About the Competition /
Personal Reflections (6 to 10 June 2022)
The Singapore Future Youths Competition was a very meaningful event for me. Over the course of 5 days, I have really grown to become more aware of the current situation we have in Singapore. The theme of the competition that year was on "Building a more sustainable and resilient Singapore". For my group, we decided to discover deeper into the category of food. We took a further look at food security learning how we can increase Singapore's self reliance on food since it currently relies a lot on imported food. I learnt that this problem became more prominent during the pandemic when Singapore learnt they cannot rely on other countries for food as often.
During the competition, we were tasked to came up with interesting solutions and present them in an unique format to the judges. As seen above, we came with a lot of ideas that we felt the government should continue and try to take. Ideas like community farming could increase the production of local food and future foods like insects could act as a substitute for the current food we have like meat. The whole competition was honestly like a mini PW (project work).
On the 4th day of the competition, we presented our idea in the form of a news format where we pretended as reporters and interviewees in the present and future. It was really enjoyable and fun to get to meet different people that share a common interest in caring about the future of Singapore. I must say that as compared to them, I initially just joined this competition with a slight interest to know more about Singapore's current situation and how it is going to move forward. As I met these people, I got to know how some of them had been doing a lot of research and investing into this field of the future. It was truly an eye-opener!
Amazingly, our presentation was well-liked by the judges and we managed to make it into the finals. Although we did not manage to win the top 3, we still managed to grab some cash as a consolation prize winner. However, the cash rewards or position definitely is not the main purpose of this event. As I heard the other groups present during the competition, I really gained a lot of knowledge in many areas. For instance, how online shopping is extremely unhealthy when a lot of plastic is wasted to pack a single fragile good.
This event is definitely something very purposeful and something I will consider participating in again next year. Who knows, I may be able to clinch a better prize!