As of August 2022, Call Home has decided to reduce its monthly calling limit for users from 200 minutes down to 80 minutes.

This decision was taken after much deliberation from the team, but we ultimately decided it was in the best interest of our users for a few reasons:

1. As pandemic restrictions in Singapore have lifted, workers have been able to increasingly resume their regular social activities outside of their dorms.
2. The Call Home team has come to recognize that there are a number of other pressing issues workers need support with, beyond calls home. These include easy access to professional mental health support, legal advice etc. Our team is working to expand access to these services as part of Call Home, and we would like to ensure we reserve sufficient funds for this effort.
3. Reducing the monthly calling limit allows us to extend the app to more users who may need to use the app to make calls home in times of emergency for short periods of time.

Thank you all for your understanding. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our instagram, @callhomesg. We look forward to updating you soon on what else you can do on Call Home!

Call Home is powered by Twilio, which allows 3G to landline calls. We chose Twilio because they're an industry-standard mature product, have good documentation, and do all the things we need (e.g. browser to landline calling, SMS delivery, phone number verification). This makes it super easy for us to iterate the service to best fit our users' needs.

Supported by Twillio.org, Call Home gets a heavily discounted rate, which means that the overall calling costs are 40-55% than standard calling rates, among the lowest in the market.

Call Home started as a passion project between four friends who wanted to do something for our migrant worker brothers during the COVID-19 period. We hope to build a community of recurring givers who will continue to support our migrant workers on Call Home. Give.asia will also provide development support to maintain the service and build new features to help migrant workers stay connected to their loved ones back home.

Currently, we support migrant workers with a valid Singapore number. Bangladesh, where the majority of our migrant workers’ families reside, is currently the only country which calls can be made to. We are looking to support more countries if demand increases.

Over 90% of donations will go to fund the calling costs for migrant workers. About 1.5% goes to Give.asia to cover credit card admin processing fees.

Many workers’ families do not have access to wifi and cannot afford data plans that make WhatsApp or Viber calls possible. Workers often spend $30-40 each month on IDD cards alone, not including data plans they purchase to access other services.

COVID-19 restrictions mean many migrant workers have yet to return to work. Unable to earn any income, purchasing IDD cards become a luxury they cannot afford. For those that have returned to work, tight movement restrictions mean going out to purchase IDD cards from stores is a significant challenge.

The result: migrant workers cannot reach their families just when they need them the most. Call Home aims to fill that gap.