God’s Bespoken Blessing to EAST

Blessed Charity Ong joined EAST as an intern in 2019 to complete her Communication Master’s degree and then stayed on as a volunteer. She designed many of our EAST’s collaterals and equipped the Advancement Team with media design and communication skills. She is the design genius who helped to initiate the EAST’s rebranding project and came up with a new brand kit and logo. This happened as we relocated from 110 Middle Rd to our new permanent campus at 118 Joo Chiat Rd. Read about Blessed’s journey in her own words and her motivation to bless EAST for His glory.

Blessed’s Journey in Design & Communications

It is actually a story of creating and developing something out of nothing. My first ministry was being part of the Music Team. But as our church grows and expands its vision to becoming a church that adopts the digital trend, there came a need to fill in that gap. And as a young person at that time, with zero knowledge on all the media tools and softwares, I prayed and asked for my parents’ support to switch from my current college program to Multimedia Arts, to hone my skills and to help further the advancement of our church ministry. So I believe what I have in my hand at that moment is only a desire to serve and with that hope, that I want to be part of something great.

With all that God is doing in my life, from that first yes to His challenge of taking up – Arts Bachelor’s to Communication Master’s Degree, I have seen how He wants me to use and develop even further my God-given creativity for His greater ministry of reaching out to multi-generational audiences in the moving digital landscape.

Our community now has extended to the realm of digital audiences and crowds, and I believe the Church and the Word should be visible, reaching out and making a great impact in inspiring these digital communities. The vision is to be present where people are because ministry is all about people. It entails more than just being present but communicating His word that resonates with people’s hearts. I believe, it is not just a one-man show, but it is a collaborative work from people with the same “ready to serve” heart.

Her Experience as EAST’s Intern & Volunteer

I learned about EAST when I was still in the Philippines. I was browsing and looking for a Seminary in Singapore where I can continue my Master’s Program when I opted to pursue my overseas career. EAST is one of the many institutions I emailed that have replied, and gave me an opportunity for Supervised Ministry Internship for my Graduate Program.

The most enjoyable aspect of serving with EAST is being able to immerse myself with the circle of Christian Leaders who are also driven and passionate about being a blessing to more people by teaching, training, and developing leaders to fulfill the Great Commission. I am thrilled knowing that I get to be a part of the first step for audience to know about EAST through the creative visuals that I designed – enhancing visibility, creating awareness and continuously informing through creative communication. I am also happy and grateful for sharing my knowledge to the Advancement Team. I sensed a great joy seeing them thrive and so motivated, working on newly acquired skills and trying to upskill themselves. Another thing is the Branding Implementation which is a timely project because of the relocation of EAST from Middle Rd to Joo Chiat Rd.

The most challenging aspect for me is the fact that I am not a full time staff, and as much as I want to do a lot of things, I am bound by my own limitations in terms of time allotment. I cannot work as closely with the project and the people as I truly desire. So I found this to be a challenge, but by the grace of God and His strength, we will rethink and repurpose what is already on the table.

Blessed’s impression of EAST’s culture and strength 

I have felt that EAST is very accommodating and an organised institution.

I experienced it first hand when I emailed EAST and showed my interest for internship. They welcomed me and gave me a chance to be part of their growing team. They gave me an opportunity to make into reality all the abstract thoughts in my mind by being so supportive.

EAST is organised, and I think this is one of their strengths, being an institution of learning, it is very important to be organised and systematic.  It is characterised through their established sense of identity and direction, they know who they are, what they want to do, where is their destination, and what are they offering and this institution has a very great way to GO! Go EAST!

Blessed’s desire to equip EAST’s staff and faculty in design and communication

I love starting from nothing to something. And EAST is way advanced and a fertile ground for innovations and changes which give me so much enthusiasm, being a blessing to this institution and being part of accomplishing their vision.

I believe that it all starts with an eye opener and awareness that there is actually a need to fill in and when we are able to identify those, we can start to itemize them and think of tools, learnings, and styles that we can utilize for the advancement of EAST.

We can focus on Social Media Marketing, Optimizing our EAST website, and Upgrading the Online Learning Experience.

By focusing on Social Media Marketing which targets Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Linkedin, I think we make our visibility open to a very wide range of audiences irrespective of their location and demographics. Making an awareness and driving interest to potential students and stakeholders.

Another is, optimizing EAST website, this is our owned media, and this is essential, why? Because it is an online environment where potential students and stakeholders can easily understand who is EAST, in short it is an equivalent of a physical office where they can engage with the school, know more about the courses, enrol and pay.

Finally, upgrading the Online Learning Experience. The pandemic opened our eyes on the possibility of doing a full blast Online courses, and now that EAST is implementing a Hybrid Learning Experience which combines On-site and Online courses, I believe it is about time to explore digital teaching methods, digitizing modules, and being interactive to cater for highly digitalized potential students and learners. Which means a possibility of being in an online learning platform such as coursera, edx, and maximising Populi which EAST is already using.

Thanksgiving & Prayer Requests

Thankful for God’s protection, provision, and peace throughout the year. Being away from my family and facing the pandemic on a foreign land is a difficult and challenging situation. Emotions, fears, and tears could bring me down, but God is always faithful to bring in the joy of endurance, to hope that these too shall pass and will mold a stronger version of myself.

I pray right now for His strength and wisdom to be upon me as I continue to navigate on this journey of God’s calling, towards His great plans for me. It will not be a smooth-sailing ride, but I know that whenever He’s in my vessel, I can smile at the storm. And that is my hope.