Building resilience within families and ensuring the Malay Muslim community is able to seize job opportunities are ongoing processes that self-help group Yayasan Mendaki has facilitated through its programmes amid the Covid-19 outbreak, President Halimah Yacob said on Saturday.

The programmes help those who have lost their jobs find new ones and learn new skills, Madam Halimah said on a visit to Mendaki's satellite centre in Choa Chu Kang, where she was given a tour and interacted with families involved in the programmes.

Often, the biggest challenge is job matching, she noted.

Some of Mendaki's programmes include online job fairs and the Cari Kerja job app to help match people to available jobs.

"I do encourage the community to make use of these apps, to go online to take advantage of these opportunities," she told reporters.

The Mendaki programmes are a showcase of how the group has been working to uplift the Malay Muslim community, she added.

One of their key focus areas is ensuring that children have at least three years of pre-school education, Madam Halimah said in a Facebook post yesterday.

"Based on expert opinion, that amount of exposure (three years) is needed for children to build their foundation so that they are Primary 1-ready and don't end up on learning support programmes (LSPs) when they enter primary school. LSPs are special programmes for students who need additional help in Maths and English. Mendaki's own efforts show a marked degree of success with their early intervention efforts," Madam Halimah wrote in her post.