SPRMRKT Kitchen & Bar — Dining With A Conscience

By Nookmag @nookmag · On November 11, 2016

SPRMRKT Kitchen & Bar is honoured to support the production of Buying Happiness, a documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Mak Chun Kit, through a set dinner menu that will raise funds for both the film and the orphans it seeks to create awareness for.

In 2004, Mak visited a Tanzanian orphanage and made fast friends with several of the children. 12 years later he returned, with hopes that the children had grown up and realised their dreams. To his dismay, he found many of them still stuck in a painful cycle of poverty; two of them had even passed away. Mak nonetheless still believed that financial assistance would help to turn the lives of these youths around, and so he turned to crowdfunding in order to raise funds for these orphans, as well as to document the entire process—through the film, Buying Happiness—to find out how these contributions truly
impacted their lives.

The crowdfunding campaign was run earlier this year, gaining significant traction and going on to become one of the most successful of its kind in Singapore. The team still has a long way to go, however, and several fundraising events are being planned to push this project forward and have the film come to life.

Here is where SPRMRKT Kitchen & Bar comes in. Founder Sue-Shan Quek shares more: “I was recently in South Africa for my honeymoon and immediately fell in love with the country. I came back inspired to do something meaningful for the people there, so it was a no brainer to help Chun Kit raise funds for Buying Happiness,” she says. “Dining With A Conscience is a completely new initiative which we want to develop with our team to create something meaningful. Not just for the donors or the orphans, but also for our staff who’s putting dinner together. It’s to remind them that they’re not working in just another restaurant, but that they’re in an industry which can create an impression with each meal and impact with each service. Hopefully, our customers will be heartened when they realise they’ve enjoyed a fantastic meal, and that the money they’ve spent is also going to a worthy cause.”

SPRMRKT Kitchen & Bar at STPI — Creative Workshop & Gallery will launch the Dining With A Conscience menu on 24 November 2016 — just in time for Thanksgiving — with Mak giving an opening speech at the event. The menu will run until 10 December 2016, with a portion of the proceeds going towards the orphans in Tanzania and the production of Buying Happiness.

With the hope that this menu will not only raise funds for these underprivileged youths, but also heighten awareness of an issue that many people have sadly become accustomed to and desensitised towards, we share Mak’s belief that any amount of aid, when given in as direct a way as possible, can truly change lives for the better.

Join us in making a difference, while sharing a meal with the people you love most.