Singapore Buddhist Welfare Services was registered with the Registry of Societies on 27 May 1981. Its history is associated with Venerable Yen Pei and Fu Hui Auditorium. For readers searching Punggol Road heritage, this is a story of organised social assistance as well as Buddhist religious life. SBWS’s institutional account records the registration date.
SBWS lists its address as 105 Punggol Road, Singapore 546636. A Punggol Road address should not automatically be read as a location in modern Punggol New Town. This article concerns the older road corridor and its welfare institutions, not a claim that Fu Hui sits in the new town’s waterfront districts.
Fu Hui’s biography of Yen Pei dates the establishment of the auditorium and SBWS to 1981. It describes volunteers distributing financial relief and food rations to elderly people in need and less fortunate families, alongside hospital visits and donation drives.
Choose your reading route
The 1981 foundation and the 1991 charity milestone · Yen Pei’s welfare work · Reading Punggol Road heritage accurately
The society-registration date and charity-registration date are separate. SBWS records registration with the Charities Branch on 8 May 1991, ten years after the society was registered.
Keeping both dates avoids two common errors: calling 1991 the organisation’s beginning, or assigning charity registration to 1981. They mark different stages in the institution’s formal development.
The founder’s biography presents charitable action as part of Yen Pei’s Buddhist practice. It recalls his mobilisation of volunteers for regular assistance, visits to patients, and blood- and organ-donation initiatives.
It also names welfare divisions including Grace Lodge, Grace Child Development Centre, Hearty Care Centre, Green Haven and Happy Villa. Those names describe a developing network; the biography does not say that all opened in the founding year.
The same account records his Public Service Medal in 1986 and Public Service Star in 1992. It dates his death at Fu Hui Auditorium to 10 November 1996.
Previous chapter · Contents · Next chapter
The useful local-history connection is the road and the institutions associated with it. A street name, an organisation’s founding date and a building’s construction date answer different questions and should not be collapsed into one.
This welfare history adds people, volunteers and care relationships to a place-based chronology. It also helps readers distinguish religious activities from the separate organisational milestones of a social-service body.
