Anita Fam still remembers the day her brother awkwardly handed her a brown envelope. “Anita’s documents”, it said in her mother’s handwriting. That was 2014. Fam’s father had recently passed away. While clearing the family house, Fam’s brother found the envelope in the safe. It contained Fam’s original birth certificate and an adoption petition. “I've known I was adopted since probably the age of five,” said the 63-year-old. “I vaguely remember my mum coming to my bedside and telling me.”But this was the first time Fam was seeing her original birth certificate. There was a section in it that listed an unmarried 19-year-old woman from a small town in Johor, Malaysia, as her birth mother. Where her birth father’s name should be, there was nothing but a dash. The address? Not a hospital. Not a home. It simply noted: “Care of Salvation Army Singapore”.Decades later, Fam, the president of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), helped shape Singapore’s hundreds of social service agencies, including The Salvation Army. “When I shared my birth story with The Salvation Army folks, they said that my roots are in social service – I was literally born into it,” Fam said.
Fam (third from left) with her adoptive parents and brother at her christening. “I was adopted. I've known since probably the age of five,” she says. (Photo: Anita Fam)
