Walk Like A Methodist

Saturday, 28th March 2009

This morning, we fetched both our daughter and son to their respective schools. Buses would then take them from there to ACS Independent, where they would join fellow participants in the Methodist Walk 2009.

The Walk involved students from the various Methodist institutions in Singapore (ACS, MGS, ACJC) as well as members from various Methodist churches who would walk a certain distance to raise funds for their own schools in the case of the former, and the Methodist Schools' Foundation in the case of the latter.

This Foundation was set up to pool together funds that are raised by the various Methodist churches to be disbursed to the schools that require those funds.

Those of you whose children are from ACS, MGS and ACJC may be wondering how come fundraising activities are held more frequent as compared to other schools. Well, the reason is because Methodism in Singapore has Wesleyan roots. John Wesley was firmly against any form of drinking or gambling. Drinking would include beer and alcohol, whilst gambling would include Toto, Big Sweep and 4D.

Whilst other schools would get their funding from the Singapore Totalisator Board ("Tote Board"), Methodist schools cannot and do not because of Wesley's stand against gambling. The Tote Board was set up to take money that Singapore Turf Club and Singapore Pools raise from gaming and lottery and distribute them out to social, community and charitable causes.

And so, the Methodist schools have to seek alternative sources of funding. One such source is the "Fun-O-Rama", which is what ACJC calls the funfair that it holds every 2 years. I have made it a point to go back there as often as I can, and blogged about last year's here.

Another such source is the biennial Methodist Walk.

Speaking of not getting money from the Tote Board, this stand seems to be peculiar to the Methodists, because Catholic schools have no problems with this. I will blog more about this tomorrow, so stay tuned :-D