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Grooming More ITE Youth Leaders Our youth want to be given opportunities in volunteering and leadership and the SINDA Youth Club has just the right programmes for them! It’s only good news when our youngsters are keen on giving back to the community. Following a series of focus group discussions held last year, where the interests and needs of ITE students were uncovered, the ITE Leadership Programme was conceptualised. From 10-12 April, an inaugural batch of 25 teens from ITE underwent a three-day residential leadership camp, emerging with the motivation and confidence to make a difference. Since then, they have been coming together regularly for workshops to hone their skills. What they have learnt will come in handy when they take the big step into actual service: a community-based project, of their choice, for their peers. This group effort kicks off in the last quarter of the year, and the students will have to visualise, plan and execute the project. Empowered as youth leaders, they will be taking on more responsibility as concerned citizens in their community, learning to galvanise the support of their peers as well. What a great start for our ITE teens, on their road to their dreams!
SINDA Youth Symposium How do our youth believe they can sustain Singapore in the next 50 years? 50 of them under SINDA’s Thought Leadership Programme came together on 29 August at St. Joseph’s Institution to give their take on Singapore’s future. Coming from all walks of life, the young people attending the inaugural SINDA Youth Symposium animatedly discussed considerations in safeguarding our country’s success. Topics included driving a collective Singapore identity and Singapore’s survival. The panel speakers, who came from various industries in both the public and private sectors, offered a lively mix of perspectives, which one participant described as “a real eye-opener”. She added, “Often we don’t stop to think about where we are now, and where we want to go from here on. This symposium has forced us to think out-of-the-box, hearing from esteemed captains of industry. I’m glad to have been a part of this.”