“With a smile on his face, the little boy said to me: ‘My mother jumped. My father killed her boyfriend. I come to school because I have to tell.’”

That was 17 years ago and the little boy’s revelation shocked Sister Victorine Fernandez, who was then teaching in a boy’s school. She chose to resign from teaching and go into full-time counselling.

The Catholic nun from the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary says, “At that time I had 40 students in my class, and I knew there were problems with some of the boys, but this boy shocked me. I couldn’t continue teaching.

“I wanted to get into another sphere where I could directly help students like him,” she adds.

Today, she works as a counsellor at the Poverello Teen Centre in Tampines Street 12 that was set up for students from Hai Sing Catholic School nine years ago, but is now open to any youth in need.   

Through counselling at the school, she discovered the students had few places to go to when classes ended. She says that the school did a survey, “and found that the students wanted some place not far from school, and yet far away.”

 

Reaching youth

“Here, we try to enter the lives of young people by giving them life skills,” Sister Victorine says. The youths arrive at the Centre in the afternoon, and attend programmes like guitar playing, kayaking, and even lessons in Japanese drums.

She explains, “We want to engage them to build self-esteem, self-confidence, which helps them focus on their studies.”

Berwin Tan Wei Han, 18, a Hai Sing alumnus, says he first went to the Poverello Teen Centre in Secondary Two to learn kayaking.

“The first time we met,” Berwin says, “I thought she was a very jolly person, and a while ago, I had a long chat with her. It turned out that she loved music, too.”

 

Not ‘holy moly’

After working with youths for almost two decades, Sister Victorine has touched many lives. She recalls, “There was a girl who came to see me at the Principal’s recommendation.

“The girl was one who was really out with boys, out at discos, but her mother was a beautician who was not ready to give her freedom.

“But she got pregnant.”

Sister Victorine adds, “She came to see me, but was apprehensive because I’m a sister, what do I know about sexuality?

“Somehow or other, she didn’t find me to be someone who was holy moly – someone who was going to just spout about God.

“I gave her a number of options, and the issue of whether she should keep the child came up. But as a counsellor, I cannot force my moral opinions on people.

“She invited me to her wedding, and had a little boy. Being married got her through, but the last I heard from her, she had broken up with the boy, and the son was with him.

“For me, that was still something, because I had helped someone achieve her own sense of life. Wrong, right, isn’t the issue for me.”

If you need help, call the Poverello Teen Centre at 6544-2603. The Centre is at Blk 166 Tampines St 12 #01-357, Singapore 521166