Four weeks ago, we started brainstorming ways to share The Good Father with our community. We searched high and low for ice cream benefactors, location sponsors, a punny title for our  first event, made endless to-do lists, floorplans, compared prices for dry ice,  told all our friends and anyone who would listen to come to the Hub on Saturday night, and finally crossed our fingers that people would respond to our invitation to swap a little piece of their heart for a scoop of yummy homemade ice cream.

If you weren’t there last Saturday, here’s what you missed:

Xue Yi, Jonathan Chan and Marcus Tan, who made up the sweet band that sang and strummed and rapped at our open mic ,

The icey creamy nutella, reverso, pulau hitam and banana-flavoured goodness generously donated by Uncle Stanley from Island Creamery,

New (and hungry!) friends, and cosy conversations.

To be honest, when we came up with the idea for Things I Wish I Told My Father, our first project under the Good Father, we weren’t sure how many people would be willing to participate and share something so personal with … Read More »

The honour of your presence

is requested at a snack-tivity

aboard The Hub, Level 2

Saturday, 30th June 2012

First come first serve between 8.00pm to 11.00pm!

That’s right! Good Father will be holding our very first event on this special day and each one of you is cordially invited to attend it.

Trade memories or stories of your father for free scoops of ice cream, generously sponsored by premium local hand made ice cream pioneers, Island Creamery. Share your memories or feelings about fatherhood, and also memorable moments with your father. These go on our tumblr, Things I Wish I Told My Father.

Enjoy soothing music, with a live acoustic session by singer-songwriter Xue Yi, as well as an interactive sharing of the Good Father SG campaign.

Copies of the The Good Father & Other Stories will also be made available for purchase, at $12 each.

So, do come down and join us at The Hub. You wouldn’t want to miss out the fun and tasty goodness.

The Hub is at National Youth Council Academy

113 Somerset Road

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What do you think of when you think of former prisoners?

I think of the old man who ran the prison library in The Shawshank Redemption who was released after having spent almost all his life in prison, who got a job as a cashier at a supermarket but couldn’t adapt to life outside of prison and ended up killing himself. I think of Red (Morgan Freeman’s character) who found a pot of gold in his life after prison with his friend, Andy.

So much of what I know, well pretty much I really know, about the life of former convicts after prison is derived from stories, besides the good work of this prison in Cebu, Philippines, the Dads For Life movement and the Yellow Ribbon Project. The latter are all good and well, but only through the stories of the men of Shawshank Prison did the ex-convicts’ absolute terror of the chaos and unpredictability of the world beyond bars, governed by a separate set of rules from the regimented grey world behind bars, become real, and their fear of not being able to carve out a safe space where they’d belong in society become something I could relate to my own … Read More »