Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

Dear Team
Many of you have remarked to me that we have changed much this year but in my heart I say to myself that we have yet to achieve much. While it is true that we have succeeded in putting in place a service structure to face needs island-wide; it is the execution of plans, the meeting of programme targets and most importantly, the impact we impart on those we serve that determines if we have achieved much. Hence, this year has been a planting year. We still have much work ahead tending to our crops before we can see the fruits of our labour.

During this year, it would also have appeared that we are going in so many different directions with the emergence of so many new teams. Well, actually the new teams are in response to an increased or enlarged job scope and all teams are now operating more similarly because we are all now as a whole, guided by principles, values and practices that define Beyond's work approach.

As we organised ourselves this year, we had to constantly reflect on our purpose and beliefs and today all our teams approach their work guided by the following principles:
· Restoration i.e. putting things right
· Community Bridging i.e. sharing the load with partners
· Toughlove i.e. Accountability, Responsibility and Truthfulness
The application of these principles in our work will continue to be refined in the year ahead but I would also want to say how grateful and proud I am of all of you for rising to the challenge of an enlarged service with a nation-wide focus. This was a year where everyone experienced an increased workload/job-scope and you took on the added responsibility with enthusiasm and optimism.

I have been on the job for a long time now and I have drawn energy from different sources. But today, I can wholeheartedly say I draw my energy from the team around me. I am proud to be serving side by side with all of you.

Thank you everyone for your dedicated service. Let's continue getting it right in 2006.

Happy New Year!
Gerard

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as ONE - John Lennon.

Well maybe not quite but last Sunday afternoon, a 100 metre radius around the Toa Payoh Amphitheatre and later that evening at the Hangout, it felt close to that. Thanks everyone that came by last Sunday to support our young people's gift to the community. Afraid that it would storm we did the show an hour ahead of schedule and when it still did not rain we did it again. Our young people did not complain and gave their best both times.
Andrea remarked that it felt like a day of giving and when I reflect on the day, I was reminded that giving is really an empowering gift to oneself. ONE enabled our young people to give happiness to the people around them. In turn, they experienced much joy and approval.

Each show had about 250 people in the audience and elderly men were cheering our little children even as they tumbled clumsily and out of time. The crowd sang along with One Love and clapped and swayed in time with the batucada drums. I was standing behind a mother of a teen who was furious with her daughter a few days earlier because she did not return home for a couple of nights. Her face was stern when Din introduced us but she could not contain the pride within when her daughter perching precariously on Andrea's shoulders looked into her eyes to acknowledge her presence. This mother beamed from ear to ear and forgot herself as she clapped and cheered together with everyone else. It was a moment for the healing between mother and child to begin. If you must know, there was a healing exchange between mother and child after the show.

ONE challenged our young people to come together in cooperation. Sometimes it looked like it would never happen but I am glad the ONE Team, respected the process by trusting and working it. A child who was so disappointed with himself because he could not tumble stood aside during training. However, 2 days before the show, he decided that he could still be ONE with his friends. As he could not tumble, he simply rolled over like a log when it was his turn. It was his initiative 100% and the audience lapped it up as it was indeed humorous. A group of teenage girls for reasons best known to themselves, decided not to practice during rehearsals. Haughtily they told us "We are not here to rehearse." God bless all of you for patiently overcoming these adolescent tantrums. On Sunday evening, these girls were shaking hands with the other performers and made up with their fellow performers whom they were mean to. It was a wonderful job you did Greta, Shin, Serena, Andrea, Amelia, Jolene, Budi, Hardi, and Esther &Wang Feng for getting the show going. Now forgetting the wonderful shepherding of the youths over the months by Din, Yet and the KU & Sports Teams. You showed what it meant to work as ONE!

This is the season of giving and so I thought I will leave you with the Law of Giving.

The Law of Giving
Deepak Chopra

Every relationship is one of give and take. Giving engenders receiving and receiving engenders giving. What goes up must come down; what goes out must come back. In reality, receiving is the same thing as giving because giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe. And if you stop the flow of either, you interfere with nature’s intelligence.

In every seed is the promise of thousands of forests. But the seed must not be hoarded; it must give its intelligence to the fertile ground.

The more you give, the more you will receive, because you will keep the abundance of the universe circulating in your life. In fact, anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given. That which does not multiply through giving is neither worth giving or receiving. If, through the act of giving, you feel you have lost something, then the gift is not truly given and will not increase. If you give grudgingly, there is no energy behind that giving.

It is the intention behind your giving and receiving that is the most important. The intention should always be to create happiness for the giver and receiver because happiness is life supporting and life sustaining and therefore generates increase. The return is directly proportional to the giving when it is unconditional and from the heart. That is why the act of giving has to be joyful - the frame of mind has to be one in which you feel joy in the very act of giving. Then the energy behind the giving increases many times over.

Practising the Law of Giving is actually very simple: if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to be materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. This principle works equally well for individuals, corporations, societies and nations. If you want to be blessed with all the good things in life, learn to silently bless everyone with all the good things in life.

The best way to put the Law of Giving into operation is to make a decision that any time you come into contact with anyone, you will give him or her something. As a child, I was taught never to go to anyone’s house without bringing something - never visit anyone without bringing a gift. You may say, “How can I give others when at the moment I don’t have enough myself?” You can bring a flower. One flower. You can bring a note or a card, which says something about your feelings for the person you are visiting. You can bring a compliment. You can bring a prayer.

The most powerful forms of giving are non-material. The gifts of caring, attention, affection, appreciation and love are some of the most precious gifts you can give and they do not cost you materially. When you meet someone; you can silently send them a blessing, wishing them happiness, joy and laughter. This kind of silent giving is very powerful.

Make a decision to give wherever you go, to whomever you see. As long as you are giving, you will be receiving. The more you give, the more confidence you will gain in the miraculous effects of this law. And as you receive more, your ability to give more will also increase.

Enjoy your long weekend. Wishing you a meaningful Christmas!
Gerard

Dear Team
After all these months, we had our first combined rehearsal for ONE this afternoon.  ONE will premiere at the Toa Payoh Amphitheatre this Sunday at 5 pm and it is an attempt by us to help youths forge new ties with their community. Showcasing their talents is a do-able way of encouraging these youths to give back or do something meaningful for our community. In the process, we hope they find within themselves new strengths, pride and a sense of belonging to our community.

65 children and youths will go stage this Sunday and another 50 volunteers will be working backstage to get the show going. Lots to do with costumes, make-up, sound, back-drops and of course food to keep the performers up and about.

This year we approached about 250 youths at the Youth Park and the City Link Mall and 160 odd turned up for an audition 3 months ago. Those who will go on stage this Sunday are the ones who preserved with the trainings and discipline needed. Over the last month and a half, these youths have been working with Andrea Ousley, our trainer from Cirque du Monde and besides being fantastic with the young people, she has been a voice of reason and inspiration for volunteers and staff.

One of Andrea's first task was to get the ONE Team working together as one for the simple logic that if we want our young people to be working together as one, we have to lead the way. Another constant reminder from her was that we have a responsibility to the young people who will be working with us. Hence, it is having a heightened awareness of the implications of our actions when we are with them. Andrea walks her talk seriously and we really could learn from her example. Thanks Andrea : ) After this Sunday, she will spend 2 weeks helping our different teams reflect on our responsibilities towards the young people we serve, so make sure you show up for your allotted slots.  

This week we also began a series of training for our Youth United outreach workers. The training stressed that outreach workers have to absolutely clear why they are on the streets with the youths. Their values will be constantly challenged by the young people and they must be absolutely clear that Beyond expects them to be a protective factor that offers sensible adult guidance.

If you have been with us for a while now, you would have realised that our job is not so much about the skills or knowledge we have but rather it is about who we are and what we stand for. It always begins with us whether we are working individually or in a team. It does not have to happen all at once but after all these years, I know I like myself better now than before. The work has made me a more caring and humane person and perhaps you feel the same way about yourself too.

This weekend, please come down to Toa Payoh if you can because it will be

ONE love for the city streets
one love for the hip hop beats
one love oh I do believe
one love in all we need
Gerard

"Touch Lives not Keyboards." This is Leo's signature sign off in his emails. Leo is our IT guy and we can't thank him enough for constantly reminding us that technology must be our servant and not our master. This week Leo, Mui and Fook Hong have been busy training our staff to utilise FIRE, our web-based data management system. FIRE is short for Finding Info & Resources Electronically and by allowing info to be accessed and shared across Beyond, we improve cooperation, efficiency and minimise wastage among teams who are jointly helping a child and his family.

Information when organised well always has a funny way of challenging us. Unfortunately, we often see this as a threat and worry that the info will put us in bad light. By and large, helping professionals dislike such systems because they view them as management tools and the info derived puts them in a defensive position where they have to recall the theories and philosophies they left behind in school : ). I am sorry but such a response is just insecurity or incompetence at best and the lack of integrity at worst. I know I risk sounding self righteous but much time and resources are wasted when helping professionals bicker over systems that help us evaluate our work.

No matter how well we are doing our job, there is always room for improvement and we if believe this earnestly, an evaluation system is our friend and not our enemy. Evaluation is not an examination that makes or breaks us but a reality check that helps us to raise our performance. Evaluation is then an ongoing process that helps us refine our techniques, skills and models of work. It keeps us thinking, learning and developing as professionals. It is professionalism.

However, an evaluation system can only work when there is mutual trust all around. Relationship building, mutual respect and integrity among team mates are the components that enable a system to reap its full potential. So this brings us back to the fact that it is people who define whether a system is life giving or life draining. Hence, I would just like to remind everyone to continue building on the mutual trust and respect within our team that makes it such a joy to work here. By doing so, we will be able to look at the info that will eventually be generated by FIRE constructively. This info should fire us up and not burn us out.

Besides trust, lets remember that while everything can be measured, not everything needs to be measured otherwise we will all suffer from measuringitis. Use FIRE smartly and let your Manager or Director know if you feel that we are trying to generate too many numbers. After all, like what Leo advises, we are here to  "touch lives not keyboards."

Enjoy your weekend.
Gerard

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey

Dear Team
On Wednesday, we had a celebration at the Keppel Club that we called the Beyond Graduation. Sometimes when we talk about such events, people wonder what's the big deal.  From an outsider's point of view it is just another social activity for the kids and their families. Our Primary 6 kids were only scrapping through and the bulk of the other children were at most average students. Not much to crow about perhaps for the rest of the world but for us, it is so significant. It has only been 3 years in a row that Kids United has been producing Primary 6 passes and the 2nd year we have been celebrating 100% passes for those who stayed with us the entire year.

3 years ago, I remember looking for a kid who did not go home on the eve of his oral examinations.  He never made it the exams and that was not as worrying as the people that kept him for the night. We got him a replacement exam appointment, locked him up during the exams and eventually he passed and went on the secondary school. It felt like we were battling demons that were around the kid and within him.

The demons around the boy were households in the neighbourhood who welcomed children without due respect for the parents of these kids they let in. They fed the kids and left them very much on their own to do as they pleased in the households. It did not matter to the heads of these households that the kids they let in did not inform their parents of their whereabouts or that they were truanting from school. Later the kids will help them hawk food like curry puffs and contraband like illegal vcds. It was not exactly easy wrestling with these people even with the help of the police because keeping children for the night is not a clear cut offence.

