The Waterfalls Student Care Centre is a facility provided and funded by Beyond Social Services, a charity dedicated to reducing delinquency among children and youths from less privileged backgrounds. The centre provides guidance, care, protection and resources that keep young people in school and out of trouble.
We had been briefed that activities organised for the kids should be geared towards education, instilling team spirit, and team-building. After a brainstorming session among activity leaders, our capable staff came up with creative activities for the children aged four to 12 years old.
Staff who visited the centre on 24 September 2011 organised the following:
1) Dance workshop
2) Henna
3) Musical chairs
4) Origami session
5) Word games
6) Soccer match
Despite the heavy downpour on 1 October 2011, the second group of staff carried out the following in high spirits:
1) Arts & craft session
2) Pictionary
3) Story-telling
4) Telematch with four challenges
We not only awarded prizes to winning teams, but gave each child a goodie bag containing a stationery set or colour pencils and snacks. The old books, toys and clothes that we collected during our inaugural bake sale in September were also donated to the centre.
We received very positive feedback from the centre saying that the children enjoyed the activities conducted. Staff also had a fulfilling session from spending time with the children and also colleagues.
“It was very refreshing and fun to spend time with the kids and with our colleagues. Kudos to the organisers for a great initiative!” said Christophe Altaie, Sponsorship Marketing Manager. The Singapore CSR committee hopes that this will be the beginning of a rewarding, lifelong relationship between Singapore staff and Beyond Social Services.
This is not the first time that EM balls have come to the rescue – the mud mix played a role in remediation projects following the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the South East Asian tsunami in 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Moreover, the EM balls have been used to support sustainable practices in farming, disaster clean-up and waste management. Some of the QI employees affected by the flood also took home some EM balls to treat the water surrounding their houses.
