Walk For Rice – “28293”

Written by et@sfss and Mr Alex Goh

The whole of Springfield community walked 8488 km and donated 28293 bowls of rice to needy families. Springfield’s two distinctive programmes focuses on Health Science and Food Science for our Applied Learning Programme and Community Youth Leadership for our Learning for Life Programme. The Walk for Rice campaign is a collaboration between South East Community Development Council (CDC) and NTUC Foundation Ltd. It marries the two programmes, meeting multiple objectives all at once. Furthermore, our students are physically active digital natives so the use of technology to clock mileage which contributes to rice donation to the needy families was an ideal match. The overall participation rate has been really good! A rough estimation would be about 80-90% of staff and students having clocked some distance for the campaign.

Applied Learning

For one week, the whole school was abuzz with activity. This project was an excellent opportunity for some teachers to immerse the students in learning in an authentic way. For Subject Head D and T, Mr Jeremy Wang who clocked in a total of 147 km, taking part in this activity allowed him to teach his students that if they set their goals, work out a plan and stick to it diligently, they will be able to overcome challenges along the way and achieve what they set out to do. This project garnered interest from students as well who learnt values while running. Thong Minq Qian of Secondary 4C, learnt the true meaning of resilience first hand. As one of the top runners clocking a total of 145.4km, he said, “I kept telling myself not to give up and continued to push myself until I could not run anymore. My longest and most grueling run was 39.9km. What kept me going was the help I was giving to the less fortunate.”

Technology unites SPF for a good cause and a healthy lifestyle

Although the congregation of large groups were not possible with the pandemic, the use of technology, galvanized the students and teachers to action. Reaching out to the less fortunate took on new meaning. For many, what was uppermost in their minds was that with every 300m they walked or ran, FairPrice will donate 1 bowl of white rice, brown rice and oatmeal each to the 7000 low-income families in south east district. Alex Goh, HOD CCE said, “I believe that towards the end of the campaign, it gave everyone that warm fuzzy feeling of having done something well within our means to give back to society. I loved seeing all the kudos’s being shared around the various clubs and I strongly feel that can be the start of a real supportive culture within the school. Perhaps one other benefit that came about as a by-product is the inculcation of a healthy lifestyle too. Hopefully everyone starts seeing the importance of contributing back to society as well as leading a healthy life.”

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