Our Journey: Yay or Nay?

Our journey as Teens Next Door in the Media Challenge 2014 has had its ups and downs, but we have definitely learnt and grown a lot from it. Join us now as we take a trip down memory lane to recall all that we have discovered!

The 3 Little Pigs: A Little Singapore Story

We started out our advocacy with the idea of the 3 Singaporean Little Pigs. We realized that many of the little pigs in Singapore were closing their doors, both literally and figuratively, to those around them. What we wanted to do was to encourage them to open those doors, little by little, to the familiar strangers around them, their acquaintances, those they met every day, those they hadn’t gotten to know. We wanted to use social media as an enabler for this change, in that people would share their stories of friendship to inspire others to take the leap of faith. Slowly but surely, we wanted to make a community that was more open and inclusive, and thus a warmer and stronger-knit place for all.

And indeed, we have done just that. Our very first activity, the Selfie Session with the RGS Year 3 cohort, encouraged everyone to get to know a little more about the person they were sitting next to that day, and share it with everyone else in the form of a short reason why they appreciated her as a caption to their selfie. 

During the workshops and Mini-Challenge, we, too, took that first step to get to know our fellow participants whom we had spent those two enriching days with. It started with a simple hello and an exchange of social media accounts, and that has allowed us to stay in contact over the past few weeks and encourage each other to pull through the hectic school term. And over the course of these past few weeks, we have been receiving and sharing stories of friendships that were forged with strangers through our social media platforms; indeed, we have seen the spirit of Teens Next Door spread in our RGS community and out into the rest of Singapore.

a fun-shot photo together with Bowen Secondary (:

a polariod we took together with The Unseen Scene from Evergreen Secondary

Indeed, in addition to the “software” of our social impact, we have tackled some hardware in this competition too - namely, resource planning and management. Our main resources in this project were social media, electronic gadgets and people.

Social media was probably the resource we relied on the most heavily. Be it for spreading of our message through our team accounts, publicity of our blogs or even publicizing our team account through personal accounts, our social media platforms were indeed well-utilized. Specifically, Twitter was the platform we worked best with as we posted live updates, short facts, little jokes and carried out meaningful conversations with our followers! We used Facebook mainly to post deeper insights and reflections as there was no character limit. However, due to the in-between nature of Facebook posts (longer than a tweet, shorter than a blog post), our posting there was rather irregular. Meanwhile, for Instagram, we felt that we could upload more photos. Because the photos’ resolution was high, we could not upload them immediately and thus, these photos were sometimes forgotten. The blog itself could also have been further utilized as a main social media platform, instead of merely a depository for all our content. Better planning of our content could have allowed clearer delineation across the various platforms and thus more effective use as well.

The next resource was electronic gadgets. Fortunately, all our team members had smartphones with 3G/4G data plans that allowed for not just posting but also communication on the go. We also had our personal laptops so it was not necessary for us to loan out the iPads and laptops from DMC. However, in view of the field trip, most of us did not bring our laptops which hindered work on our mini-challenge deliverables and caused us to have to work more at home. On a positive note, our group also had a video camera, DSLR and internet-sharing enabled digital camera, which allowed us to produce quality pictures. Overall, the planning and use of our electronic gadgets was done well.

Last but not least, one of the most invaluable resources is human resource. We were able to play on the strengths of individual team members to work better together. Aisyah and Julia are more outgoing and thus helped us make many new friends and also rally existing friends towards our cause. Meanwhile, Clara-Ann and Fatima are stronger writers and thus helped to helm the making of deliverables. Victoria, our tireless blogger, slaved through pages and pages of HTML to make the blog both aesthetically appealing and accessible. However, having said that, we can still work on playing on the bubbly and serious contrast in our presentations as instead of balancing each other out, they have been clashing a little during our presentations so far. This is one thing we will be working towards in our final presentation!

But we could not have done this alone! Mrs Alfie, as an English teacher, provided essential feedback to improve the quality of our blog posts and also helped to secure several announcement slots on very short notice so that we could receive maximum air time and publicity to share about our cause. Noor, our student leader, also shared with us his personal experiences and tips to keep us going. Lastly, Ms Harjit Kaur helped to refine our ideas and guide us through her thought-provoking questions.

All in all, we realized the value of each of these items as resources, and the importance of planning them to maximize their potential.

From Kids to Teens

The inspiration for our team name came from a childhood TV show, Operation: Kids Next Door, wherein an uncanny group of children come together and rise above their differences to change what they feel strongly about in their community. We hope to be a sequel of sorts to this TV show, and that’s why we call ourselves Teens Next Door.

In a way, the journey is really quite reflective of our growth throughout this competition. Similar to the transition from childhood to teenagehood, our responsibilities increase. Apart from meeting the demands and requirements of this competition, we had to juggle school work and assessments. Indeed, we were unable to carry out some of our plans for Teens Next Door, but we also learned to make personal sacrifices for the team’s progress. We also learnt that not everything was play and luck, that popularity on social media was not a hit-or-miss situation but that there were methods and ways to go about building credibility and rapport. But most importantly, we grew from Kids to Teens and retained the youthful passion and burst of energy. We also spread that positive energy to work with others and further our cause.

So is our journey a yay or nay? Let us know what you think, or if you have any feedback! But for us, it’s a definite yay.