Esther Ng

Ms Esther Ng, holds a Bachelor Degree in Early Childhood Studies with University of Melbourne. She has 25 years experience working with children and families. She has designed and managed a total of 17 centres for children services in Singapore and overseas. These centres include child care, student care and centres with inclusion. Her latest addition is a centre for young children in hospice care with special programme for children in transition.

In her capacity as CEO of Harvest Centre for Research, Training & Development (HRTD), she founded The Coalition Against Bullying for Children & Youth (CABCY) in Singapore. Today, CABCY is a non-profit community arm, adopted by HRTD and fully managed by like minded volunteers. Since its inception in October 2005, CABCY has been a platform for advocacy against bullying and interventions.

As an advocate for the well being of children, she has continuously conducted surveys and research on issues related to bullying. In 2006 she conducted a pilot research to study the prevalence and phenomenon of bullying in Singapore with more than 4000 students.

In 2008, she did another research with 1226 students (11-yr olds to 15-yr olds) to study the trends and habits of their internet lifestyle and manifestations of cyber bullying in cyber space. Together with Dr Ken Rigby and other experts in the field of intervention and prevention of bullying, she has put together a book entitled: “Breaking the Silence : Bullying in Singapore” which shall be launched before Christmas, 2009.

Her advocacy works have won her much regards from local and international organizations. She is currently a well received speaker at conferences and workshops in and outside of Singapore on issues such as bullying, cyber bullying, and other internet ills such as sexual grooming and internet addictions.

In recognition of her continuous passion to advocate for children and youth, she received the Singapore Woman Award 2009, in May this year.

Yip Yean Yean

Yip Yean Yean graduated with a Bachelor of Science with 2nd Class Upper Honours in Chemistry from the National University of Singapore (NUS). She was the pioneer batch of the Talent Development Programme in NUS where selected students were engaged in interdisciplinary and inquiry-based learning. Upon graduation, she spent a total of 8 years in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

After being involved in corporate trainings, she found her interest in teaching and joined Republic Polytechnic as an academic staff. Through the unique pedagogy of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in RP, she realized that the new generation is overloaded with information through various media. However, information only becomes knowledge when one can apply and use them. While Yean Yean is not an advocate of completely replacing traditional education with PBL, she sees the tremendous potential of PBL as a supplementary tool to traditional education, and this should be done from a young age.

Through HRTD, she hopes to introduce the PBL way of thinking to more young minds, so that they can effectively apply what they have learnt in schools, not only in exams, but in everyday life.

Being a working mother to a young child, Yean Yean understands and appreciates the importance of quality child and student care centres. Hence she is committed to provide holistic and quality student care services for children, so that parents can be assured that their children well taken care of physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially.

• Dr Manjula Waniganayake
• Dr Ng Koon Hock
• Professor Ray Page