Aidha alumna, Nurul Adim (more affectionately known as Ana by her employers) has been working in Singapore for almost ten years. She left her home in East Java, Indonesia, to work in Singapore after her family lost income and found themselves in financial need. Nurul chose to work in Singapore, feeling that it is not too far away from Indonesia and that her basic English would mean she could comfortably converse with her employers here. Nurul has been happily working with the Phua family for over eight years now since their first son, Gabriel, was around a year old.
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Emelda’s Convenience Store
Emelda Cariaga left her home in the Philippines almost 30 years ago to work as a foreign domestic worker in Singapore with a clear goal to financially support her family. She realised the importance of being financially stable, and she was determined to learn how to make the most of the wages she earned. When her employer introduced her to Aidha’s courses, she didn’t think twice about joining. Her employers gave her the support she needed and offered to sponsor her enrolment fees.
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Meet The Team!
We’d like to introduce two new members of the Aidha Team, Elaine Juan (Elle) and Linette Chan! If you’re an Aidha student, you must have chatted with our friendly Campus Manager, Linette. But did you know that Linette was also one of our riders at our recent Bike Ride? And if you are an Aidha volunteer, Elle is the go-to person for all volunteering matters. Get to know them better in this feature!
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Volunteer Spotlight: Niky Sakhrani
Aidha was officially launched as an independent entity in 2006 with our first intake of 25 students taught by Aidha founder, Dr Sarah Mavrinac, in a condominium function room. Chanchul Sakhrani, better known as Niky, is a very special volunteer who has been part of Aidha from those very early days.
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A Graduation Like No Other!
Written by Cathy Heeley
October is always a special month at Aidha as we celebrate the graduation of our students from Modules 2 and 3. These students have completed at least 12 months of financial education at Aidha and worked hard to complete their own personal financial plans and business plans.
For over a decade Aidha has held a formal ceremony in a concert hall with an audience, special guests, presentations, dancing and lots of hugs. But that wouldn’t be possible this year.
How could we make Graduation Day a truly special occasion to reflect the fantastic achievements of our students in challenging times, an event to celebrate their learning journey and encourage and inspire them for the future?
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Riding for Aidha
Every year, Aidha corporate partners, supporters, volunteers, staff and students come together to ‘Ride for Aidha’ in OCBC Cycle. This year, the much-anticipated sporting event was re-conceived as a Virtual Ride. Despite the changes to the event, the Aidha community rose to the challenge and we’re delighted to have more than 135 riders now completing their distance rides on behalf of Team Aidha.
The new format allows cyclists to choose their own route and day of cycling. They’re completing their rides between 1-15 November, and you can follow their progress on our social media pages. Please support our riders by donating here.
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Online Learning Challenge!
Taking learning online is now the new normal but it is a challenging task to adopt new learning techniques very quickly!
At Aidha, benefiting from the expertise in our community, and huge willingness to help, we were able to draw on the skills and experience of our staff and volunteers to create a new delivery model for our financial education programmes. Now we’re all becoming Zoom experts!
For one of our recent graduates, Siti Mujiati, life became extremely busy under Circuit Breaker and Phase Two but she was determined to keep learning. Online classes allowed her to continue learning at her own pace, though it was different from the usual classes. She soon got the hang of using online video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Facebook Live not only to continue her learning but to connect with her friends and family.
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Shining a Light on Aidha’s Unspoken Life
Aidha’s much-awaited signature event, the 4th edition of Unspoken Life Photography Exhibition was launched virtually on 4th October 2020. For the first time ever, we brought our exhibition online by displaying winning photographs in a virtual gallery. The online exhibition is curated by local photography zine, Your Local News Stand. Despite the many challenges this year, we received almost 200 amazing submissions of varying photography styles and were very impressed with the compelling stories behind each photo.
Unspoken Life seeks to delve beneath the labels and unfurl the many selves of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) often unseen by Singapore society. The virtual exhibition also celebrates the strength, courage and creativity of foreign domestic workers – who are also mothers, sisters, daughters and artists – here seeking a brighter future for themselves and their families.
Read MoreLetter from the CEO
Dear Friends of Aidha,
Hope you have been staying safe and well through these unprecedented times.
Since the pandemic started to take hold in the early part of this year Aidha, like everyone, has been very busy adapting to a changed world. You will have received an update in May on all our various new online activities and these have continued apace over June and July as well. With the gradual easing of restrictions, we very much hope we can be back at our campus soon but we are also making contingency plans to potentially bring even more of our classes online in case that is not possible.
Taking learning online with our Module 3 students!
A Lookback at Graduation 2019
At our last Graduation, we were so proud to witness more than 140 graduating students receive their certificates in the presence of their employers and employers’ families, along with the Aidha community of fellow students, volunteers and supporters.
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NEWSLETTER 