SINGAPORE — The Food Bank Singapore (FBSG) will be going phygital (a combination of physical and digital) and entering the realm of the metaverse.
On April 21, it will mark its metaverse debut with the auction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to raise funds to support 10,000 beneficiaries in Singapore with food and essential items for one year.
The honorary art NFTs will feature FBSG’s mascot KooriMo and include a unique utility to benefit and honour the successful bidder. The three sets are drawn by an artist from Smobler Studios, which will be appointed as FBSG’s metaverse partner.
Smobler Studios is a leading metaverse architect that owns Cobbleland in Sandbox, currently the biggest metaverse. Says Co-Founder Dr Loretta Chen, a media veteran and known changemaker, “We are aware many Singaporeans are apprehensive about cryptocurrency and the Metaverse. This initiative is also part of an awareness and education campaign to acquaint our community to the Web 3 space through familiar faces, a meaningful cause and established partners to lend credibility and gravitas. Ignorance isn’t always bliss for a small country like Singapore so it is best to lean in, learn more especially if we want to stay competitive and remain an innovation hub.”
Plans are underway to build KooriLand by FBSG along with assets that can be sold in the metaverse to raise funds to support the food bank’s mission of ending food insecurity in Singapore.
“We are piloting this move into the metaverse as a new way of fundraising. It’s an exciting new world that lets us experiment with different concepts and reach out beyond Singapore to a global audience. NFT is a cool and interesting way to use art to spread our messages. From our metaverse experiment, we hope to share lessons learnt with fellow non-government organisations so that they too can consider this space for their fundraising efforts. We also warmly welcome government agencies to work alongside us to make the metaverse a safe and secured mode of donation,” said Nichol Ng, Co-founder of FBSG.
Interested donors can take part in the honorary art NFT auction on OpenSea, which will be held from April 21 to April 24, 2022, 11.59pm.
Crypto donations and phygital ambassador
To align with the new economy and make it more convenient for a new generation of tech savvy donors, FBSG will be accepting cryptocurrency as donations.
The innovative move will provide a new source of funds as well as set the pace for other charities to follow suit.
FBSG will also be appointing its first phygital ambassador on the 21st of April. His identity will be revealed at the auction event.
Celebrating a decade of feeding and fighting food insecurity
The move to phygital is part of FBSG’s 10th anniversary celebration, which began with a panel discussion on the findings of The Hunger Report Part II last month. A slew of activities in response to the findings will be held over the next eight months.
These include a S$12 million fund-raising campaign to provide 10,000 Bank Cards for 12 months to those in need. Recipients can use the cards at the targeted 1,000 food and beverage outlets that FBSG is onboarding under its Feed the City initiative. The cards can also be used at more than 60 vending machines dispensing food and daily essentials in Singapore.
FBSG is also creating a National Feeding Directory to make information on food aid more accessible and easily available. The directory hopes to unite all charities and programmes in Singapore on one platform.
“We are very happy at the ripple effect that we have managed to create within the ecosystem over the past decade. While we are still nowhere close to completing our mission of ending food insecurity in Singapore, we have come quite far in creating more awareness,” said Ng.
