Singapore International Foundation

SVO project concludes with Bengali teachers receiving training from My First Skool in Singapore

For these two weeks (12–24 July), four trainees from rural West Bengal, consisting of a principal and three teachers, will attend an immersion course at My First Skool Woodlands and Compassvale.

Since August 2005, the SIF has been sending Singapore volunteers from Singapore’s Regional Training and Resource Centre in Early Childhood Care and Education for Asia (RTRC Asia) — the training arm of NTUC First Campus — to help train Ullon Social Welfare Society, a grassroots organisation in rural West Bengal.

Throughout this SIF Singapore Volunteers Overseas project, RTRC volunteers have been providing formal training to Ullon’s pre-school education teachers and trainers. An assessment was conducted in August 2005 after which five workshops were completed in Ullon — in January, April and November 2007, March 2008, and February 2009.

The project concludes here in Singapore, with a two-week immersion course for the principal and three Indian teachers.

For the training, the SIF has also gathered a group of volunteer Bengali – English interpreters. Consisting mostly of Indian PRs living in Singapore, they are assisting the four Indian teachers throughout the course of their immersion. For the Mukherjee family, this has become a family effort in volunteering where father, mother and daughter have signed up together to assist as interpreters. Dr Mukherjee, a senior lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic who has lived in Singapore for 17 years, says:” This is a very meaningful effort, so I’ve taken leave from work specially to help out.”