However, it is the demons within that fuel the kid towards these people as well. In a less defiant mood, this child whom I am talking about spoke to me about not wanting to pass his Primary 6 because he will then be the 'smart' one in his family. None of his brothers and sisters before him made it pass Primary 4 and he did not see the need to be different. It was really sad because in a warp way he was just being loyal to his family.

Hence, Wednesday's celebration is the kind of positive events that should be filling our children's lives. Unless they see and experience brighter possibilities, they will never be able to break out of the pessimistic mental prisons they live in.  The children were really joyful and rightfully for the reason that their efforts and achievements were being affirmed. I believe the event is one that they will remember because it was one when so many people took the time and effort to let them know that they were doing well.

This year, there were 2 children whom we know that did not pass their PSLE. Early in the year, one had to be placed in a place of safety while the other did not show up after last year's holidays. When we told the boy in the home that all the kids at Kids United passed, he spontaneously said that he will do so next year. We are confident that he is capable of doing so because he was a kid who knew his work but was so disturbed inside that he either did not show for his exams or simply wrote his name on the paper and fell asleep. Perhaps, now that he has seen peers who were 'no smarter' than him succeeding he has begun seeing new possibilities for himself.

At Wednesday's celebrations, I also bumped into the other child who failed.  She was there because she was accompanying her younger siblings.  It must have been difficult for her seeing her friends jumping around celebrating success. I pulled her aside and told her not to give up and hopefully having witnessed the possibility of success, she too will give her studies another shot.

It is so important for us to continue affirming the good within our kids and those around us. The next time we celebrate a birthday, children's day, youth day or an achievement, see it as a valuable effort in strengthening the good within people.  Guess, when we continue to welcome Goodness into our midst, we will have a good life.

Enjoy your weekend!
Gerard

Dear Team
Campland for 40 students of the Singapore School for the Deaf last Friday, was a really fulfilling experience for the 8 of us on Ranger duty. It was just so different trying to pass instructions and to debrief with the help of sign-lish interpreters. While we were a little self-conscious at first, it did not matter after a while as we connected with the kids through fun and laughter. The activities were carried out with less noise than usual but these kids laughed and screamed just like any others when they were meant too. They behaved no differently and that included the swearing : ). We noticed a teacher addressing a group of kids with a stern face and animated signing and we wondered what was going on. "They used bad language and need to be disciplined!" she told us. We nodded supportively and I guess for us, 'ignorance was bliss." 

I was really impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of the teachers who were at the camp and in all sincerity, I went up to one of them to offer my compliments. I found out that she was the discipline mistress and without thinking, I remarked "It's amazing how they listen to you without you having to raise your voice." She glared at me and thankfully, with a small smile she replied "I'll take that as a compliment."  I appreciate the sense of humour many of their staff (hearing and non-hearing) kept in their back pockets. They also encouraged self-deprecating humour among their students and there were even 2 pages full of 'deaf and dumb' jokes in the Camp booklet. Now, that's a lesson in self-confidence that we all can learn.

A day before the camp, Jerel and I were at the school's graduation party and the Principal in her speech reminded us that when we make an effort to accept  disabilities  simply as a difference then over time, these disabilities wouldn't make a difference. After this positive experience, we can vouch for that.

Working together with the School of the Deaf opens a door for our children and youths to build friendships with their peers who have a disability. This will create opportunities for both hearing and non-hearing young people to learn mutual respect, consideration for others and the rules for inclusiveness. Within the school there are also children from disadvantaged backgrounds receiving assistance for their hearing instruments and education from the MILK Fund and we follow up to see what else we can do for their families especially their siblings who are children too. Also, we have been told that many of their students tend to get into trouble with the law when they are in their teens and this is largely because they feel marginalised. So, pooling resources with the School will provide these children the holistic support that keeps their lives on track.

Pooling of resources has other advantages too, as our kids and youths will be utilising the School for the Deaf for their dance and music rehearsals in preparation for ONE. Last Saturday, was the first session in the school and the wide open space for rehearsals was really useful.  

At Beyond, we are always looking for opportunities to pool resources so that more young people can benefit from our programmes. So later this afternoon, we will be addressing more than 200 school-leaving NCC Cadets to explore if they would like to help out as Campland Rangers. This is in preparation for the increased demand for Campland next year.

As we go about trying to form collaborations with others, it is important to remember that we can only be successful when we genuinely respect the strengths of potential partners. It is not about who is the 'better' organisation or who knows more. It is recognising that we need each other if we are to help the kids better.  Yes, I am beginning to sound like a nag : ) but these days, we have been getting a little more recognition from the authorities and the media. Take yesterday's visit by the Minister of State for MCYS for instance. Today, there are stories about us in all the main newspapers. Positive publicity is good for garnering community support and attracting talent and we should be proud of our achievements but don't forget that indulging in the hype will lead to complacency and arrogance.

Social work is not a zero-sum game. There will also be more than enough work to go around so there is no need for one-upmanship among social workers. To grow the work, we need to work with fellow professionals and not against them.  Let us continue to believe that good work will speak for itself and be a magnet for resources.

Oh by the way, all the Primary 6 kids who have been with Kids United throughout the year, passed their PSLE : ). Well done KU and LIFE for making this happen. This is a very important milestone for our kids when one considers their backgrounds. Vicki,  Buva and Shakira have experienced repeated failure and I am sure they will attribute their success to the stable care and guidance which they only started receiving at KU & LIFE this year. Also, I for one did not think that Talib who has been giving us so much practice in restorative justice would make it too : ) It was really wonderful seeing the kids and our colleagues jumping around, silly with joy yesterday afternoon. This is the second year in row that we are experiencing such success and it was only possible because of the efforts put in by the both the kids and us. It wasn't just us so don't forget to congratulate the kids when you see them.

This Sunday, we will be holding an orientation cum recruitment exercise from 9 am to 1 pm for 24 persons seeking employment here. Let's hope we will be welcoming more dedicated team mates in the near future. We always begin by looking for people with a heart for our work and perhaps a Red Indian attitude : ). Enjoy your weekend as you ponder on this little reflection from Chief Maquinna, a Nootka chief in the early 19th Century.

Gerard

Chief Maquinna

Once when I was in Victoria, I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank, and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank.

“Why don’t you write Another Week Beyond this time, maybe about your China trip?”  Gerard asked me on Wednesday when I was at Beyond for the Directors’ meeting.  My immediate response was “you must be kidding Gerard, I have so much on my plate, more writing, no thank you please …...”   My mischievous rejoinder then was: “perhaps I will write it in Mandarin just to punish Gerard J”.   But those of you who know me know that I adore Gerard too much to do such a thing.  Well, the other truth is of course I can’t write well enough in Chinese without embarrassing Yet and Lee Fong, our in-house Chinese Language experts.

I couldn’t have visited Luo Yuan (罗源) a village county in Fujian Province, China at a more opportune time.  It was just a week after the October 2nd typhoon, the worst in the last 100 years that had ever hit Fujian Province.  Overnight, Typhoon “龙王” (directly translated as Typhoon “Dragon King”) killed lives, destroyed and swept away livestock, property, bridges that children used to get to schools and devastated homes and livelihoods – lives that were already very harsh to begin with even before the typhoon.  There were massive traffic jams leading in and out of Luo Yuan from Fuzhou because portions of the highway had collapsed.  Truckers and travellers caught in the jam often slept overnight in their vehicles, with little food and water and in total darkness because there were no streetlights at night.  We were warned by our local organisers in China to be prepared to travel in motorbikes with our luggage, negotiating the winding mountain roads if the jam proved too bad.  Campland adventure training about challenging our comfort zone really came in handy then.  We were indeed caught in traffic jams but fortunately or unfortunately, never had to resort to calling in the motorbike “rescuers”.

Tragedies, like that brought about by typhoon for example, are of course very saddening and painful.  But every tragedy and crisis can bring with it opportunities - silver lining in the clouds so to speak.  The Chinese understands this. My German (yes German) professor friend once taught me that the Chinese word for crisis “危机” denotes that a crisis has both danger (危) and opportunity (机) depending on how one chooses to make of it. Through tragedies and crises, one can see the strengths and beauty of humanity as people rally together to help each other.  People can also tell who their real friends are from their foes and people discover and develop resilience in the face of adversity and challenges.

Such was the amazing story on resilience I witnessed when visiting the typhoon-hit home of a young man who lives with his paraplegic wife and 7-year old son.  He was a quarry factory worker in his 30s.  Typhoon 龙王 came so suddenly his backyard and dining room walls collapsed and the water level was rising so quickly there was nowhere safe enough to run to.  For a moment, he was frozen in a dilemma- if he saved his paraplegic wife, what would happen to his son or vice versa.  Fortunately, he was quick thinking – he remembered that behind the board wall of his living room were wooden supporting structures.  He hit the wall with all his might, pulled off the board and his son, his wife and him hung on to the topmost wooden beam for dear life for what must seem like ages before the water began to subside.  They spent the 2-3 agonising hours deriving strength and encouragement from each other as they prayed and sang hymns to keep their spirits up. 

Their home was left in a big mess even a week after the typhoon – thick, deep mud and dirt everywhere in the house and the water-mark (about 2.5m high) still bore testimony to the frightening night.  He and his family had to move into a discarded government building for temporary shelter.  He lost his job because the quarry factory he used to work in was destroyed.  His wife was too traumatised she had to stay with his mother-in-law for proper care. His son had gone back to school but he would have to detour around the village and walk much farther because the bridge he used to take was swept away by the typhoon.  One could easily conclude that his life was a wreck but he was neither whiny nor weepy.  On the contrary, he exuded hope and determination in his eyes as he said “人在就有希望 “which means “as long as you are alive, there is HOPE”. 

For me that was a humbling and tremendous lesson on resilience.

MILK(Mainly I Love Kids) was in Luo Yuan to see how we can help, not just because of the typhoon but because children and families were living in extreme poverty despite having worked so hard all their lives.  We saw tremendous needs and challenges but also tremendous strengths and opportunities for real change.  I learned a lot from Stanley (who incidentally is the President of Beyond and the Vice President of MILK) about effecting real change rather than just alleviating hardship that only succeed in making agony or sufferings more bearable.  Visiting the homes of the needy children put my own ‘suffering’ in perspective.  I attach here just 1 photo of a family we visited and you’ll know why we have no reason to complain that our HDB flat is too small or too far away from the conveniences we need.  This humble abode belongs to a single mom whose husband left her because she bore him no sons but 2 daughters.  Her elderly mom help watches over her 2 daughters aged 11 and 13 who study in a village school a distance from home.  Mom works in any jobs in the factories she can get hold of and often walks miles to and from work along unlit roads to their remote house.  Their roofs are leaking and grandma and 1 of the granddaughters sleep in a bedroom with a wall half blown away by the typhoon.  Winter is around the corner, you can imagine the harsh living conditions they have to bear.  

When we think we are giving, we are actually receiving.  The life lessons we gain from the work we do money cannot buy.  We hope to look at creating opportunities for staff at Beyond to go for such ‘mission’ trips.  Ranga and Rapti had been to Timor Leste and Grace will be going soon to Udonthani(a tsunami-hit area in Thailand) and Tala (a leprosy colony in Philippines that is left under-developed because it can’t shake off its legacy of leprosy even though the disease is well under control.  More like a ‘disease’ of the mind rather than a disease of the body if you ask me).  But one needs to be mentally ready for such trips. This is not another form of self-serving tourism, a visit to the ‘zoo’ so that we can boast “been there, done that”.  This is first and foremost a mission trip so we have to be prepared to serve and to work hard.  The lessons you then draw from these trips are tremendous.  I think Beyond has trained some of you well for work like this.  I can think of a few. 

