New Nepalese Band

We have a new member to the Migrant Voices team, a young and sincere Nepalese band joins us and will have their first performance at the upcoming SeptFest event on 30th September. Please check out the Music Blog on your right for a video and picture of them.

www.migrantvoicescd.blogspot.com

Congratulations to HOME

Today the 15th of August 2006 marks the 4th Anniversary of the Madonna Grotto.

I went on behalf of Migrant Voices to the Siglap Shelter and was thoroughly moved by Bridget, Jolovan, as well as the other people with HOME, the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics, have done and I was filled with a lot of admiration of their generosity. On behalf of everyone here at Migrant Voices, kudos to you all and do continue your good work. For those of you who might not know, Migrant Voices has been working closely with HOME as we are now holding our TalentTime Competition at both the Serangoon and Siglap Shelters, together with Ruby Pan's Theatre Workshop at the Siglap Shelter. Through these workshops, we have not only taught the residents artistic and life skills through art, I personally have also been many a times, enlightened by their wisdom and am always inspired by Bridget. The learning has been two-ways and it's education that money can't buy. I hope our relationship and partnership will continue to strengthen, and we look forward to holding more programmes with HOME. On this note, I would like to once again Congratulate Bridget, Jolovan and the rest of HOME on the 4th Anniversary of the Madonna Grotto. Although I hope one day, we will see the number of residents go down.

For those of you who are interested in helping Migrant Voices run art programmes for HOME and the rest of the migrant community, do e-mail us at migrantvoices@gmail.com or visit our blog at migrantvoices.blogspot.com.

For those of you who are interested to know what HOME is and their work, do visit their website at www.home.org.sg

Shaun Teo
Treasurer and Co-Founder Migrant Voices

Upcoming Events

SeptFest

Organised by The Substation, SeptFest is an effort to bring together civil society groups in light of the World Bank/IMF meetings. This is to commemorate the spirit of civil groups and Migrant Voices is excited to be a part of this event.

SeptFest, The Substation 30th September 2006, 2pm onwards.

Migrant Voices will have band performances by migrant bands and a 10 minute contemporary performance by migrant workers. We will also be selling our CD albums and cards made by migrant workers. Come support work done by migrant workers.
See you there.

Javanese Classical Dance Workshop & Others

Hello there,

Migrant Voices is looking for new volunteers!

We're a group of young arts-lovers who came together through working on various arts projects involving migrant workers - namely a CD project and a photo essay project that were both launched as part ofthe M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2007. We recently registered as anindependent society and have continued to run many arts activities by and for migrant workers - do check out our Drama and Music blogs on ure right.

We are currently we are looking for people to help us:

a) Co-ordinate a classical Javanese dance workshop for Indonesian domestic workers. If there might be any interested venue sponsors onthis list, please contact us too at migrantvoices@gmail.com!

b) Get a community-based soap opera project off the ground - see www.brookenya.org. Brooklyn community theatre activist Kate Gardnerused theatre exercises to generate soap opera plots, shot them, and sent episodes via DHL to Kenya where another team carried out the same process. Over the course of a year, they wove the storylines createdin 2 countries together and 150 volunteers were involved in thecreation of the entire soap opera! We need aspiring and experienced writers, directors, actors, community theatre folks, filmmakers,editors... the list is endless!

c) We're still selling the CD of songs written and performed bymigrant workers to raise funds for various NGOs such as HOME and TWC2,so do contact us if you'd like to buy the CD ($12), or tohelp distribute it.We're always open to collaboration, so if you have any ideas/ would just like to get involved in some way, do drop us a line as well at migrantvoices@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!:)

Ruby Pan Co-founder & Executive Committee Member
Migrant Voices

About Us

Migrant Voices started as a CD album project last year that was launched at the M1 Singaproe Fringe Festival. The album featured migrant bands from Indonesia, India, Thailand and the Philippines. After the CD project wrapped up, we realised there is a rising need to see more of such activities. Hence we registered as a society in April 2006 and rolled out workshops with migrant workers soon after. All of us are volunteers within the ages of 18-30. We don't have an office yet but if you fund us, perhaps we might?

Our office bearing committee members for 2006 are:

Sha Najak President
Shaun Teo Treasurer
Susy Bungsu Secretary

Committee Members
Jacqueline Tan Publicist
Nina Siew Artistic Director
Prashant Somusundram Co-Publicist
Ruby Pan Co-Founder
Pamela Lee
Endina Widartama
Lim Khoon Min

We also work closely with an advisory panel of professionals in various fields and migrant organisations in Singapore from various nationalities.

Friends of Thai Workers (FOTW)

Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME)

Filipino Overseas Workers in Singapore (FOWS)

Asia Evangelical Fellowship

Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)

Contact Us at migrantvoices@gmail.com