CAPTSLAM (Queensway) 2021

Article written by Toh Si Ying Christine

CAPTSLAM (QSS) is a youth mentorship programme that engages Sec 3 CCA leaders from Queensway Secondary School through relational mentoring and reflection. With a team of 21 CAPTains, the programme aimed to inspire personal growth and impart leadership skills that would bring the mentees far in their journey in life. Between January and June 2021, the CAPTSLAM team met students from QSS two to three sessions per month and conducted a total of seven mentoring sessions.

Reflections by Project Director, Toh Si Ying Christine

This year, I had the privilege of spearheading the 3rd iteration of CAPTSLAM (QSS). Despite having experience from planning camps and leadership programmes, the learning curve was nonetheless steep. While accompanied with various moments in the valley, the engagement was still overall meaningful! Apart from learning how to manage my time, juggling studies while planning for the engagement sessions, I picked up hard and soft skills and realised things about myself and others. Overall, I have come to value mentoring even more.

Prior to CAPTSLAM, I had experience mentoring and doing leadership related trainings, so when I took on the role of Project Director, I had an idea of how the programme could look like. While I had a vision, I had trouble conveying it to my team. It dawned upon me that many come with different ideas of mentoring which may or may not align to what I had initially envisioned. I realised through this struggle the beauty of finding the sweet spot with being open to ideas and standing firm in your vision. For this, one requires discernment, to believe in yourself and your team. While CAPTSLAM was far from what I had envisioned, I am still proud of the work we did because this spurs me to want to understand mentoring even more. I have also come to realise that it takes a lot of effort to make an impact in the community. This quote by Helen Keller was particularly striking over the course of my journey in CAPTSLAM: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. While it is important to be zealous for a social mission, it is equally important to see your role as a catalyst that can contribute to something bigger. The idea of working together came out really strongly when I was thinking about the sustainability of CAPTSLAM as a mentoring programme. I was encouraged to think beyond my own impact but also the impact CAPTSLAM can make when all mentors are well-guided. It is also about finding meaning in something that is seemingly not producing the results you envisioned.

Something else that challenged me was navigating and managing relationships in the team. Being someone who thrives in positive social relations, it was truly a challenge working in a team when it seemed that we may not be on good terms. As cliché as this sounds, being proactive in communicating was the way to go. That meant having the willingness to listen, even when listening was tough. This reminds me of the popular saying of how we have a pair of eyes and ears but only one mouth, reminding us to talk less and listen more. Listening is the engagement of the eyes and heart, to see value in the conversation that you’re making with a person, to make the person feel valued for the things shared. This mindset helped open up more opportunities for authentic conversations, which definitely helped us get the job done for a fulfilling engagement project!