A Family Day Outing at Singapore Botanic Gardens
In February 2012, the chairman of Siglap South Youth Executive Committee, Ms Ngee Ann, approached Eden Children's Centre (Simei), offering to help to organise an outing for our young clients. In conjunction with Siglap South YEC's Kindness Week 2012, a day spent playing with our young clients should bring fun and educational experience for their teenage volunteers as well. As the saying goes, "Kindness begets kindness"; the week of activities centred around generosity and lending a helping hand to all around us. Eden Children's Centre (Simei) was indeed fortunate to be one of the recipients of the volunteers' kindness.
Recyclables from ECC (Simei), such as spoilt fax machines, printers, telephones were collected as part of the donation drive. In exchange, Rice packets and energy-saving bulbs were donated to some clients of ECC (Simei), ECC Clementi and Eden Centre for Adults.
14 April 2012 was the last event in Siglap South YEC's Kindness Week. 20 clients with their families participated in the Family Day Outing at Singapore Botanic Gardens, Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. The activities organised by the teenagers included mini-soccer play, mini-bowling play and puzzles play. Of course, bubbles and parachute play were in the list as well. The volunteers and teachers spent enormous energy running after the children, keeping them engaged in the activities. After some light snack, the whole group adjourned to a shady pavilion where a short sing-along session was conducted. The heat and humidity of the weather, coupled with the kids' excitement, reached a climax at noontime. It was then suitably right to bid each other farewell and depart from the Garden.
Deepest appreciation goes to Siglap South YEC's effort and sponsorship, without whom the event would not have happened. Equal sincere gratitude goes to the teachers and families of our young clients, for sweating it out to make this event a successful one. Let’s look forward to another of such event in October 2012!
