By Arissa Binte Kamaruzaman (24A01A), Chen Ying (25A01C), Darren Wong (24S03C), Jermaine Lee (24A01A)
What goes on in uniform groups (UGs)? Your first thought might be camps, drills, and sweating under the hot sun.
But the UG experience is so much more than its physical demands.
Be it starting small through mentoring juniors on different skills, or going above and beyond to serve those in the larger community, the UG experience provides ample opportunities for a person to grow as a leader.
In this feature, two of our alumni, Ezekiel Joshua Chan Rong En (23S03P) and Lim Yu Jie (23S06J), who were student leaders from Boys’ Brigade (BB) and Scouts respectively, will share insights on how their UG experience has been crucial to guiding their leadership style and outlook towards service.
Ezekiel, who received the President’s Award for his leadership in the BB, and Yu Jie, who received the President’s Scouts Award for his leadership in Scouts, have made tremendous contributions to their respective CCAs.
At the heart of their stories is a genuine passion to serve the people around them—even when the going gets tough.
Ezekiel
A long, meaningful journey in the Boys’ Brigade
Ezekiel started his journey in the Boys’ Brigade (BB) over 10 years ago, when he was just a primary school student, and has stayed on ever since. Over the years, his role in the BB has changed, from merely being the participant of different activities and camps in Y14 to planning and executing the activities for his juniors in Y56.
Aside from the BB, Ezekiel was also a part of the Students’ Council, with the heavy commitments of both CCAs eating up most of his free time. When asked why he decided to take on the extra commitment of Council, he explains that he took it as “a challenge to go beyond what I was comfortable with” and apply his leadership skills “to serve the larger school community”.
While it definitely wasn’t easy juggling his BB and Council duties on top of his studies, what kept Ezekiel going were the “little moments” and interactions with his CCA mates. “The after-school dinners, the small personal chats that we still hold today”—those were the memorable moments that really made his BB experience so meaningful.
“This is where the heart of the BB lies, eroding the disconnect between batches; that’s the core of the BB family.”
For Ezekiel, the Boys’ Brigade has become more than just a CCA; it’s become a family, a community that he helped build from the ground up. As a stumbling and shy junior, his seniors helped him find a community in the BB, and as a senior, he further nurtured the sense of belonging and unbreakable bonds that make BB so special.
“We go through a lot of thick and thin together”, Ezekiel smiles as he tells us what he thinks is the value of being in a Uniformed Group. “Everyone gets the opportunity to step up in our own small ways, since everyone in a UG always gets a chance to be a leader and a good role model to their juniors.”
Leading the BB came with its fair share of challenges, though, especially with Ezekiel being an introvert, not naturally inclined to interacting with others. “Learning to establish this rapport and inspire a shared vision within the team was quite a challenge”, Ezekiel says, but a challenge he decidedly overcame, no doubt.
Going beyond to serve the community
On top of his CCAs, Ezekiel also took part in many volunteering opportunities. One of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences volunteering was at the Senior Care Centre under the St Andrew’s Mission Hospital, where he stayed as a regular volunteer for a month during the school holidays.
“What was most memorable was that year’s Christmas day”, he recalls, when he was tasked with going down to accompany an elderly man at his house. It wasn’t easy to give up the usual parties and fun of Christmas day, but to Ezekiel, “bringing that joy, that accompaniment was really something [he] wouldn’t have traded for having fun on [his] own.”
All of his experiences, be it from CCA and volunteering, have ultimately come to define his leadership style as a community builder. What this means to him is making small, yet meaningful changes in the lives of people around him.
That’s why Ezekiel makes the conscious effort to remember who he’s serving. In the midst of one’s leadership journey, it’s easy to lose track of one’s purpose, when one is faced with multiple, gruelling commitments, and finds themselves on autopilot mode—merely going through the motions. Falling into this trap, however, might just drain one even further in the long run, because one loses the motivation to keep on going.
For Ezekiel, a simple smile on his teammates’ or his juniors’ faces is enough to remind him, even during the toughest of seasons, that there is meaning to what he is doing.
For instance, he once approached one of his juniors who was looking more withdrawn than usual and inquired whether he was doing okay via text, out of concern for his well being. A seemingly small gesture like this turned out to have a profound impact. When his junior began to share about his recent personal struggles, he revealed that he had been keeping them to himself all this while.
Sometimes, people may not have an outlet to relay their concerns to, and going out of the way to show you do care for their well being, is enough to make them feel seen.
Most importantly, he recognises the importance of actively listening to the needs of his community.
