SINGAPORE – Mr Yeo Whee Jim, 52, has lost the ability to walk, to feed himself and to scratch an itch, among a growing list of functional tasks he can no longer do without help.
While amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal disease that causes progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, has robbed him of his independence, it has not diminished his capacity “to love and accept love”.
Using payouts from his critical illness and other insurance policies, the widower with a 20-year-old daughter has donated a six-figure sum to set up a charitable fund to help young caregivers.
“I’m already at the end of my life, and if I want to go, at least go with a big bang,” said Mr Yeo, who used to run his own training consultancy firm.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said in a calm and measured tone: “I believe that to live is to give, and to live audaciously is to give generously.”
Diagnosed with ALS in 2023, Mr Yeo has lived past the halfway mark of the two to five years that patients are typically expected to survive after diagnosis.
However, his condition has since progressed to a stage where he relies on a ventilator around the clock to help him breathe, and even speaking has become tiring.
There is no cure for ALS.
Over time, the rare motor neurone disease affects control of the muscles needed to move, speak, eat and breathe. The most common cause of death for patients is respiratory failure.
In his final act in life, Mr Yeo has chosen to live audaciously – stepping into pursuits he had never imagined when he was hale and hearty.
Besides starting a charitable fund, he has a collection of poems and a book of his photographs and reflections published, and written a series of essays for The Straits Times.
These are part of his efforts to live – and leave behind a legacy for his only child.
The younger of two children, Mr Yeo comes from a family of humble means. His late father was a camera repairman, while his late mother was a housewife.
Mr Yeo said he benefited from Singapore’s meritocratic system and scholarships, and wants to pay it forward to help children from lower-income families.
He was a Public Service Commission scholar who studied mechanical engineering in Japan, where he met his wife, Ms Grace Hui Lok Yan, a student from Hong Kong.
Mr Yeo Whee Jim, his wife Grace Hui Lok Yan and their daughter during a family holiday in the Maldives in 2011. In 2014, about a year after his wife died from breast cancer at the age of 39, he used part of her insurance proceeds to start a bursary for pupils from lower-income families at Mayflower Primary School.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF YEO WHEE JIM
In May 2025, he started the Lok Yan and Whee Jim Fund, with the Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS).
He declined to disclose the amount he donated, saying that it is more than the minimum of $200,000 needed to start a donor-advised fund at the CFS, and is “not an insignificant part” of his wealth.
Young caregivers are a cause close to his heart, having experienced first-hand the toll that serious illnesses take on families.
