizon Appeal, a charity that provides financial aid to children with chronic or terminal illness; the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and MediaCorp. jessicaj@sph.com.sg Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access |