When it came to Council initiatives, a central part of his planning was gathering feedback from the target audience. The Welfare department’s carepacks, for one, was a difficult initiative to plan, as he had to consider the diverse needs of the student population.
In particular, he wanted to reach out towards those who felt disconnected from the student body, and to help them feel that they are part of a larger community that genuinely welcomes and appreciates them.
Ezekiel quips, “Without the people, a leader [is] nothing”. There is much wisdom in that statement; a testament to how his guiding principle in leadership will always come externally, through the personal trust he builds in his relationships with others.
Wise words of advice
Ezekiel’s advice for juniors aspiring to embark on volunteering opportunities this year is to make the most of one’s strengths. These strengths can come in many forms, be it through tapping on one’s musical forte when teaching beneficiaries musical skills, or tapping on one’s proficiency in dialect when interacting with the elderly.
Furthermore, he encourages people to challenge the boundaries of volunteering through exploring projects that take on more unconventional forms. A more conventional project, like tutoring, can be reconstructed to be unconventional and unique if one explores ways to expand their target group.
In his experience, he expanded his target group overseas by tutoring underprivileged kids from Timor-Leste via Zoom during Covid. He researched more about their situation before deciding to reach out to this target group after noticing the deepening digital and educational divide in rural areas in Timor-Leste.
Unlike himself and his peers in Singapore, who received significant digital support to keep up with their education, these kids lacked the same resources and were unable to catch up amidst the worsening pandemic.
Undoubtedly, Ezekiel has a heart for service, that he consistently stays true to, no matter what project he undertakes or what beneficiary he serves. In the future, he hopes to be able to continue on his journey of service through the public service sector.
To him, this looks like identifying gaps in the community that are less talked about, and championing causes for marginalised groups, such as the migrant worker community and persons with disabilities (PWDs).
His story is a truly inspiring one, for at heart, he is, in his own words: “a servant leader who brings life to the lives around [him]”.
Yu Jie
Starting Out
Yu Jie began his journey in Scouts in Y1 because of his Peer Support Leader (PSL), Mitchell Koh (20S03J). “During orientation camp, I met a senior who was very cool and funny, and I wanted to be like him. So, I thought it was logical to join his CCA”.
In secondary school, his most memorable experience was a Scout Leadership Course he was sent to in Y2. “Every Scout was placed with Scouts from different troops, so we had to interact with new people and camp together. One of the things we had to do together was cook. There was this self-proclaimed ‘good cook’ that served us a very scrumptious meal of undercooked chicken, marinated cabbages and other stuff. I remember sitting there at night and crying because I was really hungry and the chicken was raw inside [but] black outside.
“It was really memorable because it helped me to understand that people have different strengths. He was a really cool guy, but I would never let him touch a wok ever again.“
However, with COVID-19 came safe-distancing restrictions that put a dampener on the activities that made Scouts, Scouts. “We had a lot of different camps and activities in the Scout year that required large groups of people to be together physically and COVID [prevented us from having] large groups of people together and you can’t be there physically with one another for overnight camps that allow you to hike around Singapore.
“Have you ever hiked around Singapore and put up a Basha (a makeshift tent) at some random park like Pasir Ris Park and used the amenities there to shower and cook food? Probably not, but as a Scout, I got to do that, and COVID stopped that from happening [for other Scouts].”
COVID-19 also made it difficult for Scout troop members to bond. “Being there with one another and going through tough times together really helps build bonds between people. With COVID-19, behind a screen or with your masks on, you can’t really tell what people are thinking about. That really started causing our CCA to be more fragmented and less bonded.”
“I decided: ‘Hey let’s just stay on and get us back to before this COVID pandemic came about.’”
Despite all these challenges, Yu Jie decided to stay on in Scouts in Y5-6. “Most people choose to pursue different things in JC, but I felt a sense of responsibility to continue on in my CCA. Especially since COVID-19 threw things off for a bit, I felt I had to continue the Scouts’ legacy. I had a teammate, his name is Zi Herng (23S03B), and he’s my ride or die. Both of us decided, ‘let’s just both stay in Scouts and make the most of our time here’”.
The Ups and Downs of Scouts: Leading after COVID-19
In Y5-6, Yu Jie was the Scout Training Leader of the 01 Raffles Scout Group. “I took on this role because even though it was a lot of responsibility, I had passion for it.”
His biggest project in Scouts was organising a collaboration with Crest Secondary School. “This was one of the things that faded away because of COVID-19. Usually, the Y5s, or the Y6s at the very least, will go to Crest Secondary School to teach the Scouts there some Scouting skills. The last time this was held was in 2020, and that batch only did 3 sessions [before COVID-19 restrictions started].
