After taking a phonics course by mistake, Lydia Lok decided to start an enrichment centre where every three students would fund free phonic classes for one underprivileged child. She tells CNA Women how she emptied her bank account and almost couldn’t afford to pay her HDB mortgage to build her social enterprise a
Lydia Lok runs an enrichment centre offering phonics, English and mathematics. Known as Curious Thoughts Academy, it currently has more than 700 students, from toddlers to secondary school students.But that’s just half of the story.
“In Singapore, many parents who can afford it are sending their children for enrichment classes to learn to read before primary school. So by the time kids enter primary one, by our estimates, 80 per cent would already know how to read simple sentences,” said the 38-year-old.“I want to minimise the gap between these two groups so that vulnerable children don’t enter primary school with a disadvantage,” she said.
Some of these children only get flagged in primary three or four when they still cannot read or write. Lok and the Curious Thoughts Giving team, try to help them catch up. Before starting Curious Thoughts Giving, Lok was a policy officer at the Ministry of Social and Family Development working on child protection, probation, and delinquency and homeless issues.
Lok and her team also tailored a phonics programme for children with special needs such as dyslexia, ADHD and mild autism, which includes more visual cues, explicit instructions and a lot of movement. “My husband and I couldn’t even pay our HDB mortgage and got a pink slip from the HDB department. We reached a point where we thought we would have to close down the business,” she said.
Little did she expect that this act of kindness in her darkest moments would become a turning point for the enrichment centre. The charity offers free phonics lessons to close to 117 beneficiaries from low-income families at various social service agencies around Singapore such as KidSTART, Singapore Children’s Society and Children’s Wishing Well.
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