Many weeks ago, Jacqueline and I had the privilege of attending a Diverse-City trail that was held at Toa Payoh.
A partnership between The Thought Collective and Ben & Jerry’s, the Diverse-City Trails is designed to create a shared experience among participants so as to spark two-way discussions about the issues Singapore faces, especially around social cohesion, which is vital to Singapore’s progress.
There are three different Diverse-City Trails that the folks from The Thought Collective is organising and all three trails are held at different locations; one at Little India, another at Toa Payoh, and the other at Jalan Besar.
We attended the Toa Payoh one and when we first received the invitation to attend the Diverse-City Trail, we were honestly quite apprehensive about going for it as our previous experiences of attending trails weren’t that meaningful or purposeful.
However, having attended the Diverse-City Trail at Toa Payoh, our perceptions towards trails like these have changed and we are planning to go for the other two Diverse-City Trails [Little India & Jalan Besar] if time permits.
The Diverse-City Trail at Toa Payoh is about how Toa Payoh, one of Singapore’s oldest housing estates, was once Singapore’s test bed for various social innovations to build cohesion amongst communities. Participants will step into familiar grounds in a new light and understand how happy neighbours in a community are forged and to explore the way forward for cohesion to be forged in Singapore.
“Learning how common spaces can foster social cohesion and interaction in the community”
Our Personal Opinion & Review of the Diverse-City Trail @ Toa Payoh
We will highly recommend people to attend the Diverse-City Trails that are organised by The Thought Collective because they are very thought-provoking and definitely engaging.
“Tong Yee, Founder & Director of The Thought Collective, conducting the Diverse-City Trail @ Toa Payoh for us. He was a former teacher and he taught General Paper at Nanyang Junior College.”
Personally, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly at the Diverse-City Trail @ Toa Payoh and throughout the engaging session, we learnt a little more about Toa Payoh Neighbourhood and how we can play our part to foster social cohesion within our communities.
“We came across a spot where drug abusers would consume drugs illegally. To be honest, we were quite surprised that drug abuse is still common in Singapore and truly, drugs destroy lives and we now understand why our country adopts a strong stance against drug abusers and drug peddlers.”
“We even past by the flat of Adrian Lim, a notorious criminal who was sentenced to death for the infamous Toa Payoh ritual murders.”
“What It Takes To Build A Socially Cohesive Community”
“A relevant and innovative solution to solve the challenges of cohesion in our community. This social experiment/solution is still a work-in-progress and hopefully, the results will be positive.”
Kept to a small group size of 15 participants for effective engagement and interactivity, it will cost a nominal sum of SGD$20 per person to attend the Diverse-City Trails and if you want to sign up or get more information, do check out http://trails.thethoughtcollective.com.sg/
We are pretty sure you will enjoy this trail as much as we had. Have fun and just a general advise; dress comfortably and bring along a bottle of water. 🙂
