Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund

Names and Roles of Group Members:

Chloe Choo (team leader)
Lau Li Xuan (treasurer)
Chrystal Chia (secretary)
Rachel Ang (logistics planner)
Voleti Amulya (publicity manager)
Sabarna
Sitara Manoj
Valencia Lim
Kathya
Maegan Sim
Nicole Ang
Rachel Hi
Eunice Chew
Sarah Heng
Chong Wai Sheen
Shermaine Sim
Yoko Lim

1) Problems or challenges faced by organisations/beneficiary of organisation (i.e. User)

1) The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (STSPMF/SPMF) was established on Children’s Day, 2000. They need the public’s help through donations and fundraising to raise money for needy students. For the past 14 years, SPMF has $5.3m donations on average every year.

Function: They rally support for the cause and donations to the Fund. It collaborates with partners, from corporate organisations to interested individuals.

2) The main challenge will be how to raise more funds so that they can benefit more students who requires their assistance and how to reach out to more students who requires assistance from STSPMF.

3)The organisation is not as well known as other organisations such as old folks home, and needs more publicity within communities so that more people would donate. This general idea is reflected in schools where whenever the school mentions donation and charity work, teachers and students start discussing about volunteering in old folks home.

4) SPMF aims to raise funds to support more financially unstable students because every child deserves a chance to be educated no matter the situation.

2) Procedure

Empathise

Old folks’ homes are more well known to the public and is often the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions “volunteer”.
Awareness of SPMF are not well raised enough within communities. Based on the graph above, the trends are not consistent every year, so this suggests that lesser people are donating to SPMF, which means lesser awareness. Hence lesser money is available for disbursement to the beneficiaries.
What happens to the money that are donated but not disbursed?

→ For SPMF to identify partners and programmes for the social and educational development of children and youth.

→ Creates public awareness of SPMF and its activities

Define

Our objective is to help SPMF raise awareness, so that we can help SPMF to reach out to more students who requires assistance from them, and also so that we can get more people to donate. With more people knowing about SPMF, more funds collected, more students who require SPMF’s assistance are benefitted
Outcome: Help more children obtain educational resources (eg. textbooks, pens etc.)
Function: target audience - primary school students

Ideate

visit pre-schools/primary schools
posters / bookmarks / post-it messages
donation tin
target audience to influence and educate: Primary 5 and 6. Donation tins are commonly found in interchange and mrt. Since primary 5 and 6 is the peak period when many of them take public transport, we hope that they are able to learn and experience donating. We also hope to inculcate these values in them before they graduate to secondary school and start taking public transport to school everyday.

Description of proposed solution/prototype (eg. activity, service, object etc)

visit primary schools (eg. Cedar Primary) to educate the students about the needy kids who don’t have enough allowance in school (basically empathising with the needy kids) → spare a thought for other kids who are less-fortunate than you
Spread awareness of this organisation and the needy through:

SPMF merchandise to sell
posters around the school to create awareness
small little bookmarks with quotes to be given out (linked with our poster), with messages educating Cedarians on rationales of helping the students

Test/implementation of solution/prototype for feedback (email Ms Hazel - person in charge for fundraising for SPMF our ideas to get her feedback whether it will benefit SPMF etc)