I have the good fortune of  meeting and living with a team of very dedicated and hard working church workers in China that reminded me fondly of Beyond.  Their leader is a pastor who looks nothing like Gerard but they bear striking resemblances in their dynamism and tireless dedication.  His wife, this very solid and compassionate woman reminded me of Ranga and I can see the likes of Vincent, Mui Mui and Gloria in his core team of young preachers.  They work very hard and their favourite taglines are “没问题” – no problem and “没事” – no worries, mirroring very closely Beyond’s   “impossible is nothing” and “can do” attitude.  It is people that make the difference.  It is people like you and me who can make the world a beautiful place to live in.  I have the good fortune of finding such wonderful people in Beyond and MILK, and now China.    

bLeng

"The staff is the organisation." This, I was told by a lecturer years ago when I was training to be a youth worker. Basically what he was trying to say was that it is people who ultimately carry out the work. Work can be described and mapped out brilliantly but without people, it cannot be carried out. However a charity like us belongs to the community and not just to salaried professionals or staff like us. I would even say it belongs to the children and youths we serve. They are the reason we exist and we as professionals should be grateful that they have given us a reason to be engaged in meaningful work.  

So it is about being a community. It is about people coming together and chipping in to improve the quality of life as a collected whole. This means it has to be more than the professionals or the staff. There are volunteers, donors, board members, community organisations, businesses and so forth. When more people start caring, it helps the work grow and a caring community evolves. Therefore, Community Building or Development would be one way of describing our work
   
This week, Campland was at Yew Tee Primary School but it was attended by students from South View, Concord and Unity too.  The pooling of resources and co-operation is the essence of community and I am glad that Campland provided the impetus for these schools to get together for the benefit of their kids. When we work with schools, one of our roles is to help facilitate inclusiveness. We are not just there to 'fix' the problem students but we are there for the long haul to build community within the school. That’s why the Programme Components for our Juvenile Justice Programme in Schools are Family Group Conference and Community Building. We do hope that over time we will promote the 'rules' of community building not just to the students but to the teachers too. To do this we must be respectful otherwise we contradict ourselves as respect is one of the rules for community building. In any case, it is no easy task teaching those who teach : ).

Back to our organisation. As we are a charity and not a commercial social work company (believe me there is such a thing), I would rephrase my lecturer's statement to "Our People are the Organisation!' We are getting things done and making things happen because our Board, volunteers, staff, beneficiaries, benefactors and members of our community desire it to be such. Besides commitment, another strength of ours is diversity and the belief that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. An ex-police officer, a marketing executive, a lawyer, a stylist and a sports trainer operating as individuals will probably be quite ineffective for our work but when these diverse talents and skills are pooled together for a common purpose, there is an energy that we enjoy and thrive on. Beyond has been thriving on diversity. Would a bunch of social workers or a diverse group of talents like us be better at delivering results? The answer is it depends on the task at hand but when there is diversity, possibilities for problem solving and community bridging increase tremendously.

This unique strength of ours and our people must be continually nurtured and strengthened and that's why we are always called back for Journey Beyond. Next year, we aim to take staff development up a notch.  Through a tie-up with the School of Social Work, Otto-Friedrich Universitat Bamberg, Germany we are offering our staff and those from our service partners a chance to get a diploma in either social or youth work. It will be a one year programme and their Professors will fly down to teach and assess participants. Of course, you will have to submit some papers like in school. It will cost approximately 2000 Euros per participant and our Board has agreed to subsidise 50% of the cost (this money will not be from the funds we raise). Mui will be happy to work out an installment plan for the other 50 % should you be interested. We strongly recommend that you take up the offer because the course will be tailored to meet our needs e.g. Family Group Conferencing, resource mobilising, strengths perspectives and so forth. The diploma will not simply be providing generic info but will be geared towards us doing a more effective job here. More details will be forwarded as things firm up but we just wanted to sound people out early.

It's going to be a busy weekend with ONE rehearsals at CityLink Mall and Campland at Evergreen tomorrow and on Sunday, Family Group Conferencing at Sembawang and kids going off to the Pony Club. Also Rashid & Vincent will be busy preparing to accompany Youth United at Galilee on a Mount Ophir Climb which leaves Singapore on Monday.  Glad everyone is having so much fun. Enjoy your weekend.

Gerard

Dear Team
This short work week with 2 public holidays in between has kept the kids away from us and hopefully, with their families.  When I was a youth worker, public holidays worried me as I often had to be at the police station the day after. The kids I worked with often chose to get into trouble during a public holiday. I later deducted that these kids got lonely or disappointed during the holiday and were more easily agitated into fights or other unruly behaviours.

Deepavali and the end of Ramandan are the 2 family oriented families we just had and if you think about it, almost all public holidays are family oriented. Hence, for many of our kids, holidays tend to create a sense of emptiness within as the media plays up images of family celebrations during festive occasions. Well no matter how hard we work or what we do for these kids, we will never replace their family. Don't get me wrong, I am not even suggesting we should or could. The irony is that we probably provide these kids as much as their family, if not more but then, we will always be someone the kids share with the rest of our caseload.

This is a reality of our work and for me, the nature of service. We are here to serve without expecting to be reciprocated for our efforts. Kids will walk away and while we should always remind them to be appreciative of goodwill (not only from us), they may never show it. Being human, we will be inadvertently affected. Having been on the job for a long while now, I am probably on autopilot when these things happen and just move on but the truth is that if I was forced into a corner, I will have to say that it does eat into me. As professional helpers, we are trained, conditioned and expected to behave 'professionally' so we often just put our emotions aside. Some of us are luckier when we have a good supervisor, team-mate or mentor who allows us to pour our hearts out. Then, it is back to the grind.

As we reach out to more kids, the probability of heartbreaks increases but before you think it is all so depressing, let me suggest that perhaps we do not see or notice the times when kids show their appreciation. When they do, it is sometimes rather awkward and that just shows us that we are touching lives here and if we have to err, let it be on the side of kindness and not cold professionalism. If we are human, so are they. Here are some occasions I was touched and in a sense burdened too:

Sharil, 18 years who left our Streetwise Programme for more than 2 years was standing at the multi-storey car park looking rather sullen when I bumped into him at about 11 am in the mooring. "I came looking for someone but as I walked pass the Centre, I did not find anyone I know so I dare not go in." He smiled sheepishly as he explained and when I nodded and asked him how he was, he just blurted it all out. "My mother got married today and I am so angry. My father will not have a place to stay when he comes out of prison and my brother and I just can't stand the guy." He dragged on his cigarette and then told me he is now putting up with his granny in Bukit Ho Swee and wants to have nothing to do with his mother anymore. I stood with Sharil as he finished his cigarette and we spoke briefly about our soccer team and his job with the bus company. Nothing much or of great importance but after about 15 minutes, Sharil shook my hand the traditional Muslim way, told me he will be fine and asked me to take care as he walked away. I went away a little bewildered trying to establish the significance of the encounter. It was his mom's wedding and he was not there but with us.

I was sending a bunch of kids back to Block 5 when we saw BeeLeng going off with her husband and kids. The kids waved their goodbyes and asked me where she was going. I knew and just said it as it is "She's going for a short holiday with her family. I think they will be driving up to Malaysia."  Immediately, they asked my why I did not go for a holiday with my family too. I was single then so I just shrugged my shoulders and said "No family lah." Without a pause they shouted in unison 'Hey Gerard, we be your family!" They then giggled and stated joking about who would do the cooking, washing etc and kept asking cheekily if I would agree so that we all could go on a holiday too. Well, I am not sure that response was all in jest. It hit me that my relationship with them mattered. Moreover, among the bunch of them was Nazrul, a 12 year old who was always playing it cool. This guy would not even say thank you or admit that he had a good time after a fun event so his spontaneity hinted to me that perhaps a family was really what he was looking for. I went away thinking this is more than a job. I have gotten into their lives and this is indeed a responsibility.

On another time, I did go on a short trip across the causeway with these kids and on the way back, we stopped at the last gas station to fill up and to snack. Gave them all a few ringgit and told them to eat something while I waited at the van. Soon a couple of them came back giggling childishly and when I asked why, they sad that Simon was now my son. Surprisingly when Simon came back he did not protest but retorted that they were just jealous. The reason for Simon becoming my son instantly was a burger stall that used Simone Patties. The artwork on the package presented the brand as such: "SimonE." Again it was a childish joke but I could not help feeling there was more to it.

Finally, 2 days ago on the eve of Hari Raya, Jolene came into the office telling me that a pair of twins were waiting outside the office for me. We all knew who they were because these blokes have been out of our sight since the beginning of the year.  In fact, they avoided us whenever we were in their sight. It was the first time they came by since January to say hi but again, why on the eve of Hari Raya?

The kids, no matter how rough and tough they appear to us, are human after all. If we remember to remain open to goodness, we will see their goodness.

Enjoy your weekend.

Dear Team
Our office at Block 26 has been really crowded over the past 2 weeks because there were 2 sets of staff working out of it. The acting ones and the real ones.  MediaCorp TV has been using our office as a backdrop for a 20 episode Channel 8 television drama where one of the main characters is a social worker. So, Rashid's work station has been given a feminine touch as actresses May Phua and Andrea De Cruz seem to be using it a lot but our adventure man Rashid doesn't seem to mind : ). The reason we agreed to this is because our Babes SMS helpline gets written in their script and it is a wonderful opportunity for us to reach out to teens who are tuned into the Chinese entertainment scene.

Lately, there has been quite a bit of press about the sexual escapades of youth in Singapore. Just to let everyone know, we always refrain from joining in the fray. The media will always turn to us for our comments because of Babes but it is because of Babes that we must never offer opinions on such stories. Babes is a crisis intervention programme and we want the target group to feel safe when calling us. Any comments that we make in the news about sexual issues or teen relationships may be construed negatively by these teens and discourage them from contacting us. In the same vein, we do not offer any sex education programmes but that does not mean we do not deal with sexual issues in our work with young persons.

As a children and youth work agency, we cannot run away from the issue of sex and more than that we have to able to handle it competently and in a manner that is beneficial for the young person's development. So over 2 training sessions, the Children and Youth Service Teams looked hard at the issue and I would like to share with everyone what came out of it.

Sex is Good, Natural and Normal and this is the position that all our workers must take. If you are uncomfortable in whatever manner with this, then excuse yourself from dealing with the issue. This does not mean that we condone the risky sexual behaviours our youths take part in but unless we agree with this position, we will not be able to listen to our youths in a manner that they will talk and talk to them in a manner that they will listen.   

As young people explore their sexuality, a mature adult "friend" whom they can confide in would be an important protective factor. This is our role and we will have to guide them as they learn to manage the risks that their sexual behaviours present. To do so, we need to know what exactly are the risks instead of diverting them beyond our sight and hearing. A lesson we can learn from the current fight against dengue fever is that we need to draw the mosquitoes out into the open. Experts have observed that Singapore's effort to 'search and destroy' the mosquito breeding grounds have forced the mosquitoes to hide better. Hence, dengue continues because the mosquitoes are better than us at this game of hide and seek. Thus, the experts' recommended solution is to place mosquito breeding traps out in the open so that mosquitoes can lay their eggs openly and we can monitor the breeding trend.

