The Apprentice - the K-12 Edition

The kids at Whampoa's learning programme have a business to run for the next few weeks: decide what to do with a newly donated set of clothes, work on a plan and execute the plan.

Kind of like The Apprentice, but no one gets fired.

Every Saturday from 10 30am to 1pm, my friends and I work with a bunch of 6 to 12-year-olds from the Whampoa neighborhood. The adults and teens running the programme are here on a volunteer basis, and so are the kids who attend the programme.

Our goal is to work with them to strengthen their life skills - in particular, building their confidence by bolstering their ability to communicate and collaborate.

On any given week, 10-12 kids come to class. (Half the number on the class register.)

On any given week, the volunteers go door-knocking, checking the attendance list to get the addresses of the kids who haven't shown up, going to their homes, sometimes waking up blurry-eyed kids hadn't gone to bed till 1am, and waiting for them to brush their teeth and get changed at 10 45am.

On any given week, I'm amazed and grateful that the kids and the volunteers come in faithfully to the void deck classroom at Block 75 Whampoa Drive.

What To Do With Donated Clothes?

Last weekend, the donated clothes arrived. The kids' got into groups with their volunteers to decide how best to make use of the clothes. The volunteers were the facilitators, the kids were the bosses.

"Sell the clothes and give the money to the less fortunate - like the people at Lee Ah Mooi old folks' home," said a 10-year-old.

"Sell the clothes and raise money for us - so that we can go to Universal Studio, buy games..." said a 12-year-old. Because most of the clothes were for teenage girls, he suggested we sell them in the markets in Geylang (high traffic area), get donations of make-up so that we have product bundles aimed at young women.

An 8-year-old said we should give the clothes to people who need them for free so that they could use whatever money they had to buy food instead.

The kids then presented their ideas to the class. They fell roughly into three camps: sell the clothes and funnel the money back into our learning programme; sell the clothes and donate the money to a non-profit that needs it more than we do; give the clothes away in the community.

How Now Brown Cow?

This week, the kids will think through their plans and agree on one option to work on as a class. And...they also need to think about where and how to store the clothes, which are currently sitting uncomfortably under a staffer's desk.

I've got no clue how today will go - but I'm sure it'll be as eye-opening for me this week as it was the previous class.

Footnote: Want to help? We need volunteers and we meet at 10am at Block 75 Whampoa Drive. We're part of Beyond Social Services. Volunteers' job description: Big brother, big sister, referee, good cop, bad cop, lesson planner, facilitator, clown, mentor, friend. Sometimes exasperating, often exhausting, always amazing. Two more classes in May, then we break for the June hols, and start again in July.