My goal for this service is to be able to make an impact that I am proud of. However, I may not be able to make a big impact as my parents are not very supportive of my decision of choosing this service. Due to this, I have a few restrictions on what I can and cannot do so that I do not have any family conflict.
So far into the service, I have made no progress towards achieving my goal. This is because our group is still in the investigation stage. Our group signed up to be visited by the migrant brothers in Healthserve every Thursday afternoon and chat/play games with them. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Healthserve told our teachers that when the service ran last year, the migrant brothers had to almost be forced to come to our school.
Furthermore, if we go over to the centre there would not be much of a difference. When other schools go to the centre, there are only about 3 migrant brothers that show up. This is because they do not really gain anything out of the activities. This got me thinking: What do they get from us visiting them? I found this eye-opening as I didn’t realise that they don’t actually have any reason to talk to us. This is because the majority of the group can’t speak in their languages. Furthermore, none of us will be able to relate to them since they are older and from different backgrounds. As students we’ve signed up to help them but, do they want help is what I was wondering.
After hearing this news in our second class, we brainstormed some questions for Willy (Healthserve’s volunteer coordinator) about Healthserve. We also made a list of things we could provide them, for example, english courses or technology workshops.
On our third class, we went to speak with Willy at the Healthserve centre. He answered our questions and we received some insight on the situation.
They don’t feel comfortable coming over because of ‘status difference’. It makes sense to me as I am Bangladeshi I know what the conditions in Bangladesh are like. Since most of the migrant brothers are Bangladeshi I now understand what it is like for them. Bangladesh is not as developed as Singapore so I can understand how overwhelming it probably is for them.
The difference between Singapore and Bangladesh is very big. The languages spoken here are different in comparison to Bangladesh where the main language is Bangla. This creates a language barrier. Not only that but the migrant brothers are also alienated from society and looked down upon. The migrant brothers have no one to turn to as they left their families behind in Bangladesh. They do not have anyone here which probably makes them scared.
All this made me feel bad for them as I just cannot imagine how hard it must be to leave everything behind only to be lied to.
For this service, I am working with a group of 20~ people. I find it challenging to work with the group. Our group is split into 3 groups. 1 group is all the girls the other 2 groups are of the boys. Since none of the groups mesh together it is a bit hard to get new ideas circulating around during discussions. I think that if the groups changed around there would be new ideas emerging. However, we have group discussions where we sit in a circle and share our thoughts. Personally, I find it a bit intimidating, however, some people share my thoughts for me.
Another problem I faced with the group is that no one particularly wants to take responsibility. To solve this problem we held elections within the group. We assigned roles such as chair,
liaison etc. After the elections, we split up into small groups handing different sections to make progress. During that a new problem surfaced, it was hard to grab the group’s attention. My group needed to know how many people were available on Wednesday after school for our section. We managed to get the co-chair’s attention however he did not really relay our question to the entire group. Therefore, our small group had to get the entire group’s attention ourselves. I found the process a bit chaotic since our small group could not progress for 10 minutes which slowed down our task.
Our group needs collaboration or else we will not get anything done. In the following weeks, I will try to take initiative so that our group can progress quicker.
Apart from the difficulties I have mentioned, our group did a lot of brainstorming. At the beginning, we thought of activities such as art classes. However, after talking to Willy, we realised that it would not work. Here are the other ideas that we planned:
- Lunch: An idea that we had from the start was to send small groups of people to spend their free period and lunch with the migrant brothers. This was to both talk with them and to overtime convince them to come over to our school. After talking to Willy he said that the migrant brothers do not want to come to our school as they are not comfortable. Furthermore, we can only send out a small group of people to meet the brothers so that they are not overwhelmed. The timing is also a pretty big concern since the time when the
7 of us are free is on Monday. For Thursday and Friday, only4 of us are free. Because of this most of our group cannot make a direct impact. So that we all make some sort of impact (whether it be direct or indirect) we brainstormed a few more ideas. - Courses: Before speaking to Willy, our group was aware that there is a language barrier between us and the migrant brothers. We thought that we could provide language classes for the brothers so that they can speak with the locals. Willy informed us that they are interested in language & technology classes. On the topic of languages, not everyone in our group speaks Bangla, Chinese & Tamil. To fix that, my group mates ma
de a document to translate some basic English phrases to the different languages. I am helping with the Bangla translations. I also realised that there are some problems with this. If one of my group mates spoke in Bangla and got a response in Bangla they probably will not understand it. We couldn’t really think of any solutions for this but I think that I may have to go around helping the group as a translator since I am one of the two Bangla speakers.
- Game night: On every last Wednesday of the month, Healthserve has game nights. During game nights, the migrant brothers play board games. After Willy answered our questions, we got a tour of where the migrant brothers relax and do community activities. Since there were 20 of us, we were a bit packed in the room. Our group knew that it was not a very spacious room. As I have previously mentioned, our big group split into smaller groups. In those smaller groups, mine was in charge of the game night. Our group needed to know how many people could attend the game night. After consulting the group we saw that the boarders of the group can go only if they get permission from the boarding house. Due to that, we will have to see later on in the service if going to the game nights is possible.
- Cricket: Willy mentioned to us that the migrant brothers like playing cricket. They play cricket from 4:30 pm to 6 pm. We are planning on sending out a small group of boys to go play and learn cricket with the brothers.
I learnt that the migrant brothers are put into very poor living conditions. Willy told us that the organisations would put 20 brothers into small rooms. The rooms were sometimes infested with rats. I think that overall this issue as a whole is quite significant as this is unfair treatment of a human being. They are lied to and promised about many things then they are put into environments that they were not told about. I think that this is unfair as the agents withheld information that was crucial. Such as the fact that the brother’s wages are eaten up by rent. Since the brothers do not come from privileged backgrounds I think that it is inhuman to treat them like this. They come to Singapore so that they can earn money for a better life instead it’s no better than staying in their own country.
My view on this issue has definitely become more open as I realised how hard it must be for the migrant brothers. Overall I have become more empathetic about this issue.