With no intention to liken our youths to insects, we should be adopting the same approach with sex or any other issue that young people prefer to keep out off our adult view. Besides talking, we need to find other ways or 'languages' to increase their comfort level in addressing these issues with us. For example, tomorrow we will be starting a monthly make-up and personal grooming workshop for our teen girls. The series of workshops was brought together by our volunteer Melissa Kwee and it is called "The Beautiful People Programme." For the first session,  Bobby Brown's most senior make up artist will be conducting the workshop and Anita Kapoor, the host of TV's Back to Basics beauty show will be mingling with our girls. The Beautiful People Programme is an important way of engaging our girls who "feel all woman" as ladies and when trust increases, it will be a good platform to move onto other aspects of sexuality.  Thanks Melissa, you have a knack of pulling a rabbit out of thin air : ). 

Finally, this morning Rashid went on stage at Shuqun Secondary's Graduation and Prize Giving Ceremony to collect a Friend of the School Award. The school was so pleased with our work that they invited Saras, Stephen and Rashid over for morning tea to show their appreciation. Well done Saras, Myrle, Stephen, Is and Rashid for showing these kids that school could be a cool place to be where they are cared for and for showing the school that these difficult classes were just exuberant young people wanting to have some fun.

Enjoy your weekend!
Gerard

Dear Team
Yesterday, I noticed a story on Hong Kong Superstar Karen Mok in the Life Section of the Straits Times. Trust me it wasn't the leggy and seductive pose but the news that she got a juicy role in the Broadway hit musical Rent. Why? Last Saturday, Kids United was creating their usual din in the classroom. And I popped in to take a look. They were just their usual boisterous selves, teasing each other, laughing loudly and chattering away in their mishmash of Malay, Chinese, and Singlish. But boy was I pleasantly surprised and impressed when they started singing an excerpt form the musical Rent. Diction was clear and no one cracked on the high notes. I really couldn't believe that our kids could sing Broadway and to do it with so much enjoyment, pride and finesse. Hey, I was proud of them! Perhaps, they will freeze when they go on a public performance but that rehearsal was perfect. Great job Wang Fen!

WangFen, a music therapist comes in once a week to coach our kids and she has only had about 6 sessions with them. While she is obviously a fantastic teacher, it also shows that our little rascals : ) are talented. We are introducing music or more specifically singing to our kids because it uplifts the spirit and it is a perfectly non-threatening way of introducing to them optimistic worldviews. It is also a tool to articulate feelings that they have no words for. Hence, WangFen's job really is to choose the appropriate songs, train, debrief, guide, and inspire them...all in name of music and fun.

As children and youth workers, we are like public relations people who create opportunities to bring out the best side of those we serve. Lareina and Michelle did just this when they transformed our fumbling teens into a competent F & B crew that impressed and reassured a group of parents who attended the Toughlove Parents Support Group on Wednesday. These were parents of our Streetwise Programme participants and it was reassuring for them to see that young people under our charge could carry themselves so well and be responsible for arranging such a welcoming reception. These parents were troubled by the problems their children were getting into and I am sure they appreciated the warm and friendly welcome you created. Watching our youths in action, they would also have left with some hope that their kids would turn out all right after all.  Lareina and Michelle, you did not simply organise food for the stomach that evening, you provided parents with weary hearts, food for their souls : ).

This week too, Saras, Myrle and Vashum were at Queenstown Secondary facilitating a rather massive Family Group Conference where more than 20 family members of the victim and offenders all turned up to put things right. The conference went really well and I have a good sense that people are taking this approach seriously. Last night, I picked up a call from the mother of the offender enquiring if she could hand over the brand new replacement walkman which he son stole on Monday instead of today because the shop will only have stock then. She came across as really sincere about putting things right and sounded like she would be a wonderful role model and guide for her son. FGC has given her a chance to play an active role in the guidance of her son again.

We are in the process of refreshing our Babes publicity and now our posters can be found in EngWah cinemas. When the new collateral is out, they will also be featured on the Comfort Delgro media networks. Thanks to our Board for these valuable connections. Babes was started in response to the incidence of abandoned babies reported in the newspapers and we are really glad to report that since our launch, there have been no such reports. Now before we get all excited, logically we cannot co-relate this simplistically to Babes. Simply because we are not God who is normally regarded as all-seeing, it is impossible for any study to verify that our programme has directly contributed to this pleasant development. However, what I do know is that Shaz and Jacinda have shown a commitment that translates into programme effectiveness. Give them half a chance and they will ensure that no troubled teen slips through them.

Over the past 2 weeks they have been tracking down a girl who initially confided that she was pregnant but later denied it. Based on their estimation, abortion would not be a legal choice and the girl's health may be at risk if she did not seek any medical attention. When they insisted that she go for a medical, she told them that she was leaving the country with her mother for a holiday. After she had supposedly returned, she did not pick up their calls. If this girl was indeed pregnant, it sounded very much like she was still trying to get rid of her baby and if she could not, she would abandon it. Shaz and Jacinda acted decisively and visited the given address but it was phoney. Thankfully the girl had visited a polyclinic and after some simple detective work they got the address.

The initial urine test was negative but Shaz and Jacinda were not convinced. Then a few hours later, they got an earful from the girl's mother questioning their motives for harassing her daughter. It was tensed but our Babes Team kept their cool.   To cut a long story short, the family is now really grateful for the intervention of our Babes Team. The girl is receiving medical support from our partner, Dr Peter Chew of Alife and she has reconciled with her family. She will go back to school next year and is being monitored from church counsellors who are friends of her family. Her expected date of delivery will be 5 December and I am sure Shaz and Jacinda will send her a bouquet of flowers but let me say it is both of them who deserve one now.

Finally, I am really glad to report that we will be working with the Singapore School for the Deaf offering them Campland and assisting them with their Soccer Programme. Hasninah their Principal shares our belief that we can better help kids in need when we pool our resources. We are both excited at the possibility of having our kids becoming friends. This though, will not be an easy challenge as Stephen will be using flags instead of a whistle during soccer training and Campland debriefs must be in Sign-glish. Jerel just came back from a 2 & a half hour meeting at the School and we suddenly have a more realistic understanding of what it means to be disadvantaged. Watching them sign, words were just flying all over the place and we did not have a clue what was going on.  It was really a quiet storm but like always we should have fun weathering it out.

Enjoy your weekend!

Gerard

Dear Team
We have grown somewhat in terms of organisational size but what matters is that our work continues to reach our beneficiaries in a personal and relevant manner. In our work, the size of our achievements need not be measured by massive happenings but perhaps by a collection of small successes and breakthroughs.

Last Sunday, Jerel brought a bunch of kids from Evergreen to the Pony Club which is one of our Campland follow-up activities. The 10 kids we chose for this follow-up activity were those we found to be extremely withdrawn during the Campland activities in school. We were hoping that the horses and closer adult attention would be able to draw these kids out of their shells.  Those of you on Ranger duty would remember kids like Jing Qi and Amanda. Both these kids never had it easy as oddballs who could not fit into any group. Whenever, I was near them, I had an uneasy feeling that they might just shatter into pieces.

So, boy was I really glad when Jerel told me that Amanda finally got on a pony and did some low jumping as well. It may have been a 1-foot jump but it was certainly a quantum leap for her. This was the kids' 3rd session and 3 months ago during the first session; it took me a long while to convince Amanda to stand next to a pony so that I could have her photo taken.  As for Qing Ji, the horses have been a pull and she is so much out of her shell now that Jerel needs to catch up with the speed of her chatter.

Stephen and Pascale, you were Qing Ji’s Rangers and I remember us having a conversation the about our inability to engage her and whether Campland was unduly stressing her out. Well, on hearing this, I am sure you are as happy and amazed as I am. Thanks for noticing her need for more attention in the first place. Often, all children need is just a little more time, attention and encouragement so thanks Jerel for providing these to the kids. This must be recorded as a success in Campland. Oh thanks too Mrs Mah and Mrs Bala for providing us this "secret weapon' to help the kids.

For the next part of this week's mail, I am going to do the easy thing of replicating excerpts of success stories that Gloria and Leelin have sent me. These stories inspired me and I am sure you will feel the same way too.

Angel as reported by Gloria
For those of you who have heard about Angel's case, it has become one of our most drama-mama case. G'ma (Susan) was furious with us when we have to remove the child from her. Among the few of us working on the case, we had our fair share of disagreement and conflict but we all knew that deep within, we all wanted the best for Angel and g'ma. About 1/12/mths after Angel was sent to the home, the CPO and I decided to pay her a visit. I was "very the scared" cos' I didn't know how she would treat me. Anyway, as usual... just do it cos' impossible is nothing!!! I purposely sat near the door in case I need to run out of the house!!! We went and to my surprise, she treated us well.

Anyway, to cut the story short, few weeks later, Susan came to b120 to refer a case to us!!! Her friend thought she was crazy in referring him to us (he was afraid we would take away his child). Anyway Susan said this to him "No they won't take away your child. They actually helped me. They took away mine cos' I was drinking and taking pills"!!! The following week, she bought a bag of rambutans for HBoon (who was the case worker then)! I guess this is her small way of saying thank you.

Susan is showing great progress and Angel is allowed short home-leave. We are in the process of re-integrating her back into the family. She was back home with g'ma last weekend and Grace went to visit her. Grace told me that she has never seen such a cheerful child like Angel!!! She does live up to her name!!! There is still a lot more work to do with this family but we are beginning to see results.

Siew Lian & her 3 children as reported by Leelin.
When we first met Siew Lan about 3 months ago, she was holed up at home on a bed, unkempt and refusing to speak to family or anyone. Her children were uncared for and her marriage was breaking down.

Thank God, client has returned from IMH & is coping very well.  Her husband has moved back to the family this week. (Amazing!) Initially a baby sitter was engaged to look after the children from 630 to 11pm, but client expressed that she wants to look after the children herself. After checking with MSW, decided to go ahead to try & apparently client has been doing fine & shown great love & responsibility towards the children. When client appeared in front of Ghim Moh office to thank Beyond with a big smile, I was really overwhelmed with joy.

Will continue to monitor the children as the 2 elder children are still quite afraid of the mother. Thank God client's husband is aware of this & is trying to build the relationship between client & her children. They have been attending school & After Sch Care regularly & the eldest child is with our Saturday Maths tuition programme as well.

Once again Thanks Jerel, Gloria and Leelin for your good work & Leelin you have really held the fort fantastically at Ghim Moh.

Enjoy your weekend!

Gerard

P.s. Ranga wants you to know that she found our meeting last Saturday meaningful and enjoyable. We thank everyone for chipping in and making it such a wonderful day.

Hi everyone
Please take a look at the attached Service Map before coming for tomorrow's staff meeting at the PSA Clubhouse. There are now almost 70 of us here on a full-time basis and that's why we need to make our way to a larger premise when we all need to come together.

Tomorrow will be a chance to fully appreciate how we are all fitting into the services at Beyond. Just as importantly if not more, it will be a chance for us to have a little fun together. Rashid and our 'newer' team-mates will be getting the experiential learning activities that will bring home the need for all programmes to be connected. Over the past few weeks I have been stressing that our service effectiveness is largely dependent on the connectedness between programmes or the quality of our working relationships. So, having fun together is serious business. If we can't stand being with one another, I don't think we are going to be very effective working with one another.

Let me try to orientate you a little as you navigate our Service Map. The dotted circles are physical facilities that house a group of programmes. Our HQ is housed at Block 26 but for visual clarity, we have put it in the middle of the map together with other programmes that support all our different facilities.

