Should scholarship providers be Santa or be like an Asian parent?

Leading up to Christmas, I remember two schools of thought from last year:

• My friends who work hard at keeping the magic alive for their kids
• On the other hand, I have friends like Elisha who is (jokingly!) petitioning to cancel Santa

Which led me to ask myself the question:

Why don’t we take this chance to teach children about gratitude and the value of hard work?

Elisha’s mother told young Elisha that Santa doesn’t exist, and that Elisha should be thanking her for her present. After all, it was her hard work that provided Elisha with the present.

One of my favourite Asian youtuber, Wongfu posted last Christmas:

“...Making sure our boy knows that all these presents were from real people who care about him and spent inflation money.. and not some random dude who shows up in the middle of the night out of thin air...”

For me, I came from parents who had never given me anything for Christmas. So gift-giving was a concept that I never really understood. But as Solve Education! provides learning incentives to underprivileged youth (above 13 years old), I started giving this some thought.

We (SE!) have been very intentional in our giving.

Having personally witnessed how charity can lead to reliance and eventually the sense of entitlement.?

It is important for youth to understand that hard work is required to improve their lives.

In the real world, we can’t expect people to give us opportunities or free passes.

Hence unlike other scholarship/learning programs, our scholars are required to “do the work”, i.e. learn and show learning improvements, before earning/getting the recognition - instead of getting the rewards upfront.

The Solve Education! scholar’s journey is simple:

#1: Play to learn on our platforms

#2: Achieve learning improvements through consistent learning

#3: Earn scholarships/grants

Education is more than just curriculum, it is also the values that the students take away - that will help them succeed in life.

We believe that education goes beyond curriculum, i.e. the content. We place even more emphasis on how the program is designed around education.

I would love to hear what your thoughts are!