Beads of perspiration trickled down Seah Keng Tia's cheeks. Awaiting updates of the PSI reading during the morning on 3rd October (Saturday), he was keeping his fingers crossed that the haze would clear up. Otherwise, 60 teams and 300 youth participants of the Young NTUC SG50 Amazing Race would have been left disappointed at Orchid Country Club.

Thankfully, the haze steered clear. If not, the efforts put in by the working committee of the event, formed by 9 young youth leaders would have come to naught.

The idea of the SG50 Amazing Race, a race to celebrate Young NTUC's 10th anniversary and the nation's 50th birthday, was mooted as early as April. And in spite of their busy personal schedules, the committee, led by Young NTUC Chairperson Seah Keng Tia, made it a point to hold fortnightly meetings in the past six months to plan for this event.

Even though Seah has had extensive experience in organising events for Young NTUC members, the recent SG50 Amazing Race proved to be a new challenge as this was the biggest ground-up joint-union event for Young NTUC in recent years.

"The working committee was excited that as many as 14 unions were going to participate in the SG50 Amazing Race. However, at the same time, we understood that the committee had to work hard to address the diverse concerns and expectations of the different stakeholders." - Seah

Fortunately, Seah had the help of active committee members like Ansari, who had a pleasant and enjoyable experience as part of this working committee.

"For example, the assignment of roles within the committee went through smoothly. Some of us volunteered for roles that we had experience in. For example, Brother Mike took up the role of Safety Assessor since he was trained as a Safety Officer. As for me, I volunteered to take care of the logistics. Everyone also played their part in garnering support for the event and over the past half a year, all of us established close friendships." - Ansari

The hard work of the working committee paid off as the SG50 Amazing Race successfully kicked off at 9am.

At each station, the participants worked together in their respective teams to complete a specific task (jigsaw puzzle etc) at each station. In addition, Young NTUC and Singapore-related trivia questions were also randomly placed at each station and bonus points were given to teams with the correct answers.

Besides having lots of fun, many of the participants, including Geneive, got to visit iconic landmarks and union offices all over Singapore. This reminded them of trade unions and workers’ contributions to the development of Singapore.

"During The SG50 Amazing Race, I managed to find out more about the historic reasons of how and why the unions were formed many years ago. This gave me an insight on how important the union is to all the workers in Singapore." - Geneive

One team from Young HDBSU displayed plenty of wit and speed as they completed their tasks to form three bingo lines in the fastest time possible, clinching the top prize. They took home and shared $500 worth of shopping vouchers. Besides the top three winners, seven other teams also won bonus prizes by performing a team cheer respectively. Amazingly, these cheers were conceptualised on the spot, a testament to the energy and creativity of our youth participants!