Dione, one of our former teammates, shares about her Skillseed experience partnering with one of our biggest supporters, GIC.
“Alright, so I’ve set a meeting to meet all our stakeholders involved in GIC Sparks…” a firm voice projected from the speakers of my laptop. I recalled feeling a little disoriented after hearing countless acronyms being flung across my very first virtual Scrum — a very common newcomer experience. Vaguely, I would make sense out of half of the acronyms but GIC gave me an uncanny aftertaste. There was vague familiarity, like an acquaintance whose name remained at the tip of your tongue. Little did I know that I would be on a three-year whirlwind adventure as the equipping workshop project manager, coordinating details down to a tee, and one of the Capability Builders conducting the sessions. Like Harry’s experience at Hogwarts, each year brought different challenges and cheers to my professional (and personal) life. If you’re still reading, this means that you either appreciated my Harry Potter reference (thank you!) or are curious about what it’s like to be a multi-hatting young professional working at a social enterprise. Indulge me while I take you through the huge milestones down memory lane…
Year 2020
I was a greenhorn. To be specific, I was a former teacher, making a risky/ brave career transition. Adding to this, COVID-19 was invading the nation and everyone was adjusting to working and learning remotely. Till now, I am still incredulous as to why I had chosen such a timing to transit.
I was tasked to be the Project Manager and one of the Capability Builders of the ‘GIC Sparks & Smiles’ (GIC Sparks for short) Award Programme on my first day. There was so much to dissect. I needed to wrap my head around the role of a Project Manager, understanding what GIC does and the heart of the programme. Rather than allowing my million questions to overwhelm me, I decided to get my hands dirty. This meant meeting with the multiple stakeholders of GIC Sparks first. After listening in and interacting with these purpose-driven individuals, I was astounded to realise the breadth and depth of GIC Sparks. This is an empowerment endeavour, blossoming from a tri-sectoral partnership among the Private (GIC), Public (ITE Colleges) and People (ART:DIS, formerly known as Very Special Arts (Singapore) sectors. Specifically, this programme empowers Singaporean ITE students to be changemakers and pay it forward in their own communities. Our role at Skillseed was to equip these sixty selected awardees across the three ITE Colleges with human-centred leadership and community engagement skills, so that they can apply them in their volunteering stint with ART:DIS and beyond the programme. After understanding its deep purpose to drive Youth Empowerment, my resonance with the programme as an educator fuelled me to do nothing but my best.
However, things were really tough for the first year. Amidst the many challenges, the biggest one was delivering an engaging experience online that spans across four sessions in four months. Building rapport with the participants over such a long period within merely four sessions, and remotely, was a big feat. Even arriving at the agreed dates and programme format took intense coordination among the three campuses and I would not have been able to do this without the support of the ITE coordinators of the respective colleges, Alex (Central), Kay Teck (West) and Leo (East), who continue to be strong pillars of support for this programme till today. Without a playbook for online engagement, it was really a period of trial-and-error for us. I remember countless meetings and discussions with my fellow Capability Builders and external stakeholders, brainstorming ways to better engage our participants. We started filming videos, redesigning our learning experiences, which forced us to grow exponentially in mastering Zoom, and adapting the context of our participants’ learning experience for their volunteering stint with ART:DIS. To enrich their learning, we added ‘Application Challenges’ after the equipping sessions so that our participants can practise applying some of the skills we share beyond the sessions.
Our relationship and rapport with the participants continued beyond the equipping sessions, as I remember crafting many WhatsApp messages to check in with them both pre- and post-sessions. To encourage them during their busy school season in October, we also prepared care packages for our participants and partners.
With Love, from Skillseed Care packages for our participants and partners - handphone holders and an in-house designed postcard, all hand-tied by our team (:
Unexpectedly, from my first year helming GIC Sparks, I learnt to be a more empathetic educator, understanding and embracing the fact that not all of us are privileged to have conducive learning environments.
Year 2021
The pandemic situation was turbulent but our regulations seemed to be slowly opening up for more in-person engagements. Hearts of educators, like me, were singing because nothing beats physical interaction! With one run of GIC Sparks under my belt, I was supposed to feel more confident, like Harry in his second year where he managed to slay a Basilisk (just imagine it as the ultimate monster of an epic story). But I was not. At the end of 2020, the GIC Social Impact team had great foresight and shared their desire for us to convert our equipping sessions to in-person ones, but also cautioned us that we had to be sufficiently agile to activate its virtual equivalent anytime, when necessary.
