Our Founding Director, Huijia shares how her experience in a community engagement programme back in 2018 inspired her to design and pilot Resilience Trails — our not-for-profit initiative that supports under-resourced communities by tapping on their gifts and assets in a dignity promoting manner.
“I wished there was a better way, you know. For me to earn money and also take care of the children.”
*Norah’s (name changed to protect privacy) voice tinged with emotion as her four young children thronged around us ladling food on their plates. There we were, some 4 years ago, seated on her floor in her rental flat breaking fast with her family during Hari Raya Puasa. In contrast to the festivities around us, Norah’s mood was a tad sombre as she shared her difficulties around balancing her familial obligations with trying to support the family financially.
In between mouthfuls of Mee Goreng, she lamented about how challenging it was to hold down a day job with limited childcare options for her younger kids. How she had been unceremoniously let go from her previous ad-hoc jobs for taking “too much” time off when her kids fell sick. How limited her options were due to her lack of credentials. But more importantly, how sad, guilty and desperate she felt every time she had to choose between her family and work.
Norah and her family hosting me and our participants as part of a community engagement programme that Skillseed organised back in 2018
“I want something more flexible, you know? But they only always ask me to take on cleaning jobs.” Norah continued with a sigh, pausing only to heap more of her home-cooked goodness on my plate.
“I know lah. Flexibility is not for people like me.”
People like me.
Those words struck me like a bucket of cold water. I felt all at once indignant and angry. Norah’s heartache and dilemma around work and family resonated deeply with me, as I was a newly minted mother of a 10-month old at that time. After speaking to other residents, we found out that there were others who shared similar pains - inflexible jobs, often far from their homes, with long hours that took them away from caring optimally for their family members. The cost of not being there for their families outweighed the benefits of remuneration they received for many, many hours of manual labour, which comprised the main roles they were offered.
This knowledge, and Norah’s last statement of resignation - “people like me”, bugged me. It bugged me enough that for the next four years, my team and I relentlessly explored ways on how we could tap on Skillseed’s core competencies in capability building and experiential learning to provide dignified, flexible and home-oriented employment to individuals from these under-resourced communities. To fit the aforementioned criteria, I came up with the idea of equipping these stakeholders as Community Guides and co-creating learning journeys with them in their own neighbourhoods. Beyond an additional source of income, I had also hoped to provide the Guides a platform to upskill themselves and gain confidence while working with their natural assets and existing resources.
After refining the idea and the plans with social worker friends, running a few trials with residents and surmounting obstacle after obstacle (including COVID - the biggest one of all), we were finally able to partner with AMKFSC Community Services (AMKFSC) in launching a more structured pilot programme in the AMK neighbourhood. We knew that we had to build an ecosystem of partners to support our Guides holistically, and are thankful to find a partner in AMKFSC that believes in a strengths-based approach to community development as much as we do.
With that, I am profoundly grateful to introduce our pilot cohort of Community Guides of our Resilience Trails:
Our Community Guides (from left to right): Fadillea, Fazeli, Janet, Julie and Lydia.
Resourceful, skilled, hardworking, tenacious folks (and yes, with quirks and flaws too, of course) - with big dreams, and even bigger hearts.
People like Norah.
Lydia with her 4 year old daughter Ayla (our youngest Facilitator to date!), who co-led our recent Resilience Trail for Youth Corps Community Internship (YCCI) participants in June with Raine, our Skillseed Facilitator.
People like us.
The Resilience Trails is Skillseed’s latest not-for-profit community initiative and is thus far fully funded by Skillseed. Our Community Guides are former or current beneficiaries of Ang Mo Kio and Cheng San Family Service Centre. For more information on the Resilience Trails and how you can support us, please see: https://www.skillseed.sg/resilience-trails