Introduction
Project SOAR is a community service project jointly organised by Crescent Girls' School and Knowledge Village Pte Ltd to promote awareness and recognition for members of the Singapore Special Olympics Team and their participation in the World Games in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The central idea underpinning this project is the opportunity to publish a web site to cover an international sporting event thus allowing our students to engage in an academic activity integrating English Language, Physical Education and Information Technology to follow the preparation and progress of Singapore's Special Olympics Team. In doing so, they provide an invaluable service to the parents, relatives and friends of the athletes as well as the community at large.

A total of 360 Secondary Three students of Crescent Girls' School will be involved in the publication of the web site with their teachers and Learning Village Guides facilitating. A Sub-Editorial team, formed by students who are selected for their mastery of the English Language, will report to an Editorial Team formed by members of the teaching staff. Other students will be organised into reporting teams with specific, individual writing assignments.
The Project is organised into five main stages as follows :

While this project offers students a good focal point for refining and honing their writing and IT skills, it also has tremendous potential to affect the students more deeply as they work closely with the Special Olympics athletes. We hope it would help shape life-long attitudes towards facing challenges and overcoming limitations.
Project Objectives

With the fast-paced move towards the Information Age in Singapore and the emphasis on preparing for a knowledge-based economy, it is imperative for Crescent to provide our students with the requisite skills to excel and thrive in this new environment. In this Information Age, language and communication play an essential role and should , undoubtedly, be incorporated into any survival toolkit of the next Millenium. Thus, the School has planned Project Soar for Secondary Three students with the following objectives in mind:
  • To serve the community by creating greater awareness and recognition for our Special Olympics Athletes
  • To provide Secondary 3 students with an authentic platform comprising real events and audiences to exercise English Language-based process writing and communicative skills
  • To collaborate with peers, experts and others to contribute to a content-related knowledge base by using technology to research, compile, synthesize, produce and disseminate information and other creative works.

Certainly, community-awareness and participation is an integral and essential part of the total education of the individual student. The school has thus consciously incorporated this into a significant portion of the project.

Special Olympics Project

"Let me win. but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt."

Special Olympics motto
Special Olympics is for the disabled athletes and will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, in mid-June to July this year. Through the project, our students will learn more about how these special athletes prepare for their events and be inspired by their strength and determination. Our students will also have the opportunity to meet and interact with the special athletes through games and participation at their training sessions. In doing so, the students will be able to have a glimpse of the struggles and triumphs of the special athletes. This, in turn, will serve to draw the students from teenage self-centredness towards a more mature, community-centred mind set.

At the beginning of the project, a large web site will be set up to highlight the Singapore special athletes. This web site will be hosted by the school server and publicised to both public and private sectors. Our students, who will serve as roving journalists, editors, video crew, e.t.c, will be involved in every aspect of the project, right from writing up the web page contents, to designing the newsletter and creating the video segment, which will be presented at our schools' annual speech day celebration. The newsletter will be given to the Special Olympics Committee in Singapore to use as promotional material.

Skills such as web publishing, video techniques, journalistic and report writing, public speaking will be taught to the students. Help and advice will be sought from professionals from various relevant fields. Certainly, it will also go a long way in developing our students into well-balanced, all-rounded citizens of tomorrow.
Pre-Special Olympics activities

Prior to the Special Olympics, the student teams from Crescent will make regular field trips to NIE, to take part in the training sessions of the special athletes.
Special Olympics here we come!

With the help of generous sponsors, the school will also send a team of a teacher and two outstanding students to North Carolina to cover the event. This team will communicate with the teams in Singapore via email using palm-sized computers to provide regular event updates and interviews.

Clearly, the project will certainly be a big step forward where school-community partnership is concerned. It marks the beginning of a growing awareness that true education lies in providing our students with the exposure to other important aspects of life, besides academics.

Come join us in making the project a resounding success.
© Knowledge Village Pte Ltd. © Crescent Girls' School
and All Rights Reserved. Revised: 16.6.99. Updated on 22.07.99