Thursday 19 September 2013

Pre-owned Luxury Handbags wanted!

In April this year, we started a new initiative to collect pre-owned luxury handbags for resale to help finance DOT's livelihood programs.

In the past 5 months, we managed to raise $548 from the collection and sale of pre-loved handbags! This money has helped us partially finance the training allowance of $799.75 so far (not inclusive of material costs) for the migrant ladies in crisis in Singapore (check out http://www.home.org.sg). They have learnt how to make reversible baby dresses, Christmas decorations and fabric brooches from our programs.

Thank you all who donated the bags and also the customers who supported by purchasing them!


We'd like to call for another round of bag donations to help us continue our work. Do keep us in mind if you're doing your spring-cleaning and have good condition, branded bags to give away! Email us at Empower@DaughtersOfTomorrow.com.


http://www.daughtersoftomorrow.com/donatemybag


 *We seek your kind understanding that only branded bags and wallets with resale value above $30 each will be accepted to avoid a storage and manpower problem on our side.

Please help to spread the word to your friends :)

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Lighting Up Lives through Candle-making!

Finally we pulled off the first candle-making workshop with ladies identified through Bukit Ho Swee Family Service Centre and Beyond Social Services! Not without a lot of sweat, some panic moments, and gearing up to handle contingencies. 

Somehow, the attrition rate of participants is really high, so 12 people may have signed up, but on the actual day, only 6 will show up. Imagine having to cater logistics for a "rubber band turn-out" event, not the easiest thing.  Along the way, we had hits and misses and important lessons as well as brow-wiping experiences to bond our volunteers and the team, which is myself and Whelan our part-timer, haha. 

What do you do when an event you've been planning for months almost doesn't happen due to a tiny breakdown in communication, and you've got a roomful of volunteers waiting and looking at you with expectant eyes?

Step 1: Panic

Step 2: Curse under your breath and pray to God in the same second.

Step 3: Ask yourself "So, what's the best thing we can do now from the situation?"

Step 4: Take a deep breath, step back in the room.

Step 5: Explain the situation, have faith in people's goodwill.

Step 6: Make the best of it and create a Train the Trainers session!

Thank you Jagdeep KaurWhelan LiewChristie KhooInez ChanAngeline Ng and ladies from Reed Elsevier for being such good sports about it!

Instead of an "organizer-participants" situation with parties expecting to be pleased, it felt like we were a team making the best out of a near disaster situation. It's great to have that kind of support :)


That sums out our inaugural candle-making workshop saga. Luckily we managed to organize another session within the next few days for the actual beneficiaries! 

Here are some pictures for the workshops - both the impromptu  "Train the Trainer" session and the workshop held for 6 beneficiary ladies from the Lengkok Bahru, Whampoa areas. 


Next up, production briefing! - We've identified 2 ladies from the workshop to commence their employment with DOT to produce the Deepavali candles! One of them is a single mother struggling to cope financially with 4 kids, and another has 3 kids with a household income of $900/month. Hope that our Deepavali candles sell well with good corporate orders so that we can continue to employ them for this work! 

PS. Candle designs for Christmas will be available in October too! Do consider getting your Christmas candles for us and look out for updates!
















Do help us to spread the word!!