Students organize a song and dance concert to raise funds for youth at risk.
At age 15 and 16, most students are usually seen after school, scouring Orchard Road and Far East Plaza, for deep discounts, non-stop shopping and catching the latest movie in town. Then there are some youths who are different—who choose to believe that they have what it takes to improve the lives of other young people.
A two hour-long song and dance concert entitled “Pizzazz” was held on March 13 in the concert hall of Anglo-Chinese School at Barker Road to raise funds for Beyond Social Services, a welfare group for youth at risk.
The event, which was professionally conducted and organized, was birthed when a group of four Secondary 4 girls from Nanyang Girl’s High School— Crystal Wong, Simone Lim, Zheng Xiao Han and Jessy Zhang—came together in August last year and made the decision to do good in society and have fun while at it. Hence, out of this creative initiative, Team Beyond ’10 was started.
Apart from organizing the entire concert from scratch, these young and resourceful volunteers went the extra mile by street-busking and selling stress balls, badges, T-shirts and other knick-knacks. They also stationed themselves at various points along Orchard Road with donation tin cans, filling up more than 100 within a day.
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| PHOTO COURTESY OF TEAM BEYOND ‘10 | |
To put this project together, the four of them persuaded and roped in 11 other friends from Hwa Chong Institution (High School), River Valley High School and Anglo-Chinese School (Barker). As with all great dreams and visions, success comes with a price—time, hard work and sacrifice. The girls had to meet up after school hours almost daily in order to organize the concert and street sales. For their charity cause, they had to set aside “luxuries” such as shopping sprees and movies, so that they could make this project a success.
It all paid off in the end. The concert was attended by over 300 people and approximately S$3,000 was raised.
Wong, the project leader of the team shared with City News about how Project Beyond ’10 came about. “One of my friends approached me to organize the ‘Pizzazz’ concert to help raise funds to fight delinquency among disadvantaged children and youths. I thought to myself, ‘What a meaningful project!’
“We faced many challenges as we lacked experience in most of the aspects involved in the fundraiser. We had to be creative with the resources we had and think of ways to raise funds, gather sponsors, coordinate volunteers and source for merchandise.”
She added, “We felt this sense of achievement when we poured out and counted the money raised from the donation tins. We also achieved our aim, which was to promote community-mindedness and inspiring other young people to start their own charity project.”
This group of young people prove that with enough heart, a fundraiser of such a scale can be entirely organized by youth, supported by youth, to reach out to youth—looking beyond their own needs and spreading love for others in their community.
About Team Beyond ’10
Team Beyond ’10 is currently working on its fundraising project under National Young Council’s Young ChangeMakers scheme.
Their beneficiary is Beyond Social Services, an organization that runs a range of preventive, restorative and developmental programs and services designed to fight delinquency among children and youths. Their objective is to help disadvantaged young people to move beyond their problems to become youths that value education and seek to become responsible persons.
Team Beyond ’10 endeavors to raise a total of S$16,000 for Beyond Social Services, to serve more than 11,000 young people and 5,500 of their caregivers.
