ABCD - Asset Based Community Development

[Susan Koshy]

I had, in my last blog, reported about my meeting with the Organisation, BEYOND of Singapore and shared my interview with the team, Gerard, Chris and Cheryl. 

Later on in the day, I visited a couple of team-mates working with the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC), Singapore (www.nvpc.org.sg) and directly associated with SGCares (www.sgcares.org), They are involved in community development. I knew one of them, Jason. 

Jason Ng had attended the Global Learning Festival held in late Y2012 at Mahabalipuram, India. He was one of the first delegates I met at the venue. Since then, we have been in touch and during my recent visit to Singapore, I met him near his office at Clark Quay. He introduced me to Hosea Lai, with whom he works. Over some refreshing beverages, they spoke to me about their work with community development and their dreams in this course. The  venue was a populated cafe and so I spared them a video recording and requested a couple of photographs. They obliged willingly.

Hosea and Jason work on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) for  training prospective volunteers and creating opportunities for potential corporates looking for involvement in community development, besides other activities in order to build a caring and an engaged community for all in Singapore. 

It was a refreshing experience to listen to their happy stories about working with the communities, even in the challenges they face with regulators with whom they have to be associated while working towards community strengthening and development.

Thank you, Hosea and Jason for your time, stories and infectious smiles. 

             

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Thanks for this great post. Its fascinating how Jason motivates volunteers. I am looking forward to stories from Jason!