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NTUC First Campus’ 142 My First Skool centres partner the Centre for Domestic Employees to appreciate our domestic employees as part of NTUC’s May Day Celebrations
As the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) holds a series of activities to celebrate May Day with our workers and tripartite partners, we also took the opportunity to involve our younger generation in showing their care and appreciation to our domestic employees for their hard work and contributions.
Every worker matters, so too, does every domestic employee as they are often the ones who help to care for our loved ones and families. Thus, the Labour Movement, through the Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE), has been championing for their well-being and employment rights to ensure that they are properly taken care of. CDE has also been undertaking upstream approaches to engage different stakeholders like, industry leaders, educational institutions and partners so that we can effect a positive mindset shift towards domestic employees.
This year, ahead of the NTUC May Day Domestic Employees Celebrations on 16 June 2019, CDE is partnering NTUC First Campus’ My First Skool (MFS) centres to do something special for our domestic employees. Starting from 29 April 2019, a month-long campaign was launched across all 142 MFS centres island-wide for preschoolers to thank our domestic employees for their contributions and sacrifices they have made to care for families in Singapore.
Some 11,000 preschoolers will express their appreciation for domestic employees through various activities, which include putting up performances, writing messages of appreciation and making handicrafts. In every centre, these messages and handicrafts will be sculpted together to form the foliage for the Trees of Gratitude. As more of these messages are put together, the Trees of Gratitude would “grow” by the efforts of the MFS preschoolers. Some of the crafted items will then be presented to our domestic employees by the preschoolers and their parents.
Through this campaign, the preschoolers learned important values like empathy and care for domestic employees. They also developed respect for the work the domestic employees do and the sacrifices they have made to come to work in Singapore. For preschoolers who have domestic employees at home, this will help them better appreciate their aunty or kakak.
Beyond preschoolers, CDE also hopes to reach out to the latter’s family members as well as the wider community to further spread the message of appreciating our domestic employees. Through this campaign, CDE also wants to push the envelope on societal views and mindsets towards domestic employees and foster better integration of this vital group within Singapore’s community.
Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, Assistant Director-General of NTUC and Chairman of CDE said, “As MFS works with many parents, who are either employers or potential employers of domestic employees, it is strategic for CDE to partner MFS on this collaboration to change their mindsets and foster better employer-employee relationship through this campaign. This collaboration also allows us to go upstream to shape the minds of Singapore’s future generations, so that they can learn to show respect and appreciation to our domestic employees.”
Ms Thian Ai Ling, General Manager of MFS and afterschool, said, “It is important to inculcate the values of respect and appreciation in children from young and we have a great opportunity to do so together with CDE through this meaningful campaign. Through acts like creating handicraft to build the Trees of Gratitude, putting up performances and making simple snacks to express their appreciation for the domestic employees, we are nurturing our children to develop empathy and show care and concern for others. It is also wonderful to have parents join in the activities as gratitude is a value best role-modelled by adults in a child’s life.”
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