Project Down-To-Earth

 Members from the Project Down-to-Earth with Eddie, our wonderful tour guide for the day.

A Visit to a Kampung in Singapore

When is the last time you have visited a kampung in Singapore? For a group of us from Jurong Spring Youth Executive Committee (YEC), we did so a week ago. Ground-Up Initiative (GUI), a volunteer-driven non-profit community organisation, held a carnival at Bottle Tree Park to allow visitors to celebrate and reconnect with our roots, and also to discover the importance of the community spirit.

Our group was very fortunate to have two guides, Eddie and Kim, to share with us the process of starting an urban farm in a small plot of land. More interestingly, they spent a short five months to convert a small plot of flat land into a thriving urban garden with more than twenty to thirty species of herbs, vegetables and flowers. Their efforts exemplified the community spirit, where people from different generations come together to do things together and realize dreams to fruition.

Kim shared that gardening is not only about planting and harvesting crops but also about build relationships among people. “Relationship is a key component to the building of any community, and this project allows people of different generations to come together to build that sort of relationship”, she said.

Also, GUI embarked on many wonderful innovations to make gardening more simple, fun, and easy. We were shown “flower pots” made entirely out of recycled PET bottles that are not only airtight; they also require minimal maintenance

This trip down to the northern part of Singapore is indeed fruitful and helped us realign our direction in Project Down-to-Earth. We share common motives of bringing different generations together, building bonds and strengthening ties within the community. In future, we hope to implement some of what GUI has pioneered to spread the “green message” in our community for a sustainable future.

About Project Down-to-Earth

Project Down-to-Earth is an interest group under the Jurong Spring Community Centre Youth Club where a group of like-minded youth explores ways to reconnect back to nature. One of the projects is the use of non soil-based method of growing vegetables in the Community Centre. The intention is to make gardening simple, clean, and easy for everyone. If you are interested to know more about the project or explore ways of growing vegetables in our concrete jungle, please do not hesitate to contact the interest group at project.down.to.earth@gmail.com.