By Joshua Joseph
Held on 6 August 2011 at D’Marquee, Downtown East,babies as young as six months old and children as old as 12 had the opportunity to enjoy a spectacular music extravaganza of popular children and national day songs presented by The Joyful Sound Orchestra. They were also treated to puppet shows and 'live' music performances.
The event also saw Guest-of-Honour MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC Zainudin Nordin launch the first-ever iPhone Application in Singapore to help parents locate family-friendly facilities near them. Family Fun, the iPhone Application, developed specially for parents by parents is an application specifically developed to meet the needs of parents with young children. In a poll conducted by U Family among 185 members, it was found that parents with young children would like to know where to access the nearest family-friendly facilities such as the nursing room, diaper changing room, children play area and many other family-friendly facilities.
Other than family-friendly facilities, Family Fun can also access information on family events and places of interest easily, allowing families to plan for quality time together. The application isprovided free-of-charge to all.Emma Grace, one of the U Family members,said on U Family’s facebook fan page: “I was at a shopping mall one day when I noticed afamily coming into the toilet looking specifically for children’s toilets only to find none. I think this Family Fun app would be extremely useful for families with children! I would like to thank U Family for taking the initiative to develop it!”
Mr Zainudin said:“Basically I think what U Family has done, firstly, is to create an environment where families with young children could come out together in a very healthy activity. At the same time being able to celebrate our National Day,that’s very meaningful and the title ‘Baby’s Day Out’ and the first National Day party for them is a very meaningful one to also bring back the spirit of Majulah for Singapore.
“And that’s I think one of the important parts for us to be able to understand that for our worker, the family unit is a very important aspect because we want the family unit to be strong, to be stable, so that the worker can be happy, the worker can be productive and that to me is a very important message.
“And secondly, the platform also allows for them to further value-add and improve this and the launch of the Family Fun App under the iPhone network is a wonderful way to show that we want to help families with young children to be able to cope with their daily lives, theiractivities and family-friendly programmes…I thought that it is a wonderful app and with this app we are illustrating that it can be done, it canfurther improve our services, make it even better and the partnership with all the relevant agencies will enrich the app and the platform and the information in there will be very useful for families with young children…
“… Thirdly, it’s about the community, I think the U Family community is a very important aspect of the Labour Movement towards creating relevance and the community is going to go towards being more relevant, being more service-oriented, family-oriented and to grow it to ensure that we can be part of a very vibrant and active Labour Movement and this to me is a very important component of the growth of the community in the Labour Movement. So the U Family will develop and grow as much as possible for the good of the Labour Movement in the future.”
Basking in the celebrations together with his family was Assistant Manager Jason Chai 33, who said: “I think that it is actually a very good event whereby you can actually bring in a lot of young families to celebrate National Day together with the kids especially for those who are not able to go straight down to the Floating Platform to celebrate National Day itself so this actually is a very good platform for other parents without the tickets to celebrate together.
“It is a very interesting event for them because right now some of them are still babies and some of them are young kids. It’s a good chance for them to celebrate and know what it’s like to be a true blue Singaporean.” |
