To mark the end of Singapore Children’s Society’s month-long celebration of World Social Work Day, VOX @ Children’s Society hosted a special edition of VOX Café to show appreciation to our colleagues from various service centres and departments.

VOX Café is a pilot programme geared towards the eventual launch of a social enterprise where youth, in partnership with a professional industry partner and social service practitioners, will run a food and beverage (F&B) outlet. The aim is to allow the youth to experience working in a simulated industry setting. They will also be attached to a social service practitioner, who will focus on developing and supporting their social-emotional-psychological needs.

For this special edition of VOX Café, some of our staff took a break and became ‘youth’ for the day while our youth members oversaw the planning and running of the event.

Our colleagues listening attentively to our youth member on the afternoon’s activities

No café is complete without food and our youth members made sure of that by having a kebab station and DIY chocolate station, ensuring the guests were well fed and taken care of.

The kebab team hard at work whipping up delicious food for guests
Guests were able to put in custom orders for handmade chocolate

Part of the afternoon’s activities involved writing appreciation cards for fellow colleagues. The cards provided were personally painted by the youth at VOX.

A personal touch – enthusiastic and heartfelt messages written by colleagues for each other

Guests were also treated to a lively band performance featuring a number of our staff and youth. Members of the audience had the chance to request for songs and step up to perform with the band. 

Enjoying a sing-along session to “I Have A Dream”, one of ABBA’s greatest hits!

The event was a great opportunity for our youth members to experience what it is like to work at a café and to engage an audience in activities. In doing so, they were able to hone skills in various areas such as planning an event, emceeing, cooking and serving, among others.

“At first it was quite stressful but once we got the hang of it, everything went quite smoothly from there. Taking things step by step, we were able to enjoy the process. It’s exciting and fun, and I’m happy that I can serve everyone here,” said one of our youth members, Ericia.

“It’s a chance for the youth to interact with others who are not in their community. I can see that they used what they had learnt from the youth centre to give back. It’s very creative, I didn’t expect them to do this,” commented Hao Yong, a social worker from our Oasis for Minds Services.

Many happy faces amongst our colleagues and youth for a successful edition of VOX Café!

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