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TLE began it's own journey as a company with workshops held in classrooms. Back in 2002, we ran the Entrepreneurship Learning and Research Centre (ELRC) in The Chinese High School 华侨中学 (present day Hwa Chong Institution), working with students on their projects both for school presentations as well as for potential commercialisation. Public internet was still in its infancy and affordable home broadband several years away. Blogs were just starting to take off and facebook, youtube, twitter only existed as ideas. In short, it made sense to have workshops in school because so much information was still inaccessible and the classroom was the most efficient way to disseminate it. Today, however, something very different is needed. Over the course of the last few years, exacerbated by the pandemic, we have found that students need more urgent help in areas of applying knowledge, in spatial reasoning, social awareness, resourcefulness (sans internet) and communication (that is not text based). Thus, since 2022, we have encouraged clients to always consider an outdoor, unknown element in their chosen programmes. It requires more work and funds, but well worth it.
ASEAN & Us
During the 18th century, Koreans were familiar with Japan, China, Vietnam (Annam) and Thailand (Siam). The rest of the world, however, was virtually unknown to them. What they did know was that there were people and lands beyond the vast seas that encircled their known world. We know this because they indicated them on their maps. As these lands were in all probability drawn only from imagination, their names are just as fanciful: the Land of Women, the Land of Immortals and the Land of Giants.
Interestingly, their myths were actually shared by the very unknown people who lived there. Southeast Asian folk tales abound of heavy footed giants and angry giants who in their many stone throwing fights ended up creating the thousands of islands that dot its waters today. But of course those stories eventually gave way to facts about undersea volcanoes & tectonic plates. Maps morphed from storytelling tools to tools of navigation. Tales morphed from entertaining fiction to useful facts and figures.
And yet even as the world became known, it also seems to have obscured some important parts as well. With the abundance of information, we have become lazy to discover pass the headlines. We readily accept and define countries and peoples by their most famous and/or notorious events and histories. But is what we know of others today simply a more sophisticated but essentially the same ignorant label: “the land of women, the land of immortals and the land of giants."
In this workshop, we reignite our innate desire for discovery and understanding of the unknown. Instead of a profusion of facts about Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), we will create a map of stories for our region for greater understanding of how we have arrived at the present. The solid frame for our map will be the PEST factors (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) that give shape to the ASEAN story and where it is going.
Finding Our Way Out
Scattered through different points in history we see the collapse of civilisations when resources were used with abandon. We are at such a point once again and the anxiety we have placed on the younger generation is crippling. Even as environmental awareness campaigns tell us to do our part we know that the answer lies not in what we do as individuals but in what we can do as a community to create large scale & therefore meaningful change.
Thankfully, the same history that points to this cyclical collapse of civilisations, also shows us those who were able to course correct. From the Emperors of China & Rome, to the Entrepreneurs of Asia, Europe & the Americas, humans have shown that they can alter seemingly set destinies. And it is not just the mighty nor the wealthy that determine our course, as the story of positive change also belongs to the writers and philosophers, the poets and the peasants who inspired and laboured to see it through.
Thus, in this programme, we refuse to be prisoners of fate and choose instead to embark on a difficult journey together, one with the determination to ensure that our wonderful shores remain marvellous for generations to come.
To encourage the students to approach the climate problem differently, we will first explore our regional geography and culture before settling into a set of islands off of the ancient port of Hoi An in Vietnam. There, students will get to know the features of the island and certain families (fictional but based on real lives and situations) and the work they do. As they come to have a deeper understanding of its attendant problems, they can begin to use tools such as design and systems thinking as well as Circular Economy principles to help the families and march closer towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) for the planet at the same time.
This workshop can culminate in an actual journey to islands in Southeast Asia (doesn't only have to be Vietnam) where students meet and work with organisations & families.
PULAU UBIN & Other Places
And so it begins ... Dear Sweetie, (the entry continues) in your hands is a diary of sorts. It is a collection of notes, drawings and pictures from as early as 1860- the year your great great grandfather arrived on Singapore's shores.
They've been passed down each generation- and now it's my turn to pass them to you. We have a family tradition that I hope you'll choose to continue- we encode secrets into secrets into notebooks so that when somebody worth of unlocking them tries- they will find their effort rewarded.
But good secrets do not reveal themselves easily. All the keys to the codes are hidden all over Singapore. However, if you follow the invisible footprints of those who have gone before us, the keys will emerge one by one.
And I hope, when you have found them & have unlocked the codes, you will remember them, always.
Adventures in the Arts
Before there were Escape Rooms in Singapore, TLE had already been driving students mad with puzzles and codes and scavenger hunts both locally and overseas. In addition to being entertaining for the students, it also heightens their other senses and tests their abilities to perform under a very different kind of stress and pressure. It also encouraged them to lean on one another and discover a different side of themselves and others.
In this workshop specifically designed for members of a school's Library CCA, the mystery begins in the dark ages of Europe where they learn about the earliest books and how they were made. They virtually explore the greatest libraries of the world, not in size nor scope but in what they hold and who had been there. Time progresses quickly as maritime progress makes a once vast world, small. But even as the world gets smaller the libraries get bigger and grander as does the breadth of knowledge. Finally, the mystery ends in their very own library, in the shelves, within the books, and if they could just solve it, "they" would come.
TLE tailors all its programmes to the school's needs and has worked with over forty (40) schools in Singapore as well as a select few in Hongkong, Indonesia and the Philippines.
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