Uplift Singapore

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This page is about the Uplift Project in Singapore 🇸🇬

To get information about the Uplift Project in Australia and New Zealand, click here to visit the official website.

Uplift recycles bras to women in need

For women in disadvantaged communities a bra is often unobtainable or not affordable. Uplift collects new and second hand bras and sends them wherever requested by women's groups.

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Why donate bras?

Women appreciate the common dignity of a bra for business or social occasions.

Bras control breast swing when women bend to farm or cook at ground level. In humid climates rashes, fungal infections and abscesses occur between the breast and the chest wall. Bras help by allowing air circulation.

Nursing mums everywhere leak, and bras allow the dignity of a dry shirt, and the comfort of support. A thrush rash on a mother's skin may spread to her baby's mouth, and then back into the breast itself. 

School girls from PNG, Fiji and Solomon Islands have reported wearing 2 or 3 t-shirts under their school uniforms to disguise breasts, despite the heat. A girl without underpants does not go to school during her menstrual period. 

How to Help

Donate Bras

Donate Funds

Set up a Bra Drop-Off Point

Run a Bra Collection Drive

Donate Bras

Here's what we need:

  • Singapore donors, your bras will be the right sizes for women in Philippines (size 30-34 inches / 75-85cm needed)
  • Size 30-40 inches / 80-100cm, A-DD cup in good condition, including crop top styles.
  • Size 42+ inches / 105+ cm 18+, A-DD cup in good condition, including crop top styles.
  • Nursing bras including crop tops. ANY condition will do. If it will catch a leak it is better than nothing, which is the alternative.
  • E cup plus, ANY size. Likely to be the only properly fitting bras that a woman gets in her life.
  • Mastectomy Bras and Breast Forms (prostheses). Like gold. A mastectomy bra offers privacy about the problem. If possible please send the box with the breast form/prosthesis, and put the relevant bras under the plastic mould, in the bottom of the box. These will be given to hospitals for distribution. If sending bras only, without breast forms/prostheses, please put a note in the bag/postpack so we don't miss-sort them.
  • Underpants, new In some places a girl without underpants does not go to school during her period.
  • Please don't send us bodysuits, torsolettes, shapewear, U-bras or bedroom lingerie (though we do love the giggle - we don't send them).

Donate Funds

Whilst the Uplift team are unpaid volunteers, we do require funding for operations.  Donated funds are used only for trucking, shipping, customs charges and fumigation. Donations are not tax deductible at the present time.

Donate

Become a Volunteer

We need volunteers to help with bra sorting, delivery, and fundraising (very important). If you are able to help in any way, please sign up for our mailing list to receive updates, or send an email to singapore@upliftbras.org.

How Are Bras Received

Women usually receive 2-4 bras each. For many, these are the only bras they've ever owned. Common comments from recipients include profound thanks, amazement at the quality of the bras, and disbelief that anyone would give bras to them for free. Often, there is dancing and singing, and lots of laughter at bra distribution events.

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 "I do unestablished work, quite physical, sometimes my bra is  loose because its old and very uncomfortable – this bra is so comfortable and fitting that it feels like I’m not wearing anything at all!"
 

Lady in her 40s, at Nasole Hart

"The five days I was there, all I heard were just words of gratitude and women pulling up their tops to compare and show off their bras amongst themselves. The bra distribution made the women feel they were valued members of the community." 

Distributor at Solomon Islands, 2012

"The young teenagers love being able to find suitable bras. In our community the proceeds from the sale of bras have gone into buying materials for a sewing group. The ladies have made skirts, curtains, bags, shorts, and have started to bring their mending in as well."


Canteen Creek, NT, 2012.

"We always look at these bras and like them very much. But we can only admire them as we cannot afford them." Another said: "All these years, I have never worn a bra until today. This Christmas is really a Happy Christmas for me."

PNG, YWCA report, 2008.

About the Uplift Project

Uplift started in 2005, collecting second-hand bras for Fiji, with help from Rotary Australia World Community Service. In 2015, the Uplift Project became a registered charity in Australia, with branches across the country and in NZ, Singapore and Botswana. So far, Uplift has sent over 1.5 million bras to 11 Asia Pacific countries, Botswana, Uganda, India and Pakistan.