Description of Organization

Mission: Special Olympics Singapore (SOSG) provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). These activities give them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship.

Goal: To create an inclusive society by empowering the athletes with ID through the power of sports. Reach out to more athletes, especially those who have graduated from the school system and recruit more like-minded volunteers who want to make a change in the society.

Core Programmes: In SOSG, we provide weekly sports training outreach programmes for our athletes with ID, which are mainly conducted by our dedicated volunteers. We also organise workshops for Special Education educators to attend and organise sports competition for all abilities to participate. Other than sports programmes, we also provide programmes like Athlete Leadership Programme, Young Athletes Programme for children aged 2 to 7, Motor Activity Training Programme for athletes with profound/multiple disabilities, etc.

Intended use of funds through the YFC 2023 programme

In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, SOSG intends to use the fund to cover the cost of the material such as hand sanitiser, wet wipes, etc used to disinfect at each sports outreach training venue. This is to make sure our athletes & volunteers have a safe training environment.

If activity/programme can be resumed in a smaller group of 5 or more, we would like to have the YFC team plan for a bonding outing with our athletes, e.g. walk at Singapore Botanic Gardens. Physical interaction would be very different from all the interaction via a virtual platform. Face to face meeting would create an environment where the volunteers and athletes could get to know each other better and form a new friendship. Through activities, the volunteers are able to work together with our athletes. Then, the volunteers would have a better idea of how to interact with person with ID.

Engaging and involving the YFC participants

An induction session was conducted to help them better understand Special Olympics mission and objectives which helped the group align their project planning to drive the same message.

Proper communication methods were established to allow them to find out any information when necessary to facilitate their planning. We also held periodic zoom meetings to check with the group on their project and provided suggestions especially during the current pandemic where frequent changes had to be made to adhere to the safe management measures.

Other engagements were discussed but postponed due to heightened measures in phase 2. These activities were: face to face training at the school with our athletes, the group leading a series of workshop in a classroom setting to teach athletes how to use google slides and forms. Bonding activities such as trail walks allow interactions and forming of new friendships.