Community Projects

“We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.”
― S. Kelley Harrell, Gift of the Dreamtime – Reader’s Companion

Arise & Farm

Arise & Farm is a community project that started out under the agricultural arm of Netatech Group in 2021, that aims to spread and democratise farming knowledge amongst Singaporeans.

Arise & Farm x MOE Schools

Planned the construction of farming systems and initiation of farming programmes in MOE Schools (15 schools engaged in 2021). Carried out the construction of hydroponic systems, and gave a talk on urban farming at Dunman Secondary School in 2023.

Arise & Farm x NLB

Through an engagement by the National Library Board (NLB) in 2022, we built an interactive herb garden, and curated a farming curriculum to teach young children and the silver generation the process of farming on weekends. Over a course of a year (2022 – 2023), the collaboration with National Library had impacted 558 participants across 29 sessions.

Creating a Space for Engagement

Community projects start off from creating an outdoor classroom in the form of an interactive garden at a site allocated by the partner. Thereafter, a software is designed in the form of curriculum and workshops to activate the hardware that has been built on site.

Urban Farm Tour for Chung Cheng High School

I wrote a tender proposal that planned for an urban farm tour that catered to 150 students from Chung Cheng High School. My company won the tender and the urban farm tour was executed across 2 days.

Research and write-up for “WSQ Cultivating A Food Forest in Community Farms” Course

Contributed research and write-up for “WSQ Cultivating A Food Forest in Community Farms”, by providing information on food forest structure, plant selection, preparing information on food forest design techniques (landscape model), and curation of information on plant propagation techniques.

Planning of Permaculture Programme at Bintan

Created a series of programmes titled “Nature Observation Guide”, “Story of the Forest”, “Cultivating a Food Forest” and “Ethnobotany and Local Market Exploration”.

Placemaking Proposal for Enabling Village

Design for placemaking in tandem with the concept of “city living close to nature” which is the spatial identity used to describe Bukit Merah. We propose a series of strategies to activate green spaces and heritage elements to increase connection between people, the neighbourhood and Enabling Village.

Our proposal was shortlisted for the final round of review by Enabling Village’s management board.

Soft Skills Utilised

Stakeholder Management

Through interacting with external stakeholders, I learnt to manage different expectations to reach a win-win situation for all parties involved (exposure for own company and public outreach and education for the other parties).

Project Management

Project management involved in the community projects looks at planning timelines from construction to engagement, dealing with procurement and transport of materials, and allocation of manpower.

Communications

Curation of a curriculum involves translating principles learnt from industrial farming into a medium that is palatable for different age groups, and often tests my communications.

Problem Solving

Adapting to changes and finding solutions to technical and operational issues that arise is part-and-parcel of initiating and running community projects.

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