Food From The Heart

Values in Action

By Jolyn Deanne Sim Giak Ying

Netball Academy, IBDP Year 5

Over the past few years, the Netball and Fencing Academies have come together and collaborated with Fei Yue Family Service Centre as part of our Values in Action (VIA) project to help the less fortunate residents in Woodlands. This year, we supported the Admiralty Food Project, which is a joint community project between Fei Yue Family Service Centre, 4Life, Innova Primary School, and Singapore Sports School. The Admiralty Project aims to provide food support to low-income families and underprivileged elderly given that the need for food support has increased during the pandemic.

A team of five people consisting of three netballers, including myself, and two fencers, led the donation drive. We had to liaise with the head of Fei Yue Family Service Centre to find out what help they needed and how both academies could be involved in this project. Our team decided to support their donation drive by putting together 50 goodie bags on our own through donations from staff and parents from the Netball and Fencing Academies, as well as assist Fei Yue Family Service Centre and 4Life pack another 150 goodie bags for distribution.

To plan the donation drive effectively, we discussed with Fei Yue Family Service Centre and decided on a more specific list of items that can be included in the goodie bags to minimise large differences in the goodie bags and ensure with meet the needs of low-income families and elderly. We also needed to take note of the restrictions set by Fei Yue Family Service Centre, to deploy the student-athletes appropriately.

With the kind donations from staff and parents of student-athletes in the Netball and Fencing Academies, we managed to put together the 50 goodie bags as planned. The bags contained food items such as rice, instant noodles, canned food, cooking oil, milo, and biscuits, and disposable masks.

On 11 November 2020, we divided both academies into seven groups to maximise the number of people involved in the VIA project at once, while adhering to Safe Management Measures. We did up a schedule that ensured that each group would be engaged in an activity, be it helping in the packing, or doing other VIA activities such as cleaning our training grounds. With multiple groups engaged at once, we had to coordinate the packing process and communicate each group's progress so as to ensure none of the groups were overloaded and we were on track.

Though I have been involved in community efforts before, this is the first time I have been put in charge of a large group. I have been given the opportunity to see community efforts from a new perspective which has allowed me to appreciate the effort that goes into such projects more. Seeing the outcome of our efforts has left me feeling contented and gratified, and personally, this experience was worth all the effort put into it.

Yoo Zheng Yi, a Secondary 3 fencer, who also co-led the VIA project shared similar sentiments. He said, “The project was extremely meaningful. Even though we could not help more due to current restrictions, I am glad that our little contribution and efforts will still go a long way.”