Ambulance Wish Singapore is a charity supporting terminally ill patients through the simple but deeply meaningful act of wish granting. Our work is rooted in our motto, “Fulfilling Wishes, Celebrating Lives!”
The end-of-life experience is different for everyone. For some, it can be the most challenging time for them and their loved ones. Sometimes a person dies without fulfilling their wishes because they are either immobile or require extensive medical support. Other times, the caregiving process stretches the families beyond their limits and little time is left to do much more.
With the support of partners and supporters, Ambulance Wish Singapore is enabled to assist these families in granting the final wishes of the terminally ill.
We hope through fulfilling their wishes, we can celebrate their lives through positive experiences and memories. More importantly, this simple act of wish granting provides closure, bringing comfort and peace to both the beneficiaries as well as their families.
AWS has worked hard to build a team of caring and committed volunteers who work closely with hospitals and hospices in identifying the needs of the terminally ill patients and fulfil their wishes.We work closely with the medical social workers, doctors and nurses caring for terminally ill patients in hospices and hospitals. Many of our referrals are from Singapore Cancer Society, National Cancer Centre Singapore, Singapore General Hospital, HCA Home Hospice, Assisi Hospice and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Through caring for their patients, the healthcare personnel understand what matters to them. Through conversations, the patients’ wishes are shared. In turn, these organisations refer their patients to Ambulance Wish Singapore so we can assist in the best possible way to fulfil each wish.
Any terminally ill patient or their family members can also contact AWS directly.We fulfil wishes for anyone who is terminally ill (with a prognosis of less than 12 months), aged 19 years and above, is Singaporean or a PR and has not received a wish from another organisation.
For the critically ill aged 3- 18, please approach “Make-A-Wish Singapore” which is another wish granting organisation.The wishes we fulfil often have to do with affairs of the heart and their families. We have helped patients visit special places of personal significance, celebrate special occasions, organise a family portrait photography session, create scrapbooks and leave legacies for their beloved family members.
Since we started 4 years ago, we have fulfilled more than 130 wishes. The average turnaround time to fulfil a wish range from 1 week to a couple of months. It is highly dependent on the patient’s condition. There were exceptional times where we had to work swiftly to grant wishes of patients whose conditions deteriorated very quickly.The safety of our wish patients is of utmost importance to us. We work closely with their families and healthcare teams to ensure their care needs are taken care of during the wish outing. Advice and clinical protocols from their healthcare teams are observed and emphasised to ensure patient’s safety.
For wish outings of patients who require extensive care, we ensure that the patient is accompanied by a registered nurse. Ambulance transfers and wheelchair accessible cars are arranged when needed.With greater awareness of wish fulfilment for terminally ill patients, Ambulance Wish Singapore has seen an uptake in wish referrals from hospices and hospitals and it anticipates more wish referrals in the years ahead.
Ambulance Wish Singapore is ramping up its operations and fundraising to fulfil more wishes.Our volunteers come from all walks-of-life. They include working adults from all industries, tertiary students, home-makers and retirees.
We currently have more than 280 volunteers who help in the wish granting process as well as fundraising projects. Our oldest volunteer is 71 years old and the youngest is 18 years old.
All our volunteers are trained on the rudiments of palliative care, how to create a delightful and memorable wish experience for our beneficiaries and how to communicate empathetically with patients and their families.
The training program is thoughtfully structured to focus on mentoring our volunteers to make every wish special and heartfelt.AWS is grateful to have received support from generous individuals and companies to help us fulfil wishes. We have been privileged to partner the following organisations and companies, for example Give Fun, Caring Hearts Nursing, Far East Hospitality, Gardens by the Bay and Eu Yan Sang.
Individual Donors can donate to us through Giving.sg and fundraisers such as the Cycle of Peace.
In the past years, we received donations and collaborated with various organisations such as IQVIA, Rotary Club of Marina City, KLA Corporation, Mazars LLP, Schroders and Ang Chin Moh Foundation on fundraisers to support the work at Ambulance Wish Singapore.Stewardship of funds donated is diligently observed at Ambulance Wish Singapore. The finance committee exercises prudence and ensures good governance over all allocation of funds including operational as well as granting wishes.
We are grateful for the generous sponsorship of in-kind contributions in fulfilling our beneficiaries' wishes. This has helped keep our expenses to a minimum.The team is working towards achieving the status of an IPC Charity whereby tax-exempt receipts can then be issued. We are pleased to share that we are on target to apply for IPC in the next financial year.
Meanwhile, Ambulance Wish Singapore is a registered charity since 2020 and we are permitted to receive donations. We are also a member of the National Council of Social Services (NCSS).As a relatively new charity, we are managed by a small team of two staff and our board of individuals who are passionate about improving the end-of-life care.
We are however, moving towards increasing the operations staff force to manage the increasing number of wishes.It is our hope to acquire an ambulance in the future. Currently we work with ambulance service providers whenever needed.
Not all wishes we work on require the services of an ambulance. Some wishes are fulfilled at home and patients who are mobile do not require an ambulance.Cycle of Peace is open to anyone who wants to support the terminally ill.
You and your friends can sign up for Cycle of Peace from 27 May to 1 July 2023.
The Challenge period starts from 27 May to 1 July 2023. Cyclists can pledge to cycle anytime, anywhere and accomplish any distance to support the work of AWS. They can also rally their family and friends to support them in their crusade to raise funds to help fulfil wishes.
All personal, team progress and fundraising accomplishments will be tracked on a leaderboard on the microsite.
If you do not cycle but would like to support our work, please donate to our fundraising appeal on Giving.sg. where we have created a campaign page for Cycle of Peace.We are excited to introduce a new element to this year's campaign.
“5 Wishes – A Celebration of Life” covers five venues where 5 of the past wishes had taken place. The sites are selected in remembrance of a few of our wish beneficiaries.
Participants of “5 Wishes – A Celebration of Life” will receive an e-Badge for cycling to each of these sites. To earn an e-Badge, participants simply need to upload a photo of themselves at the site venues of these destinations on the microsite together with the distance covered.
Upon collecting all 5 e-Badges, participants will receive a customised AWS Collectors EZ Link card.
We hope you can be a part of our wish granting journey when you cycle to these specially selected sites and find out more about the wishes we had granted.
Please click here for the five sites.Individual participants who raised a minimum donation/fundraising amount of $50.00 are qualifed for Top 5 (distance) awards.