I was mistaken when I shared that things were challenging in 2020 because the learning curve grew even steeper in 2021 with a new community partner, Engineering Good, who joined us that year. 2021 was indeed the toughest year as there were so many moving pieces on the programme and its possible formats. After a few weeks of sleepless nights, we managed to work around the three ITE Colleges’ respective Safe Management Measure(s) to conduct a two-day in-person workshop, but conducted in split teams. With a lean team, deployment was only possible due to the sheer dedication and commitment of our team members to power through numerous sessions of their weekends.
The challenge of this year was also to weave in a Citizen Library segment, as an additional layer to our Empathy module. This is where we invite community members, known as Citizen Books, to share about their lived experiences with our participants. As our participants were serving people with disabilities (PwDs), the theme naturally anchored upon that. As if being a Project Manager for the programme itself was not enough, I now had to recruit, coordinate and run the Citizen Library. It was truly “coordi-ception” (coordination within coordination, yes I coined that) at play.
However, just like how teachers will always remember the names of their naughtiest students, that year was definitely the most memorable one for me. I saw friendships being formed from the workshops and tears flowing from the heartfelt and authentic conversations during the Citizen Library segments. Somehow, all the pain and struggles to push this workshop forward was gone. I could only remember how hard I was smiling beneath my mask.
A shot of Huijia, one of the GIC Sparks Capability Builders, with the ITE College East (ITE CE) participants, and Leo, ITE CE’s coordinator. Note: She committed to this despite being pregnant at that time!
Year 2022
All of us were more optimistic. This year, VSA(S) rebranded to ART:DIS and another community partner, Green Sproutz SG, joined us. Like the different schools in the Triwizard Tournament held in Harry’s fourth year, all our stakeholders are so diversely gifted in their own ways, running the gamut of Upcycling to Laptop Fixing, brimming with infectious passion and gathered to contribute to the GIC Sparks experience.
The cherry on the cake was that in-person workshops no longer needed to be conducted in split teams (yay!). After two years of running GIC Sparks, it was embedded in my subconscious that I needed to bring something new to the table, as compared to the last two years. Therefore, I took it upon myself to enhance the Citizen Library experience by inviting our Citizen Books physically to the campuses. As a Capability Builder and Programme Manager, I was privileged to be in a position where I can make an impact. I saw how the learning experiences I had designed shape the interactions between our participants and the Citizen Books, both physically and virtually. I was beaming, like a proud mother, when I saw the blooming camaraderie formed with the twenty participants of each ITE College. Another incredibly touching and memorable experience was to witness Edwin, one of our Citizen Books and a para-chess athlete, share with our participants how he plays chess despite his visual disability. Unlike Harry’s fourth year, there was no ceremonial cup or a Yule Ball (something like a Prom party) thrown at the end to celebrate. Nevertheless, I felt a surging sense of pride and sought immense solace to be able to see through the programme’s third year running.
Edwin, one of our biggest supporters for our Citizen Library initiative, shared with several ITE CE’s participants and Faith, one of our capability builders, on how he uses his sense of touch to play chess skillfully despite his visual disability.
Without the support of my team and our GIC Sparks friends (yes, it’s hard to just address them as mere stakeholders - special mention to Mandes from GIC), scoring this hat trick would not be possible. From this experience, which I thought was a mammoth task for me to take up initially, my takeaways are crystallised into these three points. Firstly, I learnt that we should always choose to over-communicate rather than under-communicate, especially with stakeholders whom we work closely with. Being socially distanced, technology has helped to make working in silos much more convenient, but we should never underestimate how powerful a quick check-in to clarify, communicate and collaborate can be. It is really all about relationship-building! Secondly, always leave slack (buffer) and be agile. We will always face constraints that impede our freedom to execute tasks, but the work hack here is to search for our freedom within the constraints. Lastly, and most importantly, let the purpose of the programme be our guiding compass. Going back to the purpose uplifted me in my darkest and most isolating moments. Finally, I hope that reading this has reminded us that there are many like-minded individuals out there who believe in real, and not performative change, and did bring us some light today.
Sincere thanks to GIC, ITE CC, CE, CW, ART:DIS, Engineering Good and Green Sproutz SG for partnering us in the GIC Sparks & Smiles Programme.
Photos taken by Skillseed