Last week, our Year 3-4 students worked with residents of Ang Mo Kio to organise a “Football Fiesta Carnival” for youths and children! This was part of the Gryphon’s Purpose Programme*.
A service project where they collaborated with Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre, 643 Community Hub, they went through an asset mapping process and were connected to residents (who are also community leaders) to be their mentors and support them in their planning.
The carnival was 1.5 months in the making, where our students spent several sessions planning and rehearsing with residents for the carnival. Additionally, to understand the interests of children in the neighbourhood, they surveyed and interacted with them for two weeks.
RI students bonded over a football game with the neighbourhood children and in co-planning the carnival together.
Seeing how the children’s eyes lit up whenever the word “football” was mentioned, they organised a football tournament with carnival games such as throwing balls to cans, Ping-Pong balls to cups, mini basketball and floorball shoot-out.
Carnival games as fringe activities to engage the children and the tournament spectators.
The carnival was held at the Futsal Court located at Blk 180, Ang Mo Kio Ave 5. To publicise the event, the students designed a poster and created a sign-up link that was disseminated onto the neighbourhood community’s whatsapp group chats.
The event registered three teams of youths, four teams of children who participated in the tournament and over 90 people turned up for the event.
Football tournament in action.
A child even came up to one of the organisers and said, “Today was so fun, I love it!”, a testament of the smiles and laughter that the event brought to residents.
A photo with the winning teams at the "Football Fiesta Carnival".
Lu Yuanxi (4I) recounted, “I'm grateful for this truly enriching experience, the opportunity to interact and work with people I met, learn about the needs and strengths of the community and build my confidence in public speaking.” Another student, Alaric Chia (3C), reflected that the event was “well worth all the hard work”.
The "Football Fiesta Carnival" allowed our students to learn more about the needs and strengths of the community.
We applaud our students and residents for working together to bring cheer to the neighbourhood, and for igniting the community spirit!
*The Gryphon’s Purpose Programme is a 6-week enrichment programme (for Year 3-4 students) that explores students’ personalities, interests, and passions, and helps them to understand how these strengths could value-add to communities and the environment around them.