Starting ‘Em Young: A Morning at St James Kindergarten

5 August 2018

HOME gets invitations regularly from schools and higher institutions to speak on migrant worker issues. But a classroom full of pre-schoolers wasn’t something we were expecting! And so we had our very first group of the youngest audience ever: six-year-olds from St James Kindergarten (Gilstead) who listened to us share about the people who build our ‘Houses & Homes’. We touched on the work that migrant workers do, read them a tale, So Different (a children’s book about respecting domestic workers that HOME published some years ago), and discussed the various ways kids can show compassion, kindness and respect to their ‘aunties’ at home and the ‘uncles’ they see at construction sites. They even spent the next day reflecting on what they’ve learnt by drawing and recounting the stories of migrant workers.

Their little pieces of artwork left us utterly amazed and touched. And that’s not all—the kids even made cement planters to sell at their upcoming Open House to raise funds for HOME!

Start ‘em young, they say, so here's a special shout-out to Ms Tessa Rim who had reached out to us to give a talk to her students. Thank you so much for having us over and, more than that, for your efforts and conviction that it is never too early to start inculcating in the little ones about respect and dignity for migrant workers!