New challenges faced by TOUCH Young Arrows amidst Covid-19 in Singapore
By Jaylee Soh & Zuriel Issac
TOUCH Young Arrows shares with JAYLEE SOH and ZURIEL ISAAC the challenges it faces, as it caters to the needs of underprivileged children during this pandemic.
Children and parents of TOUCH Young Arrows enjoying bonding events before Covid-19 restrictions. Photo courtesy of Touch Young Arrows.
“It’s already very hard to keep [the children] engaged. Because of Covid-19, we have to do it over Zoom and it gets even harder,” says Ms Joni Quek Ching Wen, 18, a nursing student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and a volunteer at TOUCH Young Arrows (TYA).
Due to the pandemic, TYA has been facing hurdle after hurdle, such as the difficulty of keeping the attention of the children under its programme.
Mr Chia Wen Jia, 32, a programme executive at TYA adds: “We understand that the attention span of children is already on the lower side compared to adults. Adults’ attention spans aren’t that long to begin with, so to engage children, it's even harder.”
TYA, the child support organisation operating under TOUCH Community mainly helps disadvantaged children aged five to twelve. The organisation and its volunteers work to provide academic, emotional and moral support for the children.
Main office of TOUCH Community Services, the parent organisation of TOUCH Young Arrows. Photo by Jaylee Soh & Zuriel Isaac.
On a normal day, the work of TYA is far from easy. However, it has only become harder to offer help to disadvantaged families due to strict safe distancing measures.
The pandemic has worsened the lives of many Singaporeans, but low-income families have been hit the hardest. According to The Straits Times in April 2020, 300 thousand Singaporeans who earned below $2,000 before the pandemic have seen sudden dips in their income when the circuit breaker measures were implemented.
Ms Quek agrees that because of the pandemic, parents are occupied with keeping the family’s income afloat and are unable to supervise their children.
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In February 2020, Mr Chia said that TYA was forced to temporarily suspend its programme unless there is an alternative solution to carry it out without meeting face-to-face.
Mr Chia adds: “[We want] to ensure a continuous education and not let the children be suddenly postponed and have a break in their learning, breaking their momentum.”
In order to conduct remote classes, TYA turned to online platforms to run its programmes. But the lack of digital devices in some of the childrens’ homes and the technical knowledge needed to adapt to online platforms posed a challenge for the volunteers and children.
To aid the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) effort to equip every child with a laptop and prepare them for home-based learning (HBL), TYA has gone the extra mile to provide resources for the children.
Ms Valarie Teo, 24, a social worker and club leader of TYA’s Sengkang Club says: “For families that only own one working laptop and have more than one child attending TYA, TYA has loaned laptops to them."
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Volunteers meeting the children online to give them weekly academic support and to conduct activities. In comparison, before the pandemic, meetings were held face-to-face at Residents’ Committees (RCs) and Community Clubs (CCs). Photo courtesy of TOUCH Young Arrows.
Additionally, to acquire the basic technical knowledge so that activities and coaching can be carried out smoothly online, Ms Teo adds: “With us now tapping on online education resources to engage the children, we had to learn how to use the functions like ‘share screen’ and ‘annotation’ on Zoom to present the materials to children. There were a lot of things that we had to learn in order to deliver the programme with efficiency and effectiveness.”
“The top struggle the children face lies in the technical aspect of the online programme. As there are many different functions and settings on Zoom, we saw how some children struggle to navigate their way through. This is especially so with the younger children, and those whose parents are not accustomed to the use of Zoom.”
At the moment, volunteers tasked with academic coaching are experimenting with and adapting to websites with game-like features such as ‘Kahoot!’ and ‘sli.do’ to engage the children. However, these non-traditional teaching methods did not sit well with parents at the start as they did not understand the purpose behind learning through games.
Mr Chia adds: “At the start, we [volunteers and staff] really needed to talk to parents and educate them that it’s an educational game that the teachers are using as well.”
Another problem TYA faced was a declining number of volunteers.
“When Phase 2 kicked in, the number of volunteers dwindled as people were able to go out and volunteers who were working had to return to work and thus, the number of volunteers decreased,” explains Mr Chia.
With a stagnant number of children but a declining number of volunteers, TYA could not cater to every child with equal attention. This caused a dilemma for the organisation as many children were in the midst of returning to school and needed extra help with their academics.
To ease the burden of TYA and to help the children, simple actions from the community can go a long way.
“For the community, it is really [about] going further to befriend the children and build genuine relationships with them,” says Mr Chia.