{"id":9554,"date":"2021-07-01T16:49:54","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T08:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/?p=9554"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:51:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T08:51:33","slug":"the-comfort-of-a-call-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2021\/07\/01\/the-comfort-of-a-call-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Comfort of\u00a0a Call\u00a0Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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WHO HE IS<\/span><\/h3>

Mr David Chia is part of the team that developed Call Home, an award-winning tech solution that helps migrant workers stay connected with their loved ones. The Yale-NUS graduate serves on the \u2018Alumni Giving Committee\u2019 and is currently based in Ireland.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>

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For many of us, voice and video calls with friends and family have been a lifeline through the COVID-19 pandemic. But for Singapore\u2019s migrant workers, it is a luxury that they sometimes cannot afford. The problem is made worse by the low internet penetration in rural Bangladesh, where many of these workers\u2019 families are based. \u201cThey can\u2019t call their loved ones through web-based services like WhatsApp,\u201d explains Mr David Chia, a product manager with Facebook. \u201cInstead, they rely on calls via prepaid IDD cards.\u201d\u00a0<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A member of the Call Home team with a user of the service.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Accessing these cards during last year\u2019s Circuit Breaker was a challenge as the workers\u2019 movements were restricted. When they could get their hands on the cards, they would end up paying about a tenth of their monthly salary just to hear the voices of their loved ones. \u201cThe comfort of a loved one\u2019s voice was especially important as case numbers in the dormitories kept going up and people were living in fear,\u201d shares Mr Chia. He continues, \u201cIt\u2019s a comfort that a lot of us take for granted.\u201d He admits that he was no different in this respect. \u201cI\u2019m from Malaysia so I spent 2020 away from my family, who are still there. In some ways, I took it for granted that my family would know how to pick up my WhatsApp call or join a Zoom link. But there was a sense of empathy that drove me to act. What if we couldn\u2019t reach them? How would we feel?\u201d<\/p>

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ADAPTING AN IDEA<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>

Thankfully, Mr Chia did not have to devise a solution from scratch. Realising that they could help alleviate the migrant workers\u2019 challenges, he and three friends decided to adapt a tech solution they had developed during a hackathon earlier that year to the present situation. This initial solution had targeted another demographic often underserved by tech: Singapore\u2019s large community of seniors. But the group of four quickly pivoted their idea \u2014 and along came Call Home. Powered by cloud communications platform Twilio, the app allows 3G-to-landline calls. This means that workers can use the internet to call landlines back home. \u201cTo make a call, they go to a website on their phone and log in with a Facebook or Google ID.\u00a0Then they can upload contacts and hit \u2018dial\u2019 to talk to their families,\u201d says Mr Chia. An hour-long conversation on Call Home takes up just 1.5MB of data.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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This experience has put me in touch with other people around my age who are as passionate in bringing about change as I am.<\/span><\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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To tailor their solution to the needs of migrant workers, the Call Home team embarked on a series of consultations with these workers. These were made possible with the support of organisations like JTC, the COVID-19 Migrant Support Coalition and Transient Workers Count Too. These consultations eventually resulted in a two-month pilot programme for about 60 workers.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Mr David Chia.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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KEEPING IT SUSTAINABLE<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>

Despite the enthusiastic response, the team faced some challenges. For one, Twilio is not a free platform: each call has a fixed cost. Mr Chia and his team have tapped on their personal networks of friends and contacts to help build a sustainable funding model for Call Home so that the costs passed on to the migrant workers are minimal. Twilio.org, the social impact arm of Twilio, supports the initiative by offering a heavily-discounted rate for its services, bringing down\u00a0the costs of calls by more than half.\u00a0<\/p>

The remaining amount is covered through partnerships with corporates and voluntary welfare organisations. For instance, a partnership with Facebook pays for all the calls made by workers constructing the tech giant\u2019s data centres in Singapore. The Call Home team has also started a fund-raising campaign on GIVE.asia, which hopes to raise $100,000 for their service. This sum will allow 10,000 workers to access Call Home for free throughout the year. Given the large sums of money they were raising, they valued accountability. \u201cBetter.sg, which is a non-profit volunteer-run organisation that promotes tech-for-good, approached us and offered to adopt us, which we readily agreed to,\u201d he recalls.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0SUCCESS CALLING<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>

\"\"<\/strong>>\u00a0Call Home has caught the eye of the\u00a0Singapore Business Review<\/em>, which conferred the\u00a0Mobile Award for Telecommunications\u00a0on the service.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

>\u00a0It was praised by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat at the Smart Nation & U conference in March.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

>\u00a0More than\u00a01,000 users\u00a0use Call Home every month.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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DISCOVERING COMMUNITIES\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>

Though he is no longer heavily involved in the day-to-day running of Call Home, Mr Chia still gives the occasional input. The experience, he says, has been an enriching one. \u201cAt Yale-NUS, I was exposed to many people who had ideas about making a difference. Yet your priorities change when you start working,\u201d he reflects. \u201cBut this experience has put me in touch with other people around my age who are as passionate in bringing about change as I am.\u201d

It is not just the do-good community that Mr Chia has been exposed to. He has also learnt a lot about the migrant workers who have toiled thanklessly to build today\u2019s Singapore. Recalling one of the most memorable moments of the project, he says, \u201cOne of my teammates was going to meet some of the workers for the first time and she told me that she was a little nervous. At that point, I wore my \u2018anthropology major\u2019 hat and told her to blend in and they would welcome her more than she thought they would. And they did just that! At the end of the session, she told me, \u2018I can\u2019t believe how welcoming they were. They did not see me as \u2018the other\u2019; they just offered me food and received me with open arms\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to donate to the Call Home fundraiser.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How empathy drove Mr David Chia (Yale-NUS \u201917) to find a solution for a problem he had never experienced himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership","category-social-impact"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9554"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9596,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions\/9596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}