At Block 26, there are 2 main services i.e. Restorative Justice and Youth. Restorative Justice has 2 programmes. Juvenile Justice which diverts young offenders in Schools & Businesses away from the criminal justice system. E.g. a kid who steals a handphone in school or at a shop will get a chance to put things right or make amends without being charged in court. This is not a soft option but our attempt to get our community to guide and care for a young person. The youth will be made accountable for his wrong and the process will be a form of education that punishment is a juvenile prison is unable to achieve. The Juvenile Justice Programme is also the vehicle we use as an entry point into secondary schools. 

Restorative Care targets youth prisoners with the aim of reintegrating them into our community upon their release. Our motto for this programme is "After-care begins on Day One of In-care."  We are really concerned for young people who spend a large portion of their formative years in a prison. Usually they get hardened and offering them a yellow ribbon upon their release may be too little too late. Hence, our aim is really to facilitate their reintegration the day they are incarcerated and marginalised.

Youth Service oversees programmes such as Streetwise, Guidance and Cirque du Monde as well as 2 outposts at Ghim Moh & Ang Mo Kio. It also keeps on its radar all young people who come into our path because of some risk factors. That means referrals from Babes, Healthy Start, FSC, RJ, Children Service and Sports & Skills.

Moving on to Healthy Start, yesterday we got the good news that we can start construction of our Child Development Centre housed at our main office at Block 120. 120 oversees outposts at Ghim Moh and KK Hospital. The plan is to make the service accessible all over Singapore and as such 2 more outposts are in the pipeline.

At Block 5, we house the Family Service Centre and Children Service. As we grow our work with children and youths across the island, we depend on FSCs in other areas to provide the family support work where necessary. However, this is not always possible and it would be advantageous for our beneficiaries if we handled the work should other FSCs be unable to pick it up. Thus, our FSC is positioned as the family support arm of our work and a safety net for beneficiaries unable to access FSC support where they live.

Children Service mirrors Youth Service in that it keeps on its radar all children who come into our path because of some risk factors. Pascale is now Children Service Manager. 

To increase our presence in Primary Schools and to reach more kids across Singapore, the entry point is Campland. There are also specialised programmes to meet specific needs of children and these include Learning Is Fun & Exciting (LIFE) & Child Protection. Referrals from the Hope and MILK Funds are children with special needs who need social support and the HOPE Mentoring Scheme identifies kids from lower income families who need our programmes.

Residential Services is still on the drawing board but eventually Kids United will be managed there because such work is really an extension of the work we do at Kids United.

Finally, the Sports and Skills Team and the Preventive and Developmental Programmes (PDP) like Toughlove and Ask the Parents support all other services where needed.

Slowly but surely, we are becoming a more comprehensive social work organisation for troubled and disadvantaged children and youth. Thanks for joining the journey.

Gerard

Dear Team
This week Ranga and I had the privilege of getting to know so many of you a little better through the 2 different training sessions we conducted. We went through the format for the Toughlove Parent Support Group with the Children and Youth Teams and for the Healthy Start and Family Service Teams, we explored Family Functioning.

Firstly, thank you so much for enriching our lives by your active participation. You know, one thing about the work we do, is that we are constantly forced to be in touch with our own lives; be it the past, present or future. As we attempt to understand and reach out to those we serve, we cannot help thinking about ourselves and reaching places deep within us. That's why it is often said that the helping profession is one where our beneficiaries tell us who we are.

Who we are though will have an impact on those around us and in our case, those we serve. It is obvious then, to be an effective helper, we need to know ourselves pretty well. We need to put our strengths in perspective and be at peace with our limitations. What I am simply trying to say is that we cannot do this alone and this brings us back to the 'together we' motto that we constantly work so hard at nurturing here.

During the Toughlove Parent Support Group Training it was a humbling fact that only Vasantha has had the experience of raising a teenager. Hence, for all our enthusiasm, it would be difficult for us to empathise with these parents troubled by the delinquent behaviours of their teenage children. So at least it is comforting that Vasantha is the one in-charge of this programme. Even if you see yourself just as a youthworker, let me say that a truly effective youth worker would need the energy of the young but the wisdom of the old. It is rarely possible to be old and young at the same time, which again emphasises the need for 'together we.'

Life experiences do help us to develop empathy but they can also cloud our effectiveness. As in the Family Functioning Training, almost all of us had a view of family life that was moderately dysfunctional according to the clinical test we did.  Boy, "dysfunctional social workers for dysfunctional families." Great tagline : ). Take heart though it starts by being kind to ourselves and anyway that's what training is for anyway and why Journey Beyond continues all year round.

I am sorry if I have been sounding a little harsh but it is just to remind ourselves that the helping profession is never going to be an exact science and good helpers need to constantly take a good look at themselves. If you observe, many social work agencies operate more on what they are prepared to do rather than what needs to be done. Without sounding too naive or gung-ho, let's avoid that.

Tomorrow is Children's Day in Singapore, so let us all put in the little extra for the kids we are going to meet. Actually if you are wondering how to develop empathy for parents even if you are not one, my suggestion is to spend tomorrow or sometime thinking about a child you know as though he or she was your own. When I was leading the Toughlove Groups a few years ago, I had the privilege of 'parenting'  6 children i.e. getting them to school, attending to their meals, listening to complains about them and looking for them when they disappeared and of course disciplining and guiding them. These kids would be waiting for me as I was trying to wrap up the groups for the evening and it was them that gave me the gifts of heartaches, disappointments, self-doubt, anger, helplessness, exhaustion as well as purpose and hope. These were the gifts that enabled me to lead the Toughlove Groups effectively and successfully. Believe me, I am saying this in all honesty and not in jest. It was painful but it was enriching and strengthening.

Enjoy your weekend and may you have fun with the child within.

Gerard

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
The last is to say thank you.
In between the leader is a servant.
Max DePree

2 weeks ago, our Board organised a 2 day retreat to better understand the meaning of Board Governance. It was conducted by David Bussau who is the founder and visionary behind Opportunity International Australia. He frequently provides consultancy services to governments, multinationals and other organizations on the fight against poverty and degradation. He has also written numerous books on NGO governance and microenterprise development.

During the retreat, David asked us what is the most important asset within our organisation. Well the Board members said the staff and the staff said the Board. The answer rightfully would be the Board as the Board sets the direction and takes responsibility for the future of the organisation. My take on this is that Leadership is key but then the strength of an organisation is determined by the quality of the working relationships between the Board and the staff and basically the quality of the working relationship between team members. After all, it is usually quite painful when a group of brilliant individuals cannot work together.

Over the last 12 weeks, we have mapped out our scope of programmes that has been designed to cover the most pressing needs of disadvantaged children and youths. All these programmes while different are part of a whole and when we can genuinely appreciate and understand how we are linked; and are able to leverage on each other's strengths, we really got quite a good machine going that is well equipped to handle the challenges that come our way. An example this week was how Child Protection stepped in quickly when Healthy Start picked up an abused kid. Another example is how a couple of teen moms picked up by Healthy Start are now within the radar of our Youth Services.

You see, as our work grows not all of us will have the experience or expertise to handle every situation but that expertise will lie with team-mates that you can call upon.  We have designed the scope of our programmes to complement each other so when we don't work together, the kids that we claim to help suffer. Hey, that kinda makes us hypocrites.

In my first letter this year, I said that I will share the direction of our work. After 12 weeks, I would say that together we have consolidated a scope of programmes that have the potential to change the landscape how disadvantaged and troubled young people are managed. From our observations and experience many social work programmes are created because part of a system is not working. For example, school social work is a response to the problems experienced by a school partly because the teachers no longer see the disciplining of a child as their core work. "Let's farm that out to the discipline department and if they cannot manage, call in the social workers!" seems to be the tune often sung. So, if we just latch on the school social work scheme blindly, we could actually be sustaining a problem instead of changing it.

Hence, when we start working with a school we are very careful that we do not end up being the laundry service for their difficult kids but we structure our work in a manner where the school has a fair amount of responsibility. This is the approach with both Campland in Primary Schools and Juvenile Justice in Secondary Schools. While, we will never be able to succeed with every kid but as we help and motivate our community to deal with them in a more enlightened manner, we are actually increasing opportunities for our young people to succeed.

Finally, there is so much talk about governance, leadership, management and so forth. Look, we need to get organised and be accountable if we are to get anything done. But really, none of us is working for the other, we are all working for the young people that deserve better.

Have an enjoyable* weekend!
Gerard

I won't use the word 'good' anymore since it is the weekend and 'good' has a moral connotation : )

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.
Soren Kierkegaard
Danish philosopher (1813 - 1855)

5 years ago, Beeleng and I were discussing Beyond's vision and trying to see what it would mean for our different work teams. We have a national vision to create opportunities which will enable young people to steer clear of delinquency but we also realised that unless it made sense to our team-mates and volunteers in their daily work, it would be difficult for them to embrace and support it.

As Kids United was a programme with the most heartbreaks, we tired to envision how the programme would look like if our vision was on track. So one morning in the autumn room we started 'dreaming' of Kids who set aside time to finish their homework, Kids who spoke confidently in English, Kids who co-operated with one another and their adult minders and so forth. As we rambled on and continued enlarging the positive picture, we were energised and stated to smile a little but we were shaking our heads at the same time because in our heart-broken state, it felt like a pipedream.

Yesterday, Rashidah, the CEO of Mendaki dropped by for a visit and as I walked her through Kids United, the children greeted her. So she stopped and started speaking to Karthik who confidently started telling her about his routine and what he would be doing for the rest of the day. When Rashidah asked him what he would be having for lunch, he cheekily replied that it was something he wanted to know too and asked her to follow him to the kitchen. "Wow, such a confident boy!" Rashidah remarked impressed. 

At this point, I was reminded of the day-dreaming that BeeLeng and I did and was thankful that Kids United has come some way : ). Great job KU!  However, I am aware that the heartbreaks continue. This week alone, you had a child spurn you after you had been waiting for her for at bus stop till midnight so that you could catch her on the last bus home. The same child disappearing after you had fed her and before you could tuck her in for her PSLE the next day.  It is indeed heart breaking and I salute the KU Team giving it all. By doing so, this child will never be able to say that no one cared and realistically, having sincerely cared in thought and action is the best anyone could have done. Oh, and with time, dreams do come true.

At the Healthy Start Thank You Tea for Child Care Operators yesterday, it was amazing to experience the commitment and enthusiasm among those that came. People really had a stake in the success of the Healthy Start Programme and I would say that we have advocated well for our children and motivated the mainstream child care operators to share the load with us. This is the result of the type of Advocacy and Resource Mobilising we believe in and I want to commend Beeleng for laying the foundations well, Gloria for leading the way and Leelin for nurturing so much goodwill and cooperation at Ghim Moh.  Among the success stories that people were recollecting, we heard how Healthy Start discovered a withdrawn 2 year old boy who was raised in wooden box but is today his teacher's delight. We are on the right track and as long as we don't let up, the children we reach will continue to enjoy success.

Later this evening, Yet, Rashid, Jolene, Amelia, Jerel, Josh and Stephanie(from Galilee) will be conducting on-site auditions for ONE at the Esplanade underpass for the young people there. Last Friday, more than 50 youths dropped by the Hangout to strut their stuff and it does look that ONE is capturing the imagination of young people.

Our work takes us to bus-stops, rental flats, under-passes and sometimes other exotic places as well. But perhaps, the most important places it takes us to is our beliefs about what our world could be; the possibilities that people can achieve and the abilities I have that make a difference.

