Last month we concluded our annual A-Listers campaign with a big splash out party at new club Bang Bang with readers, friends of the participants as well as sponsors and the folks from CARE, our chosen charity for the year. CARE will be directing the funds towards a new project called YouTHrive! that will help to encourage kids that have dropped out of school or are falling behind to return to an academic focus.
We also announced our four winners for the year, with Jack Ser taking the lead as the Top Fund-raiser of the year, Jeff Lin winning the Viewer’s Choice Award effortlessly, Alex Toh championing the Social Media Influencer and Michael Wrigley with the Most Inspiring challenge. In all, we raised over $107,000 for CARE through this year’s A-Listers campaign.
Not only did the mentees from CARE create a tribute video to the participants, we caught some highlights of the entire evening’s celebrations in a short clip, as well as as highlights of the entire campaign over the last few months. You can see more content on the A-Listers on YouTube, as well as our August Man A-Listers page. There’s also a bit of entertainment as we hosted our very own version of the Lip Sync Battle.
We interviewed the winners in the October issue of the magazine, out now on news stands, and here are some highlights from the magazine from them.
Michael Wrigley: I had said it to many people that the A-Listers competition is a little bit of theatre. You get the glamorous photo shoots, you get to dress up in cool clothes and be seen in cool clubs. Ultimately if you look up what an A-Lister is about – style, success and then finally, substance – as I did, you’d realise the last criterion isn’t so easy to come by. Substance is a hard word to define but I got to see that from all the A-Listers this year.
Alex Toh: I learnt one very important thing from CARE and it is that being a positive role model to the youths is extremely crucial. It may feel like such a small thing to watch what you say and how you behave around them but the impact is actually quite large. I remember an incident when we were playing laser-tag with the kids. The A-Listers, as adults, were the ones leading the teams at first but after a couple of games, one boy who was quite shy at the beginning, stepped up and volunteered to be the guy protecting the “Master Chief” (a Halo reference for the uninitiated). His initiative really surprised me.
Jeff Lin: I think my biggest takeaway is how much fun I had interacting with the youths, either at the clinic or cooking with them. It was great to be given the opportunity to impart whatever I know about health and nutrition, the two things I’m really passionate about, to them. I didn’t realise how great it would feel, to contribute to the community here in Singapore.
Jack Ser: In terms of charity work, I have signed the interested youths from CARE up for further painting sessions. I’m not in the best position to teach it, being colour blind and all, but I wanted to support any of the youths’ interest in the arts.
In the meantime, if you would like to donate to CARE, our campaign on Give Asia continues till the 31st of October. Do make a donation through one of the A-Listers if you wish, or directly to CARE as well if you prefer.