150 Stationery Project is a community development project that I co-found with my postgraduate colleague – Anna. The mission of this project is to shape the idea that going to school and studying is a fun activity to do. The project reaches out to elementary students and gifts them a cool backpack complemented with a stationery kit!

Our motto: One Small Bag for One Big Dream 🎒📚🏅

How did it start? The project started with an idea that we don’t like the status-quo – where unequal access to education is prevalent! We want to blaze the trail by believing and acting on the idea that everyone has potentials to be whatever they want. For instance, a first-grader who lives in a remote island in Indonesia could achieve as much as a kid who was born with privileges. It might sound cliché and we risk the possibility of falling into a pitfall of naivety. Yet, we knew what we are taking on! and therefore, we start small. The ideation process of 150 Stationery Project took at least a year to develop. While the execution process took another year to take off. We started with a magic number of 150 backpack to give away (hence the name!) but as the project went on and Anna decided to embark on her personal journey, I carried on with a pilot project that tested the water with a new concept – giving 10 backpacks to what the project calls the champions!

How does the new concept work? The aim of 150 Stationery Project has always been to help elementary students enjoy school and understand their lessons in a more engaging way. With the new concept, however, I made a little tweak to design a programme that is educative, entertaining and competitive at the same time. It focuses on teaching children about life aspirations and creating a platform to express their thoughts. In other words, the programme is a creative simulation that prepares them for the real world. Fret not! we are not talking about giving a first-grader a hammer to build a house here. We’re talking about organising a fun game where the students are encouraged to think about what they want to be in the future and translate this goal into a colourful drawing or short essay or both! At the end of the game, the ones who demonstrate the most creative presentation are awarded with the cool backpack and its stationery kit!

On top of this, the project strives to select a local collaborator to ensure that the programme comes with extra material to learn, such as how to get along with classmates, stop-bullying and emotional awareness.

If you ask, what happen to the participants who are not selected? I don’t want them to feel left out, after all, everyone is a champion so the programme includes complementary goody-bags for all participants. This way, every single kid will go home feeling happy! 😊

Interested to see how well the students do? visit them here: @150stationeryp150