Girls' Brigade Projects:
Friendship Day

‘GB Friendship Day 2011’ marked the start of an initiative launched by GB’s Singapore team to connect GB girls and leaders to the community and to serve and befriend Lonely, Elderly, Needy and those with Special Needs (LENS).

The first event saw around two thousand people involved, with GB girls and leaders managing to  feed over 1,000 local community people in just one day.

Girls were stretched to use their skills and gifts to deliver the project, and very many lives were enriched as GB reached out in their community. This is why the Singapore team intends to grow the initiative further.

As part of the Friendship Day project the team has developed a specially designed resource to use as part of their GB curriculum. It equips GB girls with skills and understanding about serving others and provides girls with opportunities to demonstrate the values of humility, compassion, responsibility and service.

Girls are being helped to see how they can be involved in transforming other people’s lives through their own actions. For example choosing to sometimes give their own lunch money to the project will enable rice and other food to be bought to feed others at the next friendship day. Giving their time to prepare food will help the event to happen. Talking to the elderly guests will help alleviate loneliness.

GB partnered with the Singapore charity Willing Hearts to run the first event, linking in to their experience in cooking and distributing meals to the needy. Feedback about the event shows that the girls involved were really impacted by the project

“What impacted me the most were the smiles of the elderly. Out of the 365 days in the year, GB Headquarters was only hosting them for one day. Yet, they were still grateful and very happy.”  Michele Chang

“All the GB girls worked together to serve the 1,000 elderly which brought unity and strengthened the ties among us.”  Lin Yan Fan

With thanks to 84th Singapore Company [Singapore Chinese Girls’ School] for their contribution to this information

For more news of the project see the GB Singapore website