Ps Andrew Khoo (NHCS)
Our guest speaker, Pastor Andrew Khoo, is the founder and executive director of New Hope Community Services (NHCS).
NHCS is a voluntary welfare organization dedicated to helping the needy and ex-offenders. In 2003, they opened a shelter for men to allow ex-offenders to seek refuge at its premises after they had exhausted all other avenues of assistance. They have since expanded to provide temporary housing for displaced families who through circumstances have also found themselves homeless.
Pastor Andrew oversees a team of 35 full-time staff at NHCS and is actively involved in the operations of the organization and its programmes. Their day-to-day work ranges from case management, counselling, life skills training, and fundraising. Today, NHCS shelters over 900 residents via Shelter for Families, Shelter for Individual Men and Women and the Shelter for Men-in-Crisis.
As early as 1982, Pastor Andrew Khoo was already juggling a leadership position in church and continuing with his regular job as a maritime engineering technician in the navy. Hence, his decision to become a full-time pastor didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Although quitting the navy meant that Pastor Andrew had to leave a job that had lasted him 13 years – it allowed him to focus on being a pastor while opening up opportunities for him to help others in the area of community work.
In 2018, New Hope began work on Kampong Siglap Life-Skills and Retreat Centre at 10 La Salle Street, the first of its kind in Singapore, which will be used as part of NHCS sustained engagement programmes to engage the clients of NHCS through residential workshops and seminars to provide coping skills, social resilience, and other life skills to help them break out of their inter-generational poverty cycle.
