Blessings in a Bag

We’ve decided to get our WorldChangeAgents heard and felt the best way to do so would be to open the blog to the people who really make a difference through our various projects and events.  We hope that through their sharing of personal experiences you will be able to see what challenges come our way, how we overcome them, when we admit to failure (learning curve!), how we work as a team and most importantly…how we dream BIG and make it happen!

This first post sheds some light on the upcoming ‘Love is Loud’ lunch session we’ll be having tomorrow.  The ‘Love is Loud’ Lunches are put together to bring kids together from across Singapore.  We initially started (you can see a brief write up about the original project here) the project in 2011 but it only focused on reaching out to kids with serious illnesses such as cancer/leukaemia, etc. (in partnership with the Children’s Cancer Foundation Singapore and KK Women and Children’s Hospital) and we would go into the hospital wards and cheer them up through fun activities, inviting balloon twisters, handing out activity packs, screening a movie, etc.  We decided to expand our reach to include all Singapore kids in need of cheering up.  The lunches are put together for students who have been nominated by their teachers because they are going through a tough time and we’d love to turn that frown upside down!  Examples may include loss in family, low self-esteem, victim of bullying, low income family group, disability, etc.

Here’s more from our WorldChangeAgents, Leslie and Joline:

It’s ONE day to the first ‘Love is Loud’ Lunch Session!  With a long checklist of event preparations, we are very excited to finally see this session brought to reality.  We’re especially excited to meet children from:

• Damai Primary School
• Bedok Green Primary School
• Bethesda Care & Counselling Services

Today, we have started to prepare goodies bags and here’s a sneak preview:

We’d like to say a BIG thank you to our sponsors who have generously contributed to the fabulous treats for the goodie bag and the lunches.

The 1st ‘Love is Loud’ lunch session will be a carnival theme party and the lunch is proudly sponsored by McDonalds Singapore (all 40 Happy Meals!).

We’re looking forward to an enjoyable and fun afternoon with the children as they kick start their June Holidays.

WorldChangeAgents,

Joline and Leslie

We were recently part of ‘CIRQUE DU MARCHE’ - a quarterly gourmet festival that is inspired by the markets of San Francisco, Italy and Sydney, Australia.  It was held at the beautiful and historical CHIJMES HALL. 

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and it was great meeting a few new faces and seeing how you can potentially help our cause. 

Our inbox is always open, so just drop us a line HERE.

More photos can be found on our Facebook Page.

Thank you to WorldChangeAgent, Esmond for providing some of the photos.

We just received these photos in our inbox that were taken quite awhile back.  It was from our first outreach to India thanks to #WorldChangeAgent, Peny!  Peny organises C.O.M.E which stands for ’Children On Mission Eternity’ with a vision to make a wholesome impact in the lives of our children that lasts a lifetime, and beyond!

You can check out more photos HERE.

Thank you to those of you who gave so generously.  As Peny puts it, “Thanks for being a blessing that the kids will grow up remembering!”

These photos make us all stop and reflect on a little while on how far we’ve come.  We started in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that was located on the 3rd floor.  We had our WorldChangeAgents take flights of stairs just to shuttle donations-in-kind that YOU generously gave.  We had to battle some unsanitary conditions, no air-conditioning and cramped spaces.  And then we moved to an abandoned garage which was six times bigger than our humble beginnings and even then there were no complaints from our passionate, committed and amazing WorldChangeAgents who really sweated and worked their butts off to make sure donations-in-kind met a certain standard and could be passed onto kids and communities that needed them most.

We’re so grateful to our WorldChangeAgents and to you for supporting the work we do.  We may have found a brand new home that is more than we could have ever hoped or imagined.  But there are still many challenges we face on a daily basis and so much room for improvement.  Of course, there are also many ways for you to get involved (not just by sorting out donations-in-kind, though, that would be awesome, too!)

Thanks for sticking around! 

P.S  More photos can be found via our FACEBOOK PAGE.  These particular photos were taken when a group of people traveled to Cambodia and wanted to reach out to a children’s organisation based there.  You can find out more about the ‘Blessings in a Bag Movement’.

We’ve always wanted to share these photos with you.  So finally here they are!  Tammy emailed us and shared her plans to visit a school in Batam, requested to bring over some school supplies to give to students and join the ‘Blessings in a Bag Movement’.  We gladly passed them over to Tammy who popped by our HQ so that she could see the items herself and know what she was packing into her luggage.

You can find a few more photos Tammy has snapped HERE.

Thank you Tammy for being a part of the ‘Blessings in a Bag Movement’!  We hope to see you round our HQ someday soon!

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Wow!  It’s been awhile since we’ve posted one of these but we have read your emails expressing encouragement, support, feedback and amazing ideas!  Thank you so much for all your words.

Here’s a snippet from an email we’ve received in the last 24 hours from a student at the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School (SCGS):

Thank you for your talk today. :) You have greatly inspired me as well as my group and developed confidence in what we are doing.  And I hope that I can be a volunteer in ‘Blessings in a Bag’, so that I can have more opportunities to help the children other than those in my home country, China.

If you’d like to drop us a line, whether to make a suggestion, provide feedback or just send us some encouraging words (you won’t believe how many challenges we face on a daily basis to make things happen!), you can do so via blessingsinabag [at] gmail [dot] com or just fill out the contact form HERE. 

Rock on, WorldChangeAgents!

We received an email from a very lovely teacher, Miss Kassey Heng, of SCGS to invite our founder, Emily, to share her experiences and her work through ‘Blessings in a Bag’ to their students.  From previous emails, Kassey shared that the talk was part of a series on on social entrepreneurship and making a difference.  She writes:

“The idea of the talk is to inspire and encourage the students to look beyond themselves and to care for those who are less fortunate that live around them and in the world.” 

