1. Raffles Institution Year 2 Research EducationDesign for Change School Challenge 2011 Slow Bus Services By Team Leader: Jordan Ng (2M) Team Members: Leben Chew (2K) Jovan Chan (2I) Aaron Chou (2I) Teacher Mentor: Mrs Ramesh

2. AbstractThe aim of this Design for Change Challenge project is to investigate the waiting timesfor buses around Raffles Institution, to find out whether the timings affected the studentsnegatively, and if so, to make changes to that problem. We contacted our minister, Mrs.Josephine Teo. We sent our survey findings to her and requested that she assist us inpropelling our project forward. We received a letter that included suggestions so as toimprove our projects, written from her stating that she will be happy to forward ourfindings to SBS. As minister of Transport, she also vowed to help us make a change.Shortly after, we received a phone call from SBS, and answered a few questionspertaining to the problem. This is good news for us as the survey questions were givenout to students who take the buses around Raffles Institution. The survey results showthat the bus timings were indeed long and do pose a problem for the students who takethem. As such, an action week was planned out to address this issue and hopefullymake lasting changes to this problem. ii

3. AcknowledgementsOur project would not have been possible without the help of many people. As such wewould like to acknowledge the help of these people.Firstly, our teacher-mentor, Mrs Ramesh, for helping us and giving constructive adviceto improve our projects.We also thank Member of Parliament, Mrs Josephine Teo, for helping to make ourproject a success.Lastly, we also extend our gratitude to the students who helped with our survey,everyone who came forth to sign our petition and our friends and families for theirsupport. iii

4. Contents:Title Page ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iAbstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ iiAcknowledgements --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iiiTable of Contents ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ivChapter 1: Introduction ...............................................................................1 Why we chose Design for Change Our objectivesChapter 2: Background research ............................................................2 Our survey Results of our surveyChapter 3: Our action week .....................................................................3 Brief description of action plan Days 1-7Chapter 4: Discussion .............................................................................5 Limitations What we learnedReferencesAppend IvChapter 1: Introduction

5. We chose to take part in this Design for Change challenge as we were greatlymotivated by the many problems in our society. Like many societies, having problems isinevitable. It is impossible to have a society with no problems at all. However, we canstill try to reduce the amount of problems as much as possible, and this can beachieved through the help of each and every one of its citizens. As such, we felt thatthis Design for Change challenge was very meaningful and we wanted to make achange to help improve this problem.Our project has 2 main objectives, firstly to investigate the waiting times or busesaround Raffles Institution and to gather evidence that these waiting times poseproblems for the students. Lastly, to present our findings to SBS and hope thatimprovements will be made.Public transport is widely used in Singapore. Many people rely on public transport to getto their destination every day. Therefore it is essential that Singapores public transportsystem is efficient with little problems to prevent the many people who rely on it fromgetting late.There are many complaints that Singaporeans have about our public transport system,namely for buses, as there are traffic jams and other complications that make thewaiting times for buses erratic, which can become a major problem in Singapores face-paced society.We have noticed that the waiting times for buses have been getting more erratic, andwe felt that this may cause students to be late and pose a problem for them. Thereforewe decided to embark on this DFC challenge to hopefully make improvements to thisproblem. 1Chapter 2: Background research

6. In order to present our claims to SBS and hope for changes, we must first gatherenough evidence to support our claims. We gathered our evidence through the use ofsurveys, which were given out to a group of 60 randomly selected students from RafflesInstitution. The results of our survey gave us information about the bus waiting times,how students feel about them and whether they pose a problem to them.Our survey results are as follows. 76.66% of the students feel that the waiting times areindeed long, with an average time of 12.3 minutes, and the longest times they havewaited averages at 28 minutes, with timings as long as an hour.As u can see from the pie chart below, these erratic timings have caused a majority ofthe students we surveyed to be late at least once, with 41.67% of them being late often.With this information, we decided to embark on our action week. 2Chapter 3: Our action week

7. Our action week consists of seven non-consecutive days of activities, with each dayconsisting of a few hours worth of activitiesOur action plan went like this; we would, on the first day, create a Facebook page onthe service of SBS buses outside our school, and raise awareness about this issue.Next, we would spend the allocated 3 days on publicity, as well as to inform them aboutthe methods we are going to use to solve the problem. Following that, we would spendtwo days gathering signatures for our petition. Ultimately, we spent the last day talkingto Mrs. Josephine Teo, the Minister of Finance and Transport.We started off by each linked our individual pages to the Facebook page, andrecommended it to people. This allowed us to gain more likes and support. We alsohave been regularly updating the page with questions and posts about our project.For the next three days, we held a joint exhibition along with all the other DFC groups inRaffles Institution. The exhibition was held at the main atrium and many students andteachers came down to take a look at our posters and learn more about the varioustopics we are focusing on. On our poster, we had added a petition and many studentsand teachers did come forth to take a look at our poster and sign our petition. Thesedays were spent in a rotating shift, with different members of the team tending to ourposter each day.For another two days, our petition was given to our individual classes, namely; 2M, 2Kand 2I, as well as our own friends. in addition, we also spent time going around schooland approaching several students to explain our project to them, and proceeded to askthem to sign on our petition to help support our cause. over the course of these 2 daysas well as the 3 days the petition was put on the poster, we managed to attain over 300signatures on our petition. 3

8. On the last day of our action week, we made use of the Meet the People sessions heldevery Tuesday night to approach the MP of Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, Mrs JosephineTeo. We presented our our findings to her and requested of her that she assist us inpropelling our project forward. A few days later, we received a letter written from herstating that she will be happy to forward our findings to SBS for their use in planningservice improvements. (Appendix A) This is good news for us as it means we are nowone step closer to achieving our goal of improving the waiting times of buses around ourschool.Chapter 4: Discussion

9. Throughout the course of this project, we had faced many difficulties and limitations.The first of which we would like to share was that on 16th August, the day of the Meetthe People session, the Member of Parliament, Mrs Josephine Teo, was late and didnot turn up for the session. So we solved this by handing our letter to one of the staff,which then proceeded to pass our letter to the MP on our behalf.Another problem we faced was that when we left our petition on our poster or when wepassed students the petition to sign, they did not sign properly. We solved this problembeing around to make sure they sign properly and not just leave the petition unattended.We also faced the problem of being unable to arrange times to meet up, especiallyduring events in our action week, such as the days of the exhibition or the Meet thePeople session. This was largely because we had CCAs and other activities ondifferent days of the week and there was not a day where we were all free. Although thisproblem could not be fully solved, we managed to get past it by making the necessarysacrifices, to find days where we were allowed by the respective people in charge tomiss CCA or the activity and take time off to meet up. This taught us that we had to getour priorities straight, as many a time we cant always get what we want.During the course of this Design for Change challenge, we are happy to say that wefulfilled all our objectives. This project allowed us to understand the dynamics ofpetitioning and about how to bring about change. We feel that it was a great opportunityfor us to learn about serving the community, and being able to bring a change that canaffect us. At the beginning of this project, it seemed quite daunting to think that we, 4normal secondary 2 students, are going to bring about a positive change in our society.But however, after brainstorming for ideas and taking this project step by step, we haveactually came a long way. As long as we believed that I can make a change, we coulddo it. The first step was always the most difficult, but once we found our footing, wewere able to accomplish our goals. 5Appendix A -

10. Letter from Member of Parliament, Mrs Josephine Teo (scanned)