In this engagement, I had an online interview with Nisha Farah from UWCSEA EAST. She is a member of the Service Department in the school and has a large variety of experiences with issues such as gender inequality and environmental sustainability. The issue of poverty is very close to her heart and she has offers valuable insight on the topic of income inequality causing poverty from a Singaporean’s perspective. During the engagement, she has given me a very “micro” and “zoomed in” perspective on the issue, such as the struggles people under poverty in Singapore might experience. This will be very helpful for me as it would help me evaluate the effectiveness of previous efforts from, the government and NGOs, to solve the issue of income inequality causing poverty in Singapore.
For most of the engagement, she told personal stories about her experience with poverty and how she witness governments and educators attempted to solve the issue. She told stories about how socio-economic classes may impact the performance of students in school. For example, certain students require external tutoring in order to excel at school, and given their socio-economic situations, students might not be able to afford the external tutoring that they need. This causes the student to underperform, preventing them from fully developing their talent and skillsets. Because of this, a state could potentially be limited in terms of talent and development, as the economy of the country may not be growing as quickly.
Another lesson I have learned from my interview is the social aspect of poverty in Singapore. She explained how one of the reasons why the issue of poverty has persisted for so long is because society and the Singaporean government has neglected the issue for long periods of time. We discussed how the Singaporean government is keeping their reputation of being a “wealthy country”, and how this may be causing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
Finally, we discussed that although the education system may not have as much power compared to the Singaporean government, the education system can have a significant impact on the future of a country, especially compared to NGOs. She believed that the education system needs to be changed and that the government needs to contribute more towards the education system. This can be done through methods such as giving government grants or providing schools and educational institutions with the required tools and resources needed to ensure students are able to develop their talents and skillsets to add value to the economy.