“We were left with basically no information on how this thing was run. We had to—in the midst of Orientation—scramble about and ask the teachers for help and liaise with other groups of people. It was a stressful period.”
“The students there had different learning styles, and we had to adapt to that.”
“We [taught them how to use] maps and compasses, and how to do stove cooking—we tried to teach them to make pancakes, hot dogs, Maggi noodles and French Toast. Cooking from a mess tin and using small solid fuel was something their teacher didn’t regularly teach them because manpower was limited—there were only about 1-2 teachers to 30 Scouts there.
“But with our help, and the teachers there, we were able to come up with something. It’s not normal for a Scout troop to have a bunch of seniors looking over them—it’s usually a teacher looking over them instead.”
Yu Jie’s biggest lesson came from a student during the training sessions. “There was this kid with anger management issues, I believe. Once, he was scolding his peers, and we went over to tell him not to treat his batchmates that way. He became timid and quiet after that during the session, and isolated himself from the others.
“He came to apologise afterwards, and told us that he was trying to do something with good intentions. That made me realise that good intentions are hard to express with actions sometimes, and we should sit down and think from others’ perspectives.”
Lessons Learnt
To Yu Jie, leadership is something that cannot be defined—it is something that must be defined for yourself. For him, leadership has meant being the best version of himself, and modelling the way for his juniors. For instance, when working with others, he has tried to make the experience as fun and enriching as possible, instead of just another thing that the teacher wanted done.
Additionally, he also learnt to approach leading from a bottom-up view, and to be more understanding of different perspectives. If you don’t know what type of leader you want to be, he believes that even something as simple as finding an inspiring person and trying to pick up their admirable qualities can count as a step in the right direction.
However, beyond leadership, Yu Jie would also like to advise juniors to not spend their entire JC life studying. While it is important, life is really so much more than that. He wishes that his juniors can focus more on the other aspects of life, and step out of their comfort zone. In his words…
“Go out, serve the community, really explore and expand your horizons. Don’t join a VIA where you just make an Instagram post and call it a day. Truly go out and open your eyes and learn from it.”
Additionally, Yu Jie also emphasised that there are only 24 hours in a day, so we must manage our time properly. Personally, he used Notion to manage his time.
Some tips from Yu Jie on time management include: using breaks between lessons to study, studying in conducive areas with your phone put away—“I didn’t even install Tiktok…I think that helped a lot”—and most importantly, giving yourself breaks.
“Don’t give yourself zero breaks, because you’re gonna break — PUN INTENDED.”
So, why Join a UG?
Although pretty much every school has a UG, there is still a great deal of “mystique” surrounding this category of CCAs. Though UGs are often known to be physically strenuous, Yu Jie explained that it really depends on the UG—not every UG is physically demanding.
However, one thing that every UG does inculcate is the core value of discipline, and not just in terms of the outward discipline of drills, but also in the sense of self-discipline. This self-discipline can also be applied to other parts of our life outside of CCA, such as academics, and is particularly useful when you are trying to achieve a specific goal.
In addition, another key trait of UGs is the sense of family that everyone feels. Yu Jie shared that people in UGs often stick through thick and thin together, and hence form very close bonds.
Last but not least, UGs can also teach you life skills. From literal survival skills like cooking and starting a fire to soft skills like communicating with your teammates, Yu Jie believes that there are lots of lessons to be learnt from being a UG, be it tangible or intangible. For example, being in a UG has taught him how to keep up with the pace of activities and follow instructions well, and these skills also have the added bonus of being applicable to National Service.
Moving On…
Yu Jie’s time in Scouts has also helped to shape his career aspirations.Through Scouts, he realised that he was more inclined towards a more people-facing job. The numerous hiking trips he participated in as a Scout also fostered his love for being one with nature and influenced him to take a greater interest in sustainability. Thus, he wishes to pursue a career related to the environment.
Moving on from Scouts, Yu Jie will miss all the interactions with his CCA mates, especially the Y8s who played a big part in shaping who he is. He will also miss the carefree freedom that Scouts provided, which allowed its members to be more proactive in pursuing what they were interested in. Last but not least, he will also miss his classmates (shoutout to class 23S06J!).
For now, Yu Jie will be going on a hiatus from Scouts to fulfil his national obligations (read: National Service). However, when asked if he would continue in Scouts in the future, he cheekily said, “What’s stopping me from coming back?”
In a Nutshell…
UGs have been a place where Ezekiel and Yu Jie had the chance to lead, foster bonds, as well as explore their passion for community service. Evidently, UGs are so much more than just drills and commands.