YOUTH

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Championing inclusive employment for youths with special needs

For more than 10 years, CFS donors have supported the Metta Welfare Association and its trailblazing Metta Café through the Work Readiness Programme, which equips youths with special needs with the vocational and soft skills they need for the workplace. CFS is commemorating 15 years of giving and this story is one of a three-part series that highlights the strong relationships CFS has fostered with charities over the years. I am grateful to my trainers for gui

CFS Donor Learning Trip Series: The transformative power of early intervention by the Dyslexia Association of Singapore

This initiative is part of CFS’s Donor Learning Trips, a series of engagement opportunities that enable donors to personally connect with charities and gain insights into how they support communities in need.Imagine not being able to read because the letters and words are mixed up. Imagine struggling to spell or write, being labelled slow and falling behind at school. These are the realities students with dyslexia face, realities that empathetic donors from CFS got to better understand during

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Tertiary-educated adults with autism receive training for jobs in engineering sector

Tertiary-educated adults with autism are being trained and placed in jobs in the engineering sector under a new programme by research and technology non-profit organisation Trampolene.The Gates (Growing Autistic Talent for Engineering Sector) programme was started in May 2022, after research showed that people with autism have one of the lowest employment rates among people with disabilities. Read Next Those with tertiary qualifications also face underemploym

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Accessing Quality Education: A Boost for the Last Leg

As a follow-up to our last story, we now take a look at children as the next generation, and how we can empower them through philanthropy to be further educated.Education is the great equaliser, as the old adage goes. Coined by American public education pioneer Horace Mann in 1848, education was seen as the tool for the disadvantaged to basically find better jobs and lift themselves out of poverty. For the last almost 200 years, that has remained largely true. Read Nex

Accessing Quality Education: Beyond the Classroom Walls

The education of a generation is an extensive and complex undertaking.Consider the span of time it takes to bring a single individual from nursery and preschool, through the primary and secondary school levels to the various branches of tertiary education. This journey could range from at least 12 years to almost three decades for the dedicated academic. Read Next Keep in mind the need to cater to the individual’s development along the entire stretch in ter

How philanthropy can help tackle gender-based online harms

Technology and the Internet have made our lives better in many ways. But they are also facilitating an alarming increase in online abuse, particularly of young women. There is upskirting, where the perpetrator takes intrusive photos or videos up someone’s skirt without their permission. There is revenge porn, where explicit photos or videos of a person are posted on the Internet, typically by a former sexual partner.With the ubiquity of social media, there is flaming (insulti

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4 Critical Educational Gaps for Disadvantaged Children & Youth in Singapore

While abilities and talents are distributed equally across the population, access to educational resources is often not. Children from low-income families are the ones who pay the price. Without the right educational opportunities, they underperform in school and end up with lower-paying jobs. Studies show that students from low-income families are more than four times as likely to be low performers than their affluent peers. (OECD, 2016) Without intervention, this cycle of i

Law firm Rajah & Tann donates $225k to ST School Pocket Money Fund and Dementia Singapore

(From left) Dementia Singapore’s chief executive Jason Foo, ST Singapore editor Zakir Hussain, Community Foundation of Singapore chief executive Catherine Loh, R&T managing partner Patrick Ang and R&T Foundation chairperson Rebecca Chew.Law firm Rajah & Tann (R&T) has contributed $225,000 to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (STSPMF). Read Next The donation was part of the firm’s 45th anniversary celebration on Thursday (May 5) at

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Here’s how you can help the people of Ukraine – Ways to donate

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is triggering what the United Nations fears could be Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century. More than 2 million people, out of a nation of 44 million, have fled to neighbouring countries since the conflict began. The human cost of the war is alarming and rising by the day. Hundreds of lives have been lost, and thousands of families have been displaced. Read Next Global charities urgently call for funds to ramp u

#MyGivingJourney x Hauw Soo Hoon: Insuring the future for vulnerable students

#MyGivingJourney is a series by CFS to celebrate women and their work in philanthropy. This story features Hauw Soo Hoon, Programme Director at Ulu Pandan Stars and a member of CFS’s Programmes & Grants Committee. Hauw Soo Hoon has always loved mathematics. So when she discovered some students in her estate were struggling with the subject, getting just 15 marks out of 100, her heart plummeted. She wanted to help them and even get them to love numbers.