Have a good weekend!

Dear Team
Some of you kept asking me about Penang and each time I am reminded that I am getting a little too old for hopping of budget airlines and eating at rough and tough places, the likes of "The End of the World Restaurant." Intrigued by the warning ”9 out of 10 times, you would leave with an upset stomach but 10 out of 10 times satisfied with the meal"; I just had to check it out. I left the eating place really satisfied and it was not because of my wife's observation that everyone working there was female. For the record, statistically I was not in the minority 10% and I came back drained on Monday.

Anyway, I am all solid now and would like to share with you some of the wisdom I picked up. The LaSalle Brothers, renown for building a massive worldwide network of Christian Brothers Schools such as Singapore schools like St Patrick's, St Joseph's, St Stephens and so forth are gradually moving away from all the reputable institutions they have built. As Beyond is now growing as an organisation, there's much to learn from the LaSalle brothers who have been there, done that and are now coming home. Coming home to their mission of being  "an educational service of the poor."

Firstly, they would now want to be known as the LaSalle Family and this literally means that the surrender of 'ownership' and a renewed openness to collaborate and share the load with others. Bluntly put, it is no longer absolutely necessary that religious brothers are in-charged but it is important that the mission is served. When service is a collaborative effort, there is a soul alight and the Brothers now know that over time their traditions have made them so 'professional' that collaborating with the community was no longer possible. In Beyond's context, as our work grows, we must remember that our volunteers' involvement should grow proportionately too. We are after all, a voluntary welfare organisation.

This development can take us on different discussion tracks but for now I would like to highlight that the Brothers have realised that size does matter and for "service to the poor" small is beautiful. Yes we are growing but we are always mindful that we do not become an institution. Take the homes Ranga was talking about last week. I would like you to know that Beyond Residential Care will always be organised as small group homes and not hostels, houses or whatever. It is going to be less efficient but hopefully a more meaningful and 'closer to home' experience. It has to be different strokes for different folks. Kids and youths are going to come to us "wrapped" differently so we definitely need to a range of homes with different emphasis. Then, the basic operating philosophy must really be BEYOND residential care. So we are looking for another Assistant Director to work with us in this area. Once again, help pass the word around and recommendations and applications are most welcomed.

At this point, I just want to quickly say that we are committed to remaining small and when it is appropriate, we will have services that have grown too big, hived off into separate entities. Hmmm ...so in the longer run, not just Assistant Director positions are available but Executive Director ones too. Will dwell on this in the future when appropriate but for now, I just wanted to plant a thought.

Lastly, below is Brother John's description of how the LaSalleans have moved or are moving.  If you think about it, it is really inspiring and there are lessons in there for us too. The word on the left is what it was and the word on the right describes where it is evolving to.

Teaching  ... ....................................................Learning  i.e. Learning how to Learn
Book knowledge .............................. Life Skills
Information ............... Formation i.e. If it is about the whole person, Formation of Character must be attended to
Organisation .....................Community and/or Family Spirit
Work values.............................Moral values
Organising.....................Parenting
Consumers...............People

Go figure and I wish you clarity : ).
Gerard

Dear all,

Ged’s away in Penang and will be back at work on Monday. He’s been invited to share his views on children and youth work at a retreat organized by Bro John, a long time friend and mentor of his, as well as the originator of the Life programme. So it’s me this week. Thought I’d start with a story.

This little story is from The Song of the bird by Anthony de Mello titled “The Royal Pigeon” :
Nasruddin became prime minister to the king. Once while he wandered through the palace, he saw a royal falcon. Now, Nasruddin had never seen this kind of a pigeon before. So he got out a pair of scissors, and trimmed the claws, the wings and the beak of the falcon. “Now you look like a decent bird,” he said. “Your keeper had evidently been neglecting you.” De Mello’s point with this story is: “You’re different, so there’s something wrong with you!”

Our Campland rangers were at Gan Eng Seng Primary this week, precisely to beat such a notion. They were handling ‘falcons’ who see themselves, and are seen by others, as pesky pigeons. As we started the briefing, these kids, mainly the rough-and-tough bunch from the lower P5 classes, challenged us with their behaviour. By the end of Day 1, there were lots of smiles on the kids’ faces, while some rangers looked literally blue in the face. On Day 2, we called in our reinforcements - more Rangers. Day 3 is still going on as I write this email, but will no doubt end in a big bang as all our Camplands do. This is the second school we are bringing Campland to, and it is very apparent that these kids need Rangers like us – to challenge them, to laugh and play with them, to guide them and to love them.

Campland is not just any old adventure camp but one that helps us move the children from ‘I’ to ‘We’ to ‘Together We’. And it would not be possible to do that if Beyond did not have a dedicated team of Rangers who volunteer beyond their regular work to toil in the sun and challenge these kids. Campland is a very real example of how we can achieve our promise of turning every kid around, no matter how rough or tough, especially if all of us work together. Thank you, Rangers for being there!

Now that we’ve made such a promise, we’ll be preparing ourselves to manage more kids and youth who others seem to have given up on. We arranged a meeting with MCYS mainly to discuss a place of safety for our child welfare and protection work, and they counter proposed something rather different. They’ve asked us to start a post care facility. Post care is for children and youth who have been in residential institutions, but upon release do not have a home to go to. After several discussions, these plans are firming up and we’ll probably be using two floors of the Hope Centre for this programme which will begin next year. Two other shelters we’ll be working on include one for Babes clients, and another as a place of safety for our children who face abuse.

Next week is going to be a busy week for the Sports and Skills team. There will be a Soccer tournament on 8th Sept from 9am to 4pm at the PSA Club house for children and youth from other VWOs and schools we work with. There will also be the first Youth Meet for ONE on Fri, 9th Sept from 10am to 6pm. For those who don’t already know, ONE is a show we are planning in collaboration with Cirque du Monde to be launched on Dec 18th at the Toa Payoh amphitheatre. ONE will showcase youth talent like stunt cycling, skateboarding, rapping, circus arts and such, and will travel to different HDB heartlands. All are welcome at the soccer and the talent selection.

Coming back to the story that I started with, there is a common purpose that all our programmes serve. While the cycle of poverty, lack of education, difficult experiences in school or home, or abusive situations that our youth and children are in makes them feel there is something wrong with them, let us work together to help them find the strength in themselves. Only because falcons soar, and pigeons just crap the place up!

Happy weekend, and an even better week ahead!

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.  ~Mark Van Doren

One morning when our pre-school programme was still at Block 5, a well-meaning donor brought in a basket of toys that her children had outgrown. "I am sure the kids would love them!" she said. I smiled and placed the basket in the middle of the room where the children were having 'free play'. We both stepped away and while exchanging pleasantries, half expected to see the kids picking up the new toys and having a go with them.  After a few minutes, not one kid approached the basket and thankfully  sensing a tinge of awkwardness, Carissa joined our conversation "These kids did not get much constructive stimulation at home and most have never seen toys, so they won't know that they are supposed to have fun with them." Sounded logical enough and all of us were happy to leave it at that.

We are always reluctant to send the children under our charge to the child psychologist or child psychiatrist because we know that the report that returns will not be favourable. Perhaps, like "parents" we need to believe that these children are fine and they just need a little more time and the right guidance and they will turn out right. Granted we had a few with very special needs that would benefit from specialised care but these kids are far and between. The majority of our kids are normal and will be normal as long as we believe that they are so.

It going to be Teachers' Day on September 1st and I want to thank Anne, Mas, Letchumiy and Salwani for believing that quality early childhood education is for all children especially those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds since they already have less. Because of your efforts, these days our children at Healthy Start speak English comfortably, are active and curious just like how they should be. I would also like to commend you for always cheerfully making the best out of our constraints such as the lack of space and doing everything in your capacity to support children caught in various difficulties. Also in this light, special thanks to our special early childhood volunteer consultants Foong Chue and Wan Inn.

Another group of teachers that we are really grateful for are those at LIFE. I remember Liz, Katijah, Ganda and Suhailah passionately challenging me in a good way that they could help our unmotivated children get back on par with their peers at school. I have seen several whom you have helped and I salute you.

The nice thing about special days like Teachers' Day is that they help us remember the people around us whom we really value. Beyond is a social work agency and sometimes the teachers among us wonder about their place here. Let me say that it is obvious that all of you impact the children in a very important and tangible way and Beyond is effective because teachers, social workers, community workers and whatever we call ourselves work together for the children.  Hmm..... come to think of it, teaching is the profession that teaches all other professions.

Happy Teachers' Day!
Gerard

A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others.  ~Author Unknown 
 

As we did our best to fulfill our promises, it turned out to be another very difficult week. Hence, I really want to thank team members who went beyond the call of duty. 

The KU Team for making sure our Primary 6s attended their Primary School Leaving Oral Examinations. I know you will be doing the same thing next week when these kids do their preliminary examinations so hope you sleep well on Saturday. By the way, great job Pas for convincing the Principal to allow Tamil to take his exams.

The RJ & Youth Teams for the tedious ghost busting work. It's the month of the Hungry Ghosts on the Chinese Calendar and Yet thinks that's why we are seeing more of the demon in some of the kids : ).  But seriously, these days with a higher presence in some schools, we have been getting kids whom everyone else has given up on, referred to us. Well "No kid is too tough or rough for us” right? Nonetheless, it has been tough work helping a family regain their authority over a rebellious 14 who has his brains in his pants.  Such kids are not the 'gangster' sort that we normally deal with but they are no less a handful. Thanks goodness for Din (our very own Delinquent In Need) and Yet (our Youth Engagement Trainer) and not forgetting Saras who can talk herself out of anything,, we have managed to stay on top of the situation way past the top of the hour for a few days now. Great job Vincent for rallying your army and with reinforcements from our trainers in the Sports Department, one more mom and dad will experience a blissful family weekend with their young children - something they have not had in more than 2 years.  

Finally, I had the privilege of joining some of the KU and RJ discussions and I just want to say that I really appreciated the humour. We should always take the work seriously but lightening up does help us get by.  Oh one more thing, much thanks to those of you leading the 400 kids and their moms to the Herbie movie this Sunday.

Have a good weekend!
Gerard

Dear Team
Just wanted to share some thoughts or perhaps more like questions that we should think about in our work after visiting the reformative training centre at Changi on Wednesday. The RTC takes in youths aged 14 to 21 who have committed serious offences or are deemed to be unmanageable at the lesser security facilities such as the Boys Home or the Boys Hostel. In short, it is a prison for young offenders. The fact that such a facility exists for people in their formative years is sad. These boys should be forming into gentlemen and not reforming into......?

It has been about 6 years since my last visit and there ahs been some positive development. Firstly, the waiting area is a lot more comfortable and welcoming for visitors. Gone is the zinc-roofed shed and the creaky fans but an airport like waiting area, clean and efficient. Next, we can no longer say the prison “takes away your identity and gives you a number" because on their shirts, their names are printed next to their prison number and the boys are addressed by their names. The mess hall is painted a pleasant salmon pink and they even have a home-made colourful signboard above the door of the therapy room. Back then I worked in 5 different prisons and if I was lucky I could do my sessions in the prayer room, otherwise I just made do with whatever space that was available. There were also lots of computer rooms and we were given a tour by Raj, an RTC inmate who spoke well and knowledgably about the RTC methods and philosophy. Besides Raj, there were also several adult prisoners who had steward duties like conducting computer lessons and ushering of the younger boys from point to point. Finally, they literally threw away the keys; gates are now opened and shut electrically. It is spartan because it is a prison but the cleanliness, efficiency and other improvements are aimed to convey a sense of respect for the inmates as people of worth.

