About the organization
Who are they?
They are a group of people willing to help lend a listening ear to people who are suicidal, people who know someone who is suicidal.
Vision: To be an available lifeline to anyone in crisis
Mission: SOS provides 24-hour confidential emotional support by trained volunteers to people in crisis, thinking of suicide or affected by suicide.
Goals: To prevent suicide by talks, workshops and Annual Suicide awareness week. To intervene directly with a suicidal person through the 24-hour hotline, face-to-face counselling sessions and emergency situations. To support suicide survivors.
Source: http://www.samaritans.org.sg/index1.html
What do they do?
They listen to people who are calling in to the hotline, distressed, despaired and suicidal. They volunteer out their own free will, to commit time without expecting any reward.
Source: http://www.samaritans.org.sg/index1.html
What do they provide?
They provide trainings for volunteers, 24-hour emotional support to suicidal people and suicide survivors.
What do they need?
They need even more volunteers as not many are committed enough to stay, not all are suitable for volunteering.
Who are their “clients”?
Their clients are the people who are suicidal.
Information in their website
http://www.samaritans.org.sg/index1.html
1. History
The history has an introduction which talks about how they started out, in which country and by whom. They have information on how their name “Samaritans” came about and basically how they became international.
It then moves on to talk about their office in Singapore. It’s about the SOS starting training classes for volunteers, and receiving registration by the Singapore Registry of Societies. Lastly, about their premises expanding and relocation.
2. About Us
The About Us tells visitors of the website basically who they are, what they aim to do, their vision and mission. They have a link on Frequently Asked Questions and the .pdf files for downloading of the Annual Report and Financial Report.
3. Goals
They have 3 goals, Prevention (How they prevent suicide), Intervention (How they intervene directly with a suicidal person) and Postvention (Providing emotional support to suicidal people and suicide survivors).
4. Samlistens, requirements to be a volunteer, benefits
Samlistens is telling people to volunteer to help the suicidal people by volunteering if they love to listen and are ready to lend their ears anytime.
The requirements are qualities needed to be a volunteer.
The benefits are what you will or can gain from the experience of being a volunteer.
5. Survivors, facts about suicide
Survivors talks about people who survived from suicide and telling them not to hesitate calling the hotline when they need emotional support.
Facts about suicide is about facts which some people do not know about. For example, how crisis can occur anytime, and what suicidal people do to convey their intentions.
6. Statistics, annual report, financial report
These sections are about how many suicide attempts and how often or regular is it.
7. The ‘Do’s and ‘Don’t's
This section tells us what we should do and what we should not do upon facing a suicidal person.
8. Myths and facts about suicide
Myths are some sayings that people normally question about, and the facts tell us the truth.
9. Services
This section tells us about the services they provide, like face-to-face counselling, Local outreach to suicide etc.
Current situation
Do they have web presence?
They do have a website but its presence is not very well-known in this society.
Is it effective or practical?
Although they do provide a lot of information on their website, it isn’t effective enough as they are still lacking of volunteers, and so it leads to some being unable to reach them due to the limited number of calls they could take or receive.
Is their website up to date?
Yes. So far, The latest information they have on their annual report that can be found on their website is from year 2009.
Any updates?
No. The information on their annual report would only be updated after 2010 has passed.
What is lacking?
Their text are all image-based, that makes it harder to search for the website as the words in the text would not appear in Google unless “Samaritans of Singapore” is the search term.
They do not use web 2.0 or new media tools to create awareness of their organization.
Any other similar organizations? Their success? Any areas for improvement?
A similar organization, providing support for suicidal people is the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center.
Source: http://www.brcic.org/
An area of improvement for this website would be the colors used for this website. The colors used are not eye-catchy, although the design is simple, easy to navigate.
This organization is not well known too, I guess they need web 2.0. They didn’t really use the new media tools. to create awareness.
