A couple of months ago Goducate started We-Chat English, a program aimed at helping migrants integrate into Singapore society. Although aimed largely at migrants, this program of teaching functional English is also open to locals, to help the social integration process.
There is another group of migrants whose needs are different. They work long hours and live in huge dormitory complexes that house thousands of workers and that are generally situated very far from social amenities—for example, in the middle of vast industrial estates. Their daily routine is one of being bussed to work early in the morning and back late in the evening. Some have dinner at their place of work before returning to the dormitory, whereas others get back and start cooking their evening meal. Then it is practically time for bed. On Sundays, they can be bussed into town, or hang around the dorm complexes doing nothing or using the recreational facilities to watch movies or play some type of sport.
In early December there was a riot in town that involved some of these migrant workers, so visits to town have been curtailed for the time being, and dormitory managers have been instructed to provide more programs for the residents. Although Goducate’s mission is to help through education and training, our assessment is that what these workers need for now is entertainment rather than education. Thus, to start off with, we have devised an “edutainment” program called Happy Happy English for them. We will offer more conventional teaching later on.
The program takes them on a “virtual tour” to see some aspects of Singapore. The video is accompanied by people on stage to lead singing and dancing. At certain points in the video, the scene is frozen, and a relevant English phrase is taught, with the audience being encouraged to shout out the phrase with the facilitators who are on stage.
For the launch of this program last Saturday at a dormitory in the far west of Singapore, the workers were taken on a tour of Universal Studios. The program was very well received by the hundreds who came to be “edutained”, especially those workers from the Indian subcontinent. Workers from this region make up about 80% of the dormitory residents. They were only too keen to join in the singing and dancing. If anything, they found the hour-long program too short.
To make the residents feel welcome in Singapore, Goducate volunteers apart from the edutainment team also go along to mingle and chat with the residents before and after the show.
Happy Happy English is transferable and we hope to bring the program to other dormitories.
