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IMPACT 0343: LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD: EDUCATING THE NEXT GENERATION

Si Hui, 24, works at Glyph, a social enterprise championing quality education for kids and youth. Her journey started as an intern at Glyph, which led to her taking a break from university to pursue her passion in the social space. Today she shares more about what she does at Glyph!

Tell us more about what you do!

I started as an intern at Glyph, experimenting with different social projects. We focused on education in Singapore as we noticed that families with lesser resources typically have little access to extracurricular activities. In the beginning, I was involved in everything from engaging vulnerable families to enrolling their kids into our Glyph membership, working with other charities and running classes.

What inspired or motivated you to do this?

I realised from personal experience that access to supplementary classes could differ a lot based on a child’s family socioeconomic status. For example, I had friends who could learn music and attend private tuition classes. On the other hand, I had no exposure to music as a child, which made me feel lost during music classes in school. In addition, I only attended free group tuition classes.

I believe that we can make quality education accessible and affordable for every child, regardless of background, so that everyone can compete on a level playing field.

Have you faced any challenges so far? And how did you overcome them?

One of the challenges I faced was convincing the families to join our program. The programmes that we offer have always been unconventional. Everything we offered was outside the school curriculum, from regular trips to KidZania (before it closed down) to squash, rock climbing, financial literacy, design thinking and coding.

As we are all too familiar with being academically focused in Singapore, many of these families do not often consider non-academics a priority for their kids. We thus needed more time to convince these families to enrol their children into our programme. However, in recent times, more parents have begun to understand the benefits of our programme and how it can help their kids.

If you could share one piece of advice with your fellow youth, what would it be?

Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire! I hope my fellow youths dare to keep putting themselves out there to try new experiences. The experience helped shape my perspective and eventually led me to find Glyph. I always wanted to go into the social space, however, I did not know where to start. Finally, I applied for volunteering opportunities, spoke to teachers and peers, and applied for an internship early in my undergrad studies

What are your hopes or plans for the future? What do you want to see or perhaps do?

I hope we have empowered the kids who have been through our programme to find their success in life! The glyph is also looking into working closely with other social organisations so that more kids can experience the Glyph programme.