Unwritten Stories of Singapore Youths

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About The Book

The book will be divided into 3 main chapters:

Chapter 1: Life testimonies of 5 youth ex-offenders.

The youths featured are:

1. Jean Choo (for drugs abuse, 20 years old, studying to be a counsellor)
2. Jimmy Boh (for drugs-peddling, 31 years old, on SGX scholarship to study SMU, second year doing double degree in Business Management and Accountancy)
3. Teo Li Yen (underage pregnancy, 18 now, currently look for employment as her tattoos put her at a disadvantage during interviews. Currently taking care of her 1 year old baby.)
4. Tiffany Heng(caught for stealing handphones, 18 now, wants to be a hairstylist)
5. Samuel Teh (former secret society member, 26 now, currently working as a nurse at Alexandra Hospital.)
   
   *Note: To protect their identity, some of the names used are not real names.

Other than the 5 youths, we have also interviewed people who have played a role in the lives of these youths namely, their friends, family, and counselor.

Chapter 2: Reflections from the 5 writers on their learning journey for this project, which spanned over a year.

Chapter 3: Meaningful artwork and poetry by some very talented ex-offenders.


Fund-Raising

Besides educating the youths on these issues, we also hope to raise $45,000 for our beneficiaries through the sale of our books. Priced at $10 a book, we intend to sell 2,000 copies youth-oriented organisations as well as to the general public.

Our book, “Unwritten” will be launched on 25th November 2006 at the “100KM Run: Go The Distance”, where Pastor Andrew Choo, the director of AG Home will undertake a 100km run to raise $100,000 to provide more services for the girls at AG Home.

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Our Objectives

During our research for this project, we realised that the books found in the market do not specifically cater to the youths of Singapore. Therefore, we believe that by sharing of stories of youth ex-offenders, written in the point of view of youths themselves, we will be able to strike a chord with other youths out there and make a positive impact in their lives.

Our objectives are as follows:

• Shedding light on why youngsters commit crimes.
• How their social circle of family, friends and others, affect and are in turn affected by their actions.
• Highlight the importance of decision-making to the common youth.
• Showing other youths how these youth ex-offenders are in many ways similar to themselves.
• To move more people from the public to come forward to help this group of people.
• To let this be a learning journey for ourselves, the writers.

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Five tell their stories

6 November 2006
Straits Times
English
(c) 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

A GROUP of five youths have come together to write the book, Unwritten, on ex-offenders.
It chronicles the trials and tribulations of the authors who have served time for crimes such as rioting, theft, underage sex and drug use. (Correction! The authors have written about youth ex-offenders, we apologize for the error)

Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to Andrew & Grace Home for troubled female teens and Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Student Aid Fund.

It will be officially launched on Nov25 in conjunction with a 100km run to raise funds for the home. The paperback version will be sold for $10 each and the hardback for a minimum donation of $100. Orders can be placed by e-mailing to unwritten.stories@gmail.com

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About This Project

We are a group of youths of likeminded youths from different backgrounds who have come together to write a book about the life testimonies of youth ex-offenders - we call our team Life’s MCQs.

The idea for this book was sparked off through a Work-Integrated-Learning module at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, which exposed students to the Yellow Ribbon Community through the teaching of reformative trainees IT skills. Through this interaction with the youth ex-offenders, we realize that there are other ways of serving and bringing awareness about the Yellow Ribbon Community.

This project has been awarded the Citibank-YMCA “Youth For Causes” Grant and National Youth Council (NYC) “Young Changemakers” Grant. We are under the mentorship of Ngee Ann Polytechnic Business Studies lecturer, Mrs Joyce Tang and Sony Network Vice President, Mr Gregory Ho.

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