International Friendship Day 2025

9 Apr 2025

Schools in Singapore commemorate International Friendship Day (IFD) on the 3rd Friday of Term 2 each year. This special day helps students learn about Singapore’s connections with our neighbours and beyond. The theme from 2025 to 2027, “Singapore: Forging Friendships in a Complex World”, reminds us that strong friendships and understanding across cultures remain important even in a fast-changing world.

Through fun activities and meaningful discussions, our students discovered the diverse traditions and lifestyles of people across ASEAN. By learning more about different cultures, our students are better prepared to build lasting friendships and contribute to a more connected and caring world.

The focus of our IFD recess activity was the language of some of our Southeast Asian neighbours. Students were encouraged to learn simple greetings such as “How are you?” and “Goodbye” in Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, and Tamil. Before the activity, teachers guided students to log in to the Student Learning Space (SLS) to listen to the audio clips and practise the greetings.

Over two days, booths were set up at the parade square where students could try out the greetings they had learnt. It was heartening to see students eagerly queuing up to recall and recite the phrases. Those who did so successfully received a colourful sticker shaped like a country’s outline with its flag printed on it. The stickers were so popular that supply couldn’t keep up with demand!

For the morning assembly programme, our STAR CCA members put up two cultural performances. One featured two girls acting as classmates working on a project, sharing fun facts about Thai culture. The second skit had everyone laughing. It featured an English businessman, unfamiliar with Asian dining etiquette, being overwhelmed by a generous host who kept serving him food!

The programme ended on a musical note with our invited guests, an ex-student and her mother, who performed a medley of ethnic songs and brought the commemoration to a cheerful close.