DO YOU KNOW THAT?

The founder of Singapore was Sir Stamford Raffles; Singapore was founded in 1819

ministries

Besides the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education, do you know that we also have the following ministries?

Community Development, Youth and Sports, Ministry of (MCYS)
Defence, Ministry of (MINDEF)
Finance, Ministry of (MOF)
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of (MFA)
Home Affairs, Ministry of (MHA)
Information, Communications and the Arts, Ministry of (MICA)
Law, Ministry of (MinLaw)
Manpower, Ministry of (MOM)
National Development, Ministry of (MND)
Prime Minister's Office (PMO)
The Environment and Water Resources, Ministry of the (MEWR)
Trade and Industry, Ministry of (MTI)
Transport, Ministry of (MOT)

All of these ministries are involved in ensuring the smooth running of the nation, from its defence against military attacks (MINDEF) to ensuring supply of resources to the people (MEWR) and of course, to ensuring law and order (MHA).

The Little Red Dot

Every morning, we at Hua Yi sing the National Anthem and recite the pledge. We focus our attention on the National Flag as this solemn ceremony takes place everyday. Everyone knows how the Singapore flag looks like but do you know what the colours, the crescent and the stars mean?

The Singapore flag was first unveiled on 3rd December 1959. Upon independence in 1965, it was adopted as the National Flag. The colour red symbolises universal brotherhood and equality of man, while the white symbolises the everlasting purity and virtue. The crescent moon represents a young nation on the rise and the five stars represent the nation's ideals of democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality. 

Singapore is also a democratic nation. This means that the government is chosen by the people. Singaporeans do this every 5 years when they vote for their governing party. One of these party is the People's Action Party which was founded in 1959. Some founding members of the PAP are Mr Lee Kuan Yew and the late Mr S. Rajaratnam. Mr Rajaratnam was also responsible for drafting the Singapore pledge. 

With that, I hope you have all learnt a little bit more on our very own little Red Dot. 

Do you know that;

The ministry responsible for Social defence is the Ministry of Community Development, youth and sports.

Reflection on CampTeen

Hello, has been a long time since I've updated on anything.

Last year, I went for CampTeen in Pulua Ubin. It was a four day three night camp. On the first day, went to Braddell at OnePeople.sg during the early morning. There were several other students, all from different schools. The facilitators started us off with some ice-breakers before going on to some presentations on racial harmony. The first day was focused on the theme of Racial Harmony, so after the presentations, we went to Chinatown for the afternoon. We visited several religious places around the area, and had lunch in a mosque. It was quite a new experience, and it was something that is not very familiar for me. I've learned a lot from the first day, as it tells us the importance of maintaining fairness between the different races in Singapore. It also tells us of the threats to racial harmony, such as terrorism, and one notable speech made by the one in charge of the mosque: it is that we should never assume that although somebody from a certain religion commits a sin, we should assume that all of them are bad people. This is entirely a WRONG concept.

During the evening, we finally sailed to Pulua Ubin and stayed out Outbound Singapore. The day ended with reflections and some discussion on what we can do to prevent discrimination of others. For the next three days, we started working on our projects concerning the promotion of the Youth Olympic Games. There were four groups: Culture, Sports, Sports OA (My Group), Arts. Well, what does OA stand for? It actually means Other Abled. This is a much more better term to used for those who are handicapped, compared to disabled. We had to come up with games in which we can have people understand what the other abled are going through, as well as seeing how capable the other abled are. From this project, I learned a lot about not looking down on those who are handicapped, as they might actually be more talented than most people. So, on the 30th December last year, we held the carnival at Youth Park. It was quite a fun day with all the activities going around and people visiting our stall. Well, this is what happened for the camp I went to last year, and I hope that you may get a chance of going this year.

Do you know that?
The 5 stars on our National flag represent democracy,

peace, progress, justice and equality.