Emptying His Piggy Bank For A Good Cause

Posted by May January 17, 2019

Emptying His Piggy Bank For A Good Cause

Ewan brought home a letter about Chinese New Year celebration in school. Of school hours and dress-up requirements. It is a long letter and even though it is addressed to parents, I decided to read it out loud to Ewan and Faye.

Annual Community Lunch with Senior Citizens

Chinese New Year is a season of reunion and giving. It is a tradition in our Primary School for our staff and students to host a lunch for 200 senior citizens from senior homes and centres during the Lunar New Year festive month in our school.

We leverage on this opportunity to inculcate our school values of Care and Responsibility in our students through their involvement in various capacities.

- Performing arts groups: performances on that day for the seniors

- Selected P6 students: assigned to be seniors' companions

- P1 to P6 students: gifting

Over the years, many of these senior homes and centres have expressed their delight to be able to participate in this lunch and they look forward to the time spent with our students.

Our School Advisory Committee will fund the lunch and provide red packets for the senior citizens while collectively as a school, we will be raising funds to purchase goodie bags to be distributed to the seniors. Each goodie bag will consist of S$25 worth of food items and daily necessities for our seniors. We hope that our students can practice the value of Care by contributing a small token from their own red packets or savings to support this meaningful project. Parents are also welcome to make a contribution. Donation is entirely voluntary.

Any surplus funds will be used in our National Day Celebrations for Senior Citizens in August and our Senior Citizens Excursion in September.

When I was done reading, Ewan offered “I will donate all my money in my piggy bank."

"Wow! You would? You can choose to donate some and not all you know? I know you've been saving these money to put into your Timezone card so you can play lots of games." I suggested.

He responded without batting an eyelid, "It's okay. I don't need money.”

I was proud as punch I tell you? That he is generous like his dad. Which reminded me how he emptied his bank account at 25 years of age to propose to me with a S$2000 ring. He also said, "I don't need the money."

Ewan isn't always so giving. He chooses who he'd want to share or give. With his sister, there are moments of kindness but mostly selfishness. *yikes*

We had been bringing the children to food distribution at old HDB blocks from young. Not a regular thing but very ad-hoc when we can afford the time. Ewan would entertain them with his wushu routines and carry heavy bags of food bags up to the houses of those who cannot walk down for collection.

I'm just glad we gave them this little bit of exposure to appreciate what we have and for them to experience the joy of gifting.

We counted all the coins he had saved in his piggy bank since pre-schooling days [what a good chance to teach him money counting] and it amounted to S$42.80. I told him I will top up the rest of it to make it S$50 and with that, we will be donating two goody bags worth of food for this Chinese New Year luncheon.

After we sealed the envelope, he sighed, "Now my piggy bank is empty."

"It's okay Ewan! Now your heart is full!"

For his kind and magnanimous heart, I decided four hours later that I should praise him by action not just by words. I called him to me and explained how proud I was of his giving heart. Then I donated a S$10 note into his piggy bank Timezone card top up fund *haha*

Truth is, I contemplated if this act of kindness should be rewarded because I learnt in Child Psychology that if we reward children on things they love to do like drawing, they will eventually lose interest in the art itself but look forward only for rewards.

I decided not to dwell too much into it. Whatever makes him light up and I know that S$10 into his savings bank would make him smile.