A botched political moment turned meme has been made into a set of stickers and raised over S$4,000 for charity.
Weeks after Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat stumbled over his words in his now-infamous “East Coast Plan” speech, someone turned one of the resulting memes into stickers and put them on sale for S$2.
Emblazoned with a portion of the bewildering speech, the stickers have raised $4,300 for Krsna’s Free Meals, their creator announced online today.
“Thank you [R]eddit! The east coast plan sticker drive is over and we’ve raised $4300 thanks to everyone!” Reddit user MelonMilkfordays wrote.
Tea Kok Hong, aka Ayam on Reddit, transformed the meme into a sticker.
It quotes from Heng’s tortured verbiage:
“For our East Coast residents, we also have a plan for the East Coast. We have a East Coast Singapore we have a together at East Coast plan. We care at East Coast. So we look forward to working closely together with our residents to enable the East Coast and the whole of Singapore to emerge from this stronger.”
The charity drive began earlier this month.
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Reached for comment, Tea told Coconuts Singapore today that they have sold more than 2,000 pieces.
“We didn’t expect the turn out to be that big,” the 41-year-old print shop owner said. “We were thinking maybe we can get a few hundred dollars to donate then the orders started coming in…. it peaked out after voting day and we thought that was it. Then suddenly the orders started coming in. Twice as much as the previous peak.”
Thank you reddit! The east coast plan sticker drive is over and we’ve raised $4300 thanks to everyone! from r/singapore
The funds raised will help buy a van by Krsna’s Free Meals, a soup kitchen catering mainly to migrant workers.
“The $4300 raised is going directly towards the campaign to secure a van for the soup kitchen. The amount raised will bring us closer to our target. We thank everyone for the love and support,” Krsna’s Free Meals was quoted on Reddit by MelonMilkfordays.
Tea said that he has been making stickers and giving them away to interested Redditors whenever he could. He decided to turn the meme into a sticker after receiving requests to do so online.
But it soon became overwhelming with more than 500 requests. Tea decided to put up the vinyl sticker for sale at S$2 per piece on their website on July 4.
“It started out as a giveaway then the requests [were] overwhelming. In the past it was like maybe 50 or tops 100 requests for the free sticker. [For] this meme, I stopped after giving out 260. I think I still have about 330 requests that I couldn’t get to, so I saw there’s a real sizable demand and I suggested to the art creator u/melonmilkfordays that we put it up for sale on my webstore,” he wrote.
They have a East Coast plan. And now you can have one too! from r/singapore
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