Scholarship & Education e-Magazine

Like many of us, I was looking forward to a semblance of normalcy at the beginning of this year. The number of workers infected in dormitories had reduced to zero, community infections were on the downtrend and more people were getting vaccinated.

While dreaming of holiday plans to Hong Kong and beyond, news of the new variant came about and Heightened Alert ensued.

At least, we were a lot better prepared for the restrictions this time round. For one, there weren’t snaking queues at the supermarket and thankfully, toilet paper did not get out of stock. Life went on the best it could. In fact, some enterprising people even thrived in more ways than one amidst the pandemic.

We spoke with Package Pals while putting together our cover story for this issue of BrightSparks. The initiative is fronted by young individuals, Puan Xin, Rachel Lee and Rachel Han, who met during the Circuit Breaker last year. They wanted to extend the life cycle of packaging, which came up to quite a bit from the surge of online shopping as a result of Covid-19. Package Pals collect and redistribute these packaging for re-use. This is great for Mother Earth, and a boon for local businesses.

It is amazing what a bit of ingenuity can do. I would urge you to read our cover story and hopefully be inspired by what young Singaporeans are doing for their communities, in spite of what is going on.

Zero infections may be a pipe dream, at least in the foreseeable future, but embracing the new normal may not be that bad after all.

Ong Cheow Eng
Editor