Being Beings was a ground-up community initiative by Being Bridges during the Circuit-Breaker lockdown phase of COVID-19 when religious services around Singapore were suspended for public safety.
Purpose
Its intent was to provide an accessible platform that may offer some form of supportive tool to help with consoling spiritual relief for members of the public who were now separated from their usual providers and means of religious, spiritual, and emotional aid.
Product
Tapping on religious leaders and volunteers within our local interfaith landscape, the tool came in the form of an online community magazine leveraging on the power of shared stories from various faiths featuring articles helping with spiritual relief while contributing to a more versatile diversity.
Process
Magazine articles initially featured articles, reflections, and interviews by our own team volunteers as well as from a network of contacts from the interfaith landscape. Soon, we also began accepting and working with submissions from members of the public who loved the idea and wished to contribute while being stuck at home.
Our observations from community interest also led us to develop a sub-project and main feature for the magazine. This was a first of its kind online interfaith retreat, called ‘A Dose of Spirituality’, where we brought in religious leaders and expert spiritual retreat directors of various religious background to offer within the same episodes their take on certain spiritual themes relevant to community resilience during the pandemic.
Being Beings was proof that even a totally free, unplanned, community project could provide a platform that engaged people’s needs and help in the alleviation of the emotional weight of that moment.
Programmes
How can you or your community get involved?
As interest and engagements in our work has been rising quickly, we have unfortunately had to place the development of the Being Beings project on hold.
However, we are seeking either funding or a dedicated pool of talented volunteer contributors and editors to revive and maintain this noble ground-up community initiative.
For enquiries, ideas, and suggestions, you can drop us an email or schedule a call with us.
We’ll be excited to hear how you can help!
While the newsletter is being revamped and repositioned, enjoy the early Facebook page that got us started.