The facility is managed with incentives and disincentives and inmates who learn the rules quickly are rewarded with privileges quickly. Common sensical enough but the flip side is that it reinforces the every man for himself attitude. Is such an attitude really helpful for young people who need to develop empathy and feel a sense of responsibility towards their fellow men and our society as such?  The answer is no but then I don't have a real alternative either. One suggestion is to give them opportunities to give to the less fortunate without expecting anything in return but executing that under an over arching powerful prison culture may just be a drop in an ocean. Nonetheless we should really think further about this.

Working in the RTC and other lesser security facilities for youths will be a challenge that we will continually keep in view but our focus will always be on how to keep young people out of these facilities in the first place. Hence, we have agreed to become a Guidance Programme operator where there are potentially 800 to 1200 young people whom we can guide each year. We were offered this opportunity to join the other 17 operators because the authorities thought that it would be a good idea to implement Family Group Conferencing within GP. Well we are taking the opportunity to establish Family Group Conferencing as a preferred method of case management but we must manage expectations. Currently, MCYS proudly states that only 7% of all GP cases go back to crime within 3 years after completion. That is a pretty darn good statistic by any standard and I am also wondering if FGC can really bring that number down. Whatever it is we should take the challenge but we must be really clear about our positioning and what we are trying to achieve.  Saras, Yet and everyone else in Vincent's army really need to think a lot more about this.

Finally, while we are at recidivism statistics, I would like to leave you with this quote from Einstein, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” 

To my team-mates "Keep up your good work even when the chips are down, you never know the difference you are making."
Gerard

Dear Team
Ranga, Bee Leng and I thank all of you for bearing with us over the past 4 weeks as we reorganised to meet the challenge of growing our work.  At Beyond, we have always defined professionalism as the positive difference we create for our beneficiaries and we see this continuing to happen only if we continue to strengthen our teams. So we streamlined the jobs and ensured that both case management and support programmes are well resourced. Both are important aspects of our work and by being more focused, we expect to see the quality of work in both areas improving.  From here on, Ranga and I will be meeting with your Assistant Directors to arrange for Journey Beyond sessions that address the needs within your service group.

During these 4 weeks, I am sure you felt that things are moving so quickly and that we are growing so fast. If I may hazard a guess, some of you are wondering if it will still be a 'great place to work’ as so many of us like to boast :?  In response, I would like to say that I believe so. It is always people who make up an organisation and as long as we want this to be a 'great place to work' it will be so. It is people who make things work and one brilliant example this week is the effort Mui Mui and Leo put into organising a 'closing' orientation session for our newer team-mates.  We have a standard orientation programme but Mui and Leo's extra effort ensured that it was a meaningful exercise and not something we did just to go through the motion.  Mui played game master for the session quizzing our new team-mates about Beyond and while it was good fun, it also showed how serious we are about ensuring that people are really part of the team. Thanks Mui and Leo for the initiative, small gestures like that make a big difference.

At the same session I was really gratified to hear Vasantha comment that whether she was at Healthy Start, the Hangout or the FSC, she experienced a warm homely feel about the place. She added that coming to work was like leaving home for another home. It is good to know that we are living up to our promise of creating a warm and welcoming place wherever we work.  Home is an important place literally or figuratively speaking. The first thing we do in counseling is to help people feel safe and comfortable like they do at home.  Home is nurturance, comfort, safety and the place where we can simply be who we are.  So apart from sleeping on the job, please continue to make yourself at home here. The work is demanding and we need to draw strength from all at home.

It's the weekend. Have a good time at home.
Gerard

On Tuesday morning, I had a delightful privilege of catching a private screening of Eric Khoo's latest movie Be With Me. It's a movie where a social worker is one of the main characters and one where our children had bit parts...really small bits but that's why Leela, Ranga and I were invited. Hey, social workers like us have perks too you know but we were not allowed kacang puteh* in the movie hall. A main story in the movie was about Theresa Chan, a real Singaporean lady who never had any formal education but mastered English in her adult life even though she was blind and deaf.  After the movie, I was wondering aloud to Ranga whether I would have had the will to live on if I was in the same situation. This lady's awesome as despite her disadvantages, she found it in herself to give to others by organising fund raising projects for the homeless in India. Theresa figured that although she was blind and deaf, her needs were taken care of, but the homeless in India had nothing and were suffering.  

Robert Coles with his seminal work on moral intelligence would describe someone like Theresa as a "good person" who has mastered and understood the meaning of respect for others and commits her heart, soul and mind (and may I add hands and legs) to help others.  Come to think of it, we all can give regardless of our situation but isn't it so very often that we lament that the kids we help "only take but never give." Hence, the film was a timely reminder that we really should be more conscious in inculcating in our young people values that will help them want to reach out and look out for others. Values are caught and not taught so we all have this all important task of being good role models but we are also going to try structuring the imparting of values a little more systematically. So thanks Norman for volunteering to lead "United Time" every Friday with some of our more 'stony' hearted kids. I am sure as we chip away at the stone, the beautiful child within will emerge.

The movie also reminded me of an email I received some time back entitled 'I wish you enough.' The writer was saying that a unique family greeting was "I wish you enough."  Not more, not less but enough Thus she believed that her  family always got through thick and thin simply because they believed they had enough. It appears that it is not about having more so that we can give but simply about having enough.

With the spotlight on VWOs the last 3 weeks, some of you came up to me wondering if we were likely to get into trouble too? When some of you asked me if we had too much money in the bank, I smiled but not because of what we have in our bank account but because I was very proud that I have colleagues who bother whether we have been operating with integrity.  First of all, we believe that a charity is not a business and the key indicator for our success in whether our help reaches our target group of beneficiaries and whether it has been helpful for them. Our success must never be judged on the amount of money we raise or have and fund-raising must be an auxiliary function that supports our work and never THE work. Stanley put it nicely when he said that a VWO is a conduit between donors and the people in need. Being an effective conduit also means being an effective communicator of needs. In social work language, its Advocacy and Resource Mobilising.

Here's what I normally tell our donors and perhaps you may want to use the line too. It is a principle and a promise that we will only raise funds for current needs. We will never have reserves exceeding 1 year's operating budget.  Right now some of you may think that 1 year's reserves is pretty risky but let me say that since we started fund-raising in 2001, our reserves have always been between 4 to 6 months. As we have just finished our Run, it is about 8 months now, an all time high : ). When I think about it, being a little hungry is good for the work as we constantly have to challenge ourselves to be relevant. Without being relevant we will not survive and striving to do better should lead to better help for the kids. In a sense it's' like adventure training in Campland where we  surprise ourselves pleasantly whenever we stretch a little beyond our comfort zones.

Back to managing with integrity. Last Saturday, George walked into the office with a copy of TODAY, commenting that the whole world now knows how much I earn. I was quietly thinking to myself that that's okay as long as my wife didn't. Then as I turned my back, she walked in. Believe me that's transparency.

Have a good weekend!
Gerard

*For those of you who are not local, kacang puteh means "peanuts"

ONE more week has gone by and I just wanted to thank everyone who responded so encouragingly to my mails. Really uplifting to know that we are ONE in thought. ONE message I wanted to bring across this week is that as Beyond embarks on programmes with a nation-wide focus, we will take the BABES approach of bringing different VWOs and other stakeholders to work together.  We may be leading and driving the programme but we would like to share the load and encourage others to work with us. In a best case scenario, ONE or more of these partners would be able to drive the work as an equal and perhaps take over the programme.

So we will be embarking on the Child Protection Programme in this fashion. Once again, Promiseworks will help us as a researcher that links all stakeholders in Singapore and explore if stakeholders can come together for a consolidated response to the issue of Child Abuse. Promiseworks has gathered a team already and we need to meet them ONE more time before they get down on it in mid August. Well, this week I learned that we now have ONE volunteer foster parent approved by MCYS. Thanks Wan Inn for persevering through the grueling process and coming up tops. Wan Inn as a foster parent for temporary care for our kids will certainly be a welcome alternative to the 3 gazetted homes while investigations are being carried out. We are trying to increase this pool of foster parents so if you know of suitable people, please let me or Yik (yik@beyond.org.sg) know.

Also wanted to thank Anne, Mas, Letchumiy, Salwani, HoyFong & Wan Inn for inviting us to Healthy Start's racial harmony day on Tuesday and reminding us all that we are ONE human race. It was so fitting that the message was driven home by our guest Dr Subba Rao an hour later when he commented that the 1800 odd languages in India was perhaps reflective of the ONE human need to communicate. Similarly the reason there are so many religions, reflected the ONE need to find God (whoever you may make HER out to be) in our lives. ONE comment I particularly liked was that GOD is in the people we meet.  Personally, I am no big fan of religion but I do believe that the humanistic work we do gives us a deep sense of meaning and stability in our lives. Subba Roa saw us as the Beyond Family and he rightly noted that the work has pulled us from all over the world to work together as ONE. 

ONE is also the name of the show that our Cirque du Monde Programme is trying to put together with the 300 odd youths that Joshua has contacted on his outreach exercises at the esplanade underpass and the youth park. ONE will premiere at the Toa Payoh Amphitheatre on 18 December and have a repeat performance on 26 December. Josh's job is to get these skateboarders, break-dancers, hip hoppers, stunt cyclists, ball jugglers, and musicians etc to work together as ONE on the production of ONE. ONE is basically a preventive programme for youths hanging out on the streets with little to do and engaging them through circus arts. The method of engagement is to build a 'touring' community circus that performs 3 to 4 times a year. We aim to have 500 youths taking an interest within a year.

ONE important outcome of this programme is that it enables youths regarded to be on the fringes of our society to forge new ties with society. As performers bringing shows to our heartlands, they will literally have a stage to showcase their positiveness and vibrancy. Thus, the show will be a bridge between these youths and their community. Oh by the way, we are selling Cirque du Soleil tickets for the opening night of their show, Quidam on 9 September at $150. All proceeds will go towards the Cirque du Monde Programme. Please email Jolene@beyond.org.sg if you can buy some off us. It's opening night and we have 300 of the best seats in the Grand Chapiteau.

Finally, during our MILK McCoy auditions at Toa Payoh in June, an elderly lady standing next to me was bobbing her head, tapping her feet, grinning and giggling away as she watched the dance preface of a hip hop group on stage. Apparently she was tickled pink at the antics of the teenager doing his clockwork moves. I am not exaggerating and perhaps through Cirque du Monde, our young people will realise that our community supports their dreams and adventures and it may not be so difficult to come together as ONE.

Namaste
Gerard

Hi team
My week started uneventful enough at 9am on Monday morning with a very slow meeting with officers from the Prison. These people were from the Reformative Training Centre (Youth Prison for 14 to 21 year olds), the Prison School, the IN Care Counsellors and the After Care Department. They wanted to see how they could engage community agencies to provide their inmates after-care services upon release but we maintained that After Care begins on Day 1 of Incare and if they believe us, they have to start putting in place organisational structures that facilitate such a working philosophy. It was simply food for thought for most of them as it was not really up to them. Anyway many of them invited us for a visit to their facilities so that we could explore further how we can work together. Let me know if you are interested in visiting the Reformative Training Centre so that I can keep you in mind when we do so.

