In 2017, a handful of young adults felt the desire to make a direct impact in the lives of youths who had slipped through the cracks of Singapore’s existing social support services. What started as a small movement has now grown larger than its founders could have imagined, having served over a thousand children and youths in the community today.
Since its founding, Impart has grown to receive IPC status, and has developed into what it is today: an organisation consisting of 3 different arms, allowing volunteers to address the range of different needs that youths may have in the way that plays to the volunteers’ strengths and interests.
Volunteers in the Education arm provide youths with academic support in a way that centres the youth’s personal experiences and goals to motivate them. Those in the Mental Health Care arm come equipped – typically as psychology or social work students seeking meaningful exposure – to provide support and to coach coping skills to youths facing mental health struggles.
Last but not least, the Community arm engages youths in group settings, providing these youths with a space to learn new activities such as sports or music while cultivating a safe and healthy community of peers for these youths.
The charity seems to have been growing at unprecedented rates: not just through the increasing scale of their services, but also their widening scope, the latest addition being Pause 2024.
VOLUNTEER-DRIVEN EVENTS: PAUSE 2024
Volunteers have always been, and continue to be, at the heart of Impart’s major events. Pause 2024 was no different.
Pause for a Cause
Pause 2024 took place on 13 January, where participants consciously and intentionally set aside time to carry out acts of kindness in the heart of Yishun. The event, while orchestrated by Impart’s volunteers from conceptualisation to execution, was possible with the support of the Singapore Kindness Movement and SG Mental Well-Being Network.
Beyond that, it was not only graced by many of our community leaders, but was even kickstarted by the Guest of Honor and Patron, Min. Desmond Lee, whose presence and involvement embodied the purpose of the event: to pause, notice the people that we often pass by without a second thought, and to take a second to prioritise kindness.
With the hard work of a team of Impart’s volunteers, co-led by seasoned volunteers Joseph Quek and Sia Yu Ting, Pause 2024 garnered over 50 participants. The participants consisted of not only Impart volunteers and community partners, but also youths who had journeyed with Impart and who wanted to give back to the community.
To support the participants in their acts of kindness, the organising team had equipped each participating group with snacks, refreshing drinks, reusable masks, and other useful items to give out to individuals within the community.
In a video covering this event, Yu Ting shared that she had made the choice to run this event as she had recognised that she came from a relatively privileged background and wanted to use her time contributing to something meaningful.
Needless to say, she had achieved her goal, with Impart having tracked over 200 acts of kindness carried out that day by participants of Pause 2024. Each act of kindness had its own potential to be passed on to another individual, thus creating a ripple effect of compassion that echoed through the community.
Afterwards, Impart’s Executive Director, Narasimman “Narash” S/O Tivasiha Mani, expressed his desire to continue this momentum beyond Pause 2024, something that Impart managed to accomplish.
Voluntary Yet Vital
Impart kept the ball rolling with yet another volunteer-run event, held on 20 April: their Education Symposium. The symposium, titled Voluntary Yet Vital: How Volunteachers Shape Community Education, highlighted the hard work, impact and specific aspects of volunteer educators and tutors which make them such a powerful force within the community.
This symposium was once again organised almost entirely by volunteers, with one of the long-time volunteers, Sarah Lean, at the helm of it. With the support of Impart, the symposium team was able to bring together the leading voices in the world of volunteering and education in Singapore. The event was done in collaboration with EqualEd, Starfish, Mentoring SG, and with Assumption Pathway School as the venue partner.
Voluntary Yet Vital was a great success, with a turn-up of over 100 individuals present. The panel discussion showed not just the wide range of experiences within the social sector and education, but also the experience of students who had received these volunteer services. Ultimately, the symposium was a success in sharing how the nature of volunteer teaching differed in a way that met the needs of students who were not sufficiently supported in schools.
Sarah shared in an article afterwards that the largest motivation that she had in running such a large-scale event was out of appreciation for the trust that Impart, an established IPC, had in its volunteers.
ENABLING VOLUNTEERS
Impart’s trust in its volunteers runs deep and goes beyond its volunteer-run events. Across all the arms and different volunteering roles, trust is the foundation of every opportunity Impart provides its volunteers. Impart serves a wide range of youths, some of whom are referred to its services in a very vulnerable state.
As Sarah had asked when discussing the symposium: “why would an established IPC do that?”
The answer to that is at the core of how Impart was built: having started as volunteers themselves, the founders and many of the current staff members at Impart are well-aware of the impact that volunteers can have if organisations are willing to take calculated risks.
At the same time, Impart recognizes that these risks must be balanced, in order to still maintain quality care for the youths who come into its programmes. As such, Impart manages this risk through a variety of ways. For example, volunteers who are youth-facing are required to attend a rigorous in-house volunteer training that equips them with the necessary skills needed for their roles.
For volunteers whose roles require a more specific skill set, Impart spares no expense in providing external training to those volunteers. Many of the experienced volunteers have been provided with either in-house or external training for the sole purpose of upskilling volunteers. Impart recognizes that when volunteers receive further training and thus are better equipped in carrying out the work that they do, that these volunteers will be better able to meet the organisation’s goals of giving youths a fighting chance.
Beyond that, Impart has intentionally built checks-and-balances to ensure that volunteers are well-supported and well-supervised. Within each programme, experienced volunteers or staff members are tasked with overseeing volunteers’ operations. These individuals are tasked with ensuring that everything runs smoothly, providing feedback, and responding to volunteers’ support needs in a timely fashion.
Ultimately, it’s Impart’s belief in its volunteers that drives the organisation to invest in them, and this then empowers volunteers to pull off such incredible tasks, from supporting their youths week after week, to organising large-scale events such as Pause 2024 and Voluntary Yet Vital.
Soon, Impart will be re-starting its recruitment for the next batch of volunteers, who will receive training in December before being deployed in January 2025. To be one of the many volunteers who Impart believes and invests in to give youths a fighting chance, register as a volunteer today and someone from Impart will reach out to you when recruitment starts up again!