2 interesting things happened today.

first, while i was walking towards the mrt station, i'm anticipating the usual sight of saturdays: students wriggling their donation cans at passerbys, hopping to do their part for the charitable organisations (or simply bec of 'bo bian' because they have to clear a certain number of community service hours per year).

to my surprise, i saw none!

i thought i was too early so i dig out my handphone and it showed 10.52am. hmmm... something is just not right.. how come at this hour the mrt station is still so quiet? where are the students? where are the charity origanisations' volunteers?

its only when i reached jurong east then i realised that the students are selling coupons instead of handing cans at passerbys. sometimes i wonder the purpose of asking students to ask help in fund raising thru donation cans. does it really serve its purpose? can the task of standing under the hot sun, drying their throats asking for donations be done in a more beneficial way, both for the beneficial organisations as well as the students? or perhaps can the students learn something instead of just 'wasting' their time standing there holding cans or selling coupons?

why not organise flea markets or 'pasar malam' where the students can make handicrafts, sell food and drinks, design t-shirts, etc etc so that the students can exercise their creativity and have hands-on entrepreneurship experiences instead of learning those theories from books as well as their teachers who are in no way entrepreneur in the 1st place? perhaps the schools or sponsors can allocate funds for these enterprising students to start their little business and be their own bosses for a day or two? not only will they understand the difficulty of making money, also will they make better use of their time helping the needy than just being a statue holding a can under the hot sun...


will share with you all the other interesting thing tomorrow!