The reason we are talking with the Prisons is really to see if we can play a part in restoring/integrating troubled young lives back into our community. While meeting managers these 2 weeks, we referred to our vision and it is timely to reiterate that the vision is about building a framework/network of opportunities where troubled children and youths can to turn to for help. This meeting with the Prisons was an opportunity to engage a community institution to partner us in our work. Currently, working with the institutions i.e. prisons, boys’ hostel etc falls under our Restorative Justice Service.

Later that afternoon, I was on the brink of receiving a cheque for $175,000 from Starhub until they realised that M1 was helping us too. Both these telcos wanted to be associated with a youth charity and their research pointed us in their direction. However, to quote the Starhub lady "it is impossible, we don't want to be seen as two suitors chasing over the same girl." Her cheque presentation event is a couple of weeks away and understandably being a little flustered she told me to recommend her another youth agency which I gladly accepted. We are now helping Galilee Centre to package a youth service which they have been trying to start. We are calling their youth outreach programme Youth United - Building Futures Through Friendships. Hopefully, Starhub supports this but Mrs Mah told me that in any case, we should thank Starhub because we are now working towards serving another 100 youth-at-risk in Ang Mo Kio. Hey, this is exact the kind of positive attitude we said we would have for ourselves in our Compass.

By sharing this story, I hope to make several points. Understanding these points will help you understand the approach and actions we take towards our vision. Perhaps, it also helps explain why management makes certain decisions on staff movement and our emphasis on leadership development, which is also stated in Our Compass. 

Firstly, the work at Ang Mo Kio is a real need and it does not matter who does the work. What matters is that the work is done. In this light, we will be absolutely happy if Starhub supported Galilee with their funds. The point is that Beyond believes in sharing the load as there will always be more than enough work to go around.

Secondly, the advantage of this approach is that we build friendships rather than make enemies. This can only be empowering and translates into more kids getting help. Being human, we often get caught in turf wars. With an ingrained sense of competitiveness in us, we will always think we are the better agency and end up fighting over cases or service boundaries. When this persists, we may even start building an empire for the sake of doing so and lose focus on the reason for our existence which is our beneficiaries. We exist to work for the kids; anything else we do is only to support this and must never overwhelm the core reason for our existence e.g. fund raising is to support current needs and not to greedily get a bigger slice of the charity dollar pie just because you can.

Thirdly, when we don't share we don't get it anyway and the beneficiaries are not helped. The Starhub incident demonstrates this. Even if we had other 20 youth centres, Starhub and MI won't work together. That means unlike Noah we can only have 'one of each'. Somehow, that does not seem like a viable practice for procreation or in our context, growing the work and reaching more kids.

We are growing the work and we need partners but because of the competitive streak in all of us, this is easier said than done. My previous experience bringing Streetwise youth agencies together had only limited success. Perhaps, these days I am less competitive myself so the Babes network is faring better.   To move forward, it would certainly be easier for an agency like MILK instead of Beyond to forge such partnerships. MILK is a neutral funding agency and its partner agencies will see themselves as equals. So this National Day, Bee Leng will be seconded to the MILK Fund as Executive Director and she would be in a strategic position to  help forge these partnerships and oversee the other work that MILK does overseas. I am going to miss her 'nearby presence' deeply but then, we are still on the same team and I know we will still be seeing a lot of each other.

So folks, Ranga is now Deputy Director and Vincent and Gloria, Assistant Directors. Saras has got her wish to kick Vincent out of her team and she is now Manager of Restorative Justice. Gloria will return to Healthy Start and she will be based at 120 Bukit Merah View which will soon become a full-day Child Development Centre and the Flagship Centre for the Healthy Start Programme. The Healthy Start Programme is an important programme that has its growth plan mapped out and the HS Team is looking towards setting up a Geylang Bahru Outpost by end of the year. Oh, the Team leader at  Ghim Moh is LeeLin and Far leads KKH. As Assistant Director, Gloria will chart the growth plan and lead the whole team which includes the Child Development Educators as well as the Community Workers.
Vincent oversees RJ, Youth and KU. For the moment, Babes and Campland will be under Ranga and all other programmes will fall under the FSC. A new FSC Head will join us in September.

Ok that's all for this week. Have a good weekend!
Gerard

Dear Team
Since the run began in 2001, I have been organising my work year from August to July.  So in a sense, now that the run is over, here's my New Year resolution. I am going to keep in touch more often. Being the strong silent type doesn't work anymore for the fact that as our work grows my strength alone will not hold everything together. Today the work is beyond me as an individual. Our work can only be done on the collective strength of all of us. More than always, we need to be talking with each other and holding hands.  Before you start getting any wild ideas let me elaborate. John (who is copied in this email) has been a long time mentor/trainer for me and many at Beyond. He once told us that the experience of our work is like being caught alone in an Indian train station. People are just going against you no matter where you turn. It is overwhelming and often you get spun around too; losing your balance and direction. Well, we can try taking a boxer's stance, bruise some knuckles and make some headway but won't it be easier if we just found a few people who are going in the same direction as us, hold hands and start moving. Soon we will realise that the line we formed has become a marching contingent.

Never in our history have we had so many staff, volunteers, Board members and public support rallying for our cause. Hey, 9394 people were at our run a few days ago and that's not counting the friends these people brought along. Stephen who was in-charged of crowd control will swear that they were at least 15 000 people : ). My point is we have enough people to make a contingent. We just have to be marching in the same direction.

Let's start with some basic info that I have been meaning to send out for a long time but never got to it. We have a new Board of Management that was elected in March 05. Some names you may recognise as having been with us but many probably because you have seen them elsewhere. The Patron and the Advisers were of course are not elected. Here goes:

Patron- Dr Sheryn Mah
Hon Advisor - Dr S Vasoo

President - Stanley Tan
Vice President-Goh Chee Kong
Hon Secretary-Norman Wong
Hon Treasurer-Janet Lyn
Members-Joy Balakrishnan, Low Seow Juan, Douglas Foo 
Founder Member Rep-Sr Molly Lim

With due respect to our previous Board Members, I have never worked with a more supportive and empowering Board. Boards have many roles. At times they are sounding boards, other times barring boards but most importantly they should be spring boards. Remember though you need to plunge into deep water if you are jumping off a spring board : ). In short, it is a Board that aims to get work done and they lead by example.

A few weeks ago, the Board met with team-leaders and managers for a day long retreat. They called it a bonding exercise but I went home that day very heartened that the Board leadership is very much in sync with the Community Workplace we are constantly nurturing.  The work we do is hard and often heart breaking. We are only going to survive if we can find strength holding hands in our community workplace. The Board is going to put their money where their mouth is by contributing 50% of every community/teambuilding building we carry out for the staff team. Not to worry, this will be their personal contribution and we will not be eating into the charity dollar that we all work so hard to raise. Do let Ranga or Mui Mui know if you have some ideas.

 Like I said earlier, my year has just begun and I am getting Managers to take stock of where their service areas are and draw up plans to move on. BeeLeng, Ranga and I were at the Hope Centre with reps from KU, Youth, RJ & Volunteer. Next week we will be getting to the other teams and by end of this month our whole contingent will come together as one. We took stock of our work by asking ourselves how does our service/programme respond to Beyond's promise of "Keeping Young lives on Track!" i.e. What exactly is it that we promise those who seek our help?" 

I must say that I was particularly impressed with Pascale and Leela who started their list of promises with "For better or worse".hmm where did I hear that before?  Anyway, along with the promises came several wishes and plans but let us discuss these further before we present them. Meanwhile, here my summary of the promises made by those present.  

Beyond has promised to care for disadvantaged children who have been neglected, abused or simply 'forgotten'.  Hence, we need to do it in a nurturing manner that is able to address the challenges brought about by their natural overall development. For instance, insecurities, rivalries, curiosities including sexual, negative peer influences and so on. In a nut shell, no kid will be too rough or tough for us. That's the Kids United promise. Also, just because they have complicated backgrounds there is absolutely no necessity for us to over react to this fact and blow the misbehaviours we encounter in proportion to their juicy stories.

As for youth services, they promise to do their best to "turn a kid around”. They know how to engage youths, keep them meaningfully occupied on and off the streets and journey with them through their difficulties without forgetting their parents. Besides connecting with the youths we must be able to connect with their parents/guardians and strike them as responsible adults who have their kids' best interest at heart. We must be able to gain the parents' confidence and comfort and encourage them when things are not going well with their kids.

For both the above we are not just caring and repairing. There is education and the imparting of values. We know how to handle misbehaviour so that kids can learn from their mistakes and pick up positive values. The world talks of IQ & EQ but with youth development we need to add MQ (moral intelligence). However, it is not a simple way of morality (as in basic religion) because otherwise we cannot do BABES:). Young people must learn that "putting things right" is not just because they have to but because "it is the right thing to do". Here's where RJ is supposed to be driving things. RJ has also promised to develop a pool of family group conferencing facilitators. Finally, Volunteer Service will continue to be present at all discussion as they have promised to work together with all teams to improve the quality of contribution from volunteers.

So what does Management promise? Here's our list:
1. We promise to continually share the big picture....This letter is one effort ok : ).
2. We promise to provide experiences that will enlarge your personal and professional growth.   Beyond being a part of MILK is now within a network of social services across Asia. These include Timor-Leste, Aceh, Isan, Manila/Davao, Luo Yuan, Phnon Penh and Luo Yuan/Xiamen. Hence, if any one is game to experience social/community work in these areas, the opportunities are there. The rationale is that a stint addressing problems beyond Singapore will bring out in us skills and strengths that will serve us well when we return. I think Coach will call this conditioning training, you know like "no pain no gain."

By the way, Rapti will be seconded to the Alola Foundation in TImor-Leste from September to co-ordinate a Maternal & Child Health Programme. The women in Timor have an average of 7 to 8 children but 2 out of 5 die in childbirth. Timor probably has the highest maternal and infant mortality rate in the world.  One reason for this is that culturally, women give birth unassisted at home in front of the fireplace and sometimes, the baby is suffocated by the smoke from the fire. Rapti's job is to coordinate a programme that puts up birth-assist clinics at strategic locations, increasing the probability of women receiving the assistance of a mid-wife during labour.

3. We promise to create organisation space for staff to assume enlarged management responsibilities.  We will create Assistant Director positions and meanwhile we should follow the Kids United example of getting the children to apply for leadership positions.  So if any one is interested to be an Assistant Director, let me know and like Kids United there will be a selection process : ) and we promise our frank assessments.

Ok that's it for now and I just wanted to keep you posted of some events that may interest you this month before signing off.

Monday, 11 July, 9am to Noon at the Hangout - Dialogue with the Reformative Training Centre with a view to working together for the improvement of Restorative Care in their establishment. Drop by if you want to know what goes on within the walls of the Reformative Training Centre.

Tuesday, 19 July in the morning(details later)  - A session with Dr S.N. Subba Rao, Director of the National Youth Project, India. The National Youth Project is arguably the most successful youth movement in India and Campland can certainly learn a thing or two from them. Dr Subba Rao is 76 years old but he still attends all his youth camps when he is not travelling. He is happiest when he meets with children and youths and we have set aside time for him to interact with KU. He will be in Singapore from 16 to 20 July and we are hosting his visit taking him to FeiYue, Ramakrishnan Mission and the Bhavan's International School. So if you want to spend some time playing host, please let Vincent know.

Saturday, 23 July, 2.30pm to 4.00pm at Galilee Centre- A session on the Learning Centre Movement Today by Bro John DCruz. Please let Shedah, Pascale or Leela know if you are interested.

Peace!
Gerard