The FLAGship Project

The FLAGship project was a collaboration between students of NUS and ITE College Central. The project was aimed at understanding and enhancing mental resilience among adolescents. We learnt through our reading that one of the predominant factors was that someone who has very strong ties with their friends and families is better able to weather the storms they face, as a result of the emotional and mental support they can receive from these people.

This inspired us to come up with a one-day campaign to emphasise the importance of the 4 values of friendship, love, appreciation and gratitude (FLAG) that are crucial to a person’s ability to form meaningful relationships. On Valentine’s Day, we headed down to ITE College Central, where we carried out a few activities such as taking photos with appreciatory or motivational messages, and dedicating notes which allowed the students to express their appreciation towards their friends and classmates. The event was rounded up with a sharing session whereby the students from ITE shared their life stories with their classmates, a crucial step in the understanding of a person.

Our Reflections

While this constitutes a first step and we hope for a more sustained involvement in order to see an impact, we feel that the CAPSTONE Experience is certainly one of the best programmes we have worked on thus far. This particularly because it gave us the opportunity to work with parties outside NUS and it built in us an awareness about the issues facing local communities and the complexities that one faces in handling these issues.