NOVEMBER'21 UPDATES

At the start of November, our Hindu Friends celebrated Deepavali; the festival of lights. To have our own socially-distant celebration, APSN Delta Senior School sponsored Deepavali Snack Packs for us to give out to our children!

Each pack came with yummy murukku, popcorn and cookies for them to enjoy. While we are unable to gather to celebrate festivities, we are glad to still be able to bring the festive mood to our children through other means such as this. This collaboration with APSN certainly showed the opportunities for win-win when charities team up!

2021 has been a challenging year with COVID-19 and the devastating toll of the pandemic on children is undeniable.

There were immense challenges for kids, and their families, as they coped with ongoing changes including online schooling and social distancing from friends. Despite all this, we are so proud of all our children for how they handled taking a major exam amid Covid-19 and several rounds of home-based learning.

We are grateful for all the support received this year, especially for our adult volunteers who were coaching some of the PSLE Students online.

Continue to watch our socials as we share more on this round of PSLE! Meanwhile, we bid farewell with a heavy heart to many of our P6-ers whom have journeyed with us over the years. Here is a beautiful card by one of them, showing her gratitude for the CWW Staff members. She spent 9 hours making this card by herself, she says!

At Children's Wishing Well, we always ensure to celebrate our children's birthdays monthly as you may have seen from previous issues of our newsletter. This November however, we had a birthday celebration that truly tugged at the heartstrings of our staff.

Birthday Goodie Bags are always a joy for children to both give and receive these during birthdays. While it may seem like nothing, we were extra touched when one of our girls brought these over to the centre for her peers, because we knew that the family is already struggling.

Her father drives a Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) at night because he spends the day caring for her and his wife (who was recuperating after operation early this year and needed help with activities in daily living). Furthermore, he used a humble Samsung phone which frequently hanged & cost him his ratings, then affecting the number of passengers given to him as well.

Despite tough times, the family opted to buy goodie bags to share with friends at CWW instead of get a birthday cake for their daughter.

Not to worry, as always we ensured that we bought her a surprise birthday cake and her smile was heartwarming. Thus far, we have also supported the family with grocery sponsorship and a new phone so that father can install additional PHV apps for better income.

Sometimes, it is these little gestures that remind us how giving our families can be and how they deserve so much more.

World Mental Health day is not just a symbolism. Here at Children's Wishing Well we truly value mental health and have thus started a new Self-Care for Caregivers Programme.

Just as we are advised in airplanes to put on oxygen masks for ourselves before attending to the people around us, caregivers also need to take care of their own mental well-being before they can give their best to their children. Caregiving brings its own challenges and stressors at home and this programme hopes to serve as an outlet for them to release stress and have fun. We also hope it will provide an opportunity for them to bond with other caregivers and find support through one another and Children’s Wishing Well.

We kick started the programme with a fun Zumba class and hope to bring in volunteers to lead other sessions such as arts & craft, sports and so on.

What do you do for self-care?

Thank you for responding and bumping up our social media following!

We have since posted some material to raise awareness of poverty and inequality in Singapore. Please do continue to share and encourage your friends and families to follow our pages!

Find us on Facebook and Instagram: @childrenswishingwell

The school holidays are here so head on over to find out what our children are up to!

Email: info@wishingwell.org.sg
Website: https://www.wishingwell.org.sg/
Location: 365 Clementi Avenue 2 #01-503, Singapore 120365
Phone: 67770041
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/childrenswishingwell/