Emily also shared on the theme that SCGS had set for the session which was to share:

“definition of success when you were younger in schooling years and possibly if your definition of success have taken a change in your adult years and possibly also in how you measured success as you began Blessings in a Bag as a social movement and a cause that you believe for.”

We had so much fun during our very first ‘Love is Loud Lunch’ session (held post Valentine’s Day)!  Because of the great response and the cheers we received from both WCA’s (WorldChangeAgents) and kids alike, we’re considering ways to grow this arm of our project to reach out to more children locally.

The ‘Love is Loud’ lunch essentially selects a handful of children who may not necessary have the same opportunities as their peers in school or who have been nominated by their own class teachers and gives them a few hours of undivided love, fun and yummy food (sponsored by Singapore’s very own restaurants!)

Some of these children have never dined in a restaurant before and were super excited that this was their first time!  We feel so blessed and grateful for all that we have in each of our lives and we feel inspired to do more through the simple act of inviting kids out for lunch and chatter!

For the first ‘Love is Loud Lunch’ we were proud to partner up for Singapore’s Social Media Week and invited CanManLondon, Martin, to join the kids for lunch.

Here’s a brief run through of what happened for this lunch (as told by WCA, Joline).

• We kicked off the morning by briefing our WCA’s (Led by Joline) at Bedok Green Primary and got to know one another before meeting with the kids.

• We arranged personal pick-ups by a private bus (sponsored by ‘Blessings in a Bag’) from their schools- some individuals were shy but cheerful to be a part of the lunch.  (One of the girls had been sick for days before our ‘Love is Loud Lunch’ and was so excited to join in that she  came to school!  It’s amazing to hear how excited the kids are about the work we are doing locally but we have to note that she was sent home in the end so we’re hoping to have her join in for our next one!)

• We reached FIKA after much singing along and chatter on the bus ride and Haikel, the restaurant manager, was kind enough to help introduce the menu to us.  For starters, we had mushroom soup.  Mains were a choice of either meatballs, chicken thigh or pasta!  And dessert was a Mascarponecheesecake (yum!).  We even had a choice of either coke, coke light (No surprise as to what I chose), Sprite, Fanta orange (no surprise what the majority chose!) and green tea.

• The kids were soon crowding around the couch near the dining table as we asked everyone (WCA’s included) to introduce themselves; name, age and hobbies.  The younger kids were really brave as they were the first ones to take up the challenge!  However, everyone managed to do it (with a few laughs at the age gap between some of us) and we even coaxed some of the kids to teach us how to shuffle!

• We ran a little bit behind time (seeing as this was our first time attempting such an activity) and we got permission from parents/teachers to have a little extra time.  Pretty soon the mains arrived with meatballs being the crowd favourite and our WCA, Tash, got to work by taking snapshots of everyone involved.  We’ve got to say what a pleasant surprise it was when one of the shyer kids actually got behind the camera and started taking photos of us all!  (Sidenote:  All the kids got to take home their memories through Polaroid photos that were taken throughout the session)

• After lunch and desserts, we all took some time to write ‘Thank you Cards’ and FIKA really went above and beyond what we expected…One of the kids had their birthday the day before our lunch and FIKA came out to surprise him with a birthday ice-cream treat! 

• But wait, there’s more!  We arranged everyone in a circle to receive gifts that were purchased by each WCA that buddied up with them one-on-one throughout the session.  We could tell that they were really touched by this simple gesture, some more than others, especially the birthday boy!  FIKA (again!) surprised us each with chocolate roses to enjoy - thank you!

• Finally (but sadly), the day came to an end and some kids fell asleep on the way back, others curiously asked questions about if we were going to do a lunch again (and said to invite them back if we were!) and one child mused about why we do what we do.  So the ‘Blessings in a Bag’ values were shared and passed onto the next generation and hopefully we have encouraged another future WCA to take over when his time comes to lead his generation to a better future.

We’d like to say a very big thank you to the following people who, without their love and support, we would never have been able to spread more smiles to children in Singapore:

Fika (For sponsoring full meals as well as making sure a special area was available for seating)

WCA’s:  Sakina, Wana, Siew Ing, Huiting, Jayina, Tash, Martin (CanManLondon) and a big shoutout to Joline who has been helping to co-ordinate all of the ‘LOVE IS LOUD’ activities and sessions with us.

We’re just so happy that everything was pulled together in such a short time (less then a week) and most importantly, there were big smiles on little faces by the end of the day.

Here’s to more ‘Love is Loud’ Lunches in the near future and if you’d like to get involved, contribute or find out more, please email us at:  blessingsinabag [at] gmail [dot] com!

Rock on, WorldChangeAgents!

We had such a blast towards the end of last year at the Stamford American International School Singapore.  Many thanks to Kimberly D., for inviting us to be a part of a very special day where students participated in a range of games, contributed to great causes and had a fun time (Christmas) shopping for their own friends and family.

We aren’t used to big groups of kids flocking to our table but it was a very welcome change!

Thank you to WCA’s who helped out on the day:  Krys, Esmond and CJ!  To be a part of the WCA fam, email:  blessingsinabag@gmail.com

Other photos from the day are posted up HERE.

Till next time, WorldChangeAgents!

Wishing all our WorldChangeAgents and BIAB Fam who celebrate, a very Happy, Prosperous and Blessed Chinese New Year!

This photo was taken at Tiwala Kids in the Philippines who we’ve been so blessed to come to know over the years and reach out to since before our story even began.  The kids are learning Geography - about the World around them, continents, cities, countries and culture! 

Thank you to everyone who has been able to help us provide items that can aid in teaching such concepts and we hope to see more awesome donations-in-kind at a drop-off box near you! 

More photos can be found HERE.