“We wanted to create more than a programme. We wanted to build a community where every child belongs, every family feels supported, and no one is left behind.”
– Min Yee Cheo, Founder, Ark Social
ABC stands for three simple words: Access. Belong. Connect.
For many families raising a child with special needs, these are everyday realities that are often overlooked.
Access remains a challenge, as finding suitable programmes that support both social development and recreation can be difficult, costly, or simply unavailable. Even when such services exist, they do not always foster a true sense of belonging and connection is often limited, leaving persons with disabilities isolated and lacking opportunities to build meaningful relationships with peers within a supportive community.
These quiet, persistent gaps shaped the foundation of ABC Hangout, a community-based inclusion programme by Ark Social, a social impact organisation that provides accessible, affordable, and evidence-based support for individuals with autism, ADHD and other neurodivergent profiles.
Access: Opening Doors That Were Once Closed
Long before ABC Hangout began, its founder, Min Yee Cheo, had spent years working in early intervention with children with autism.
Through this work, one challenge became increasingly clear: many families were looking for more opportunities where their children could learn, play, and build social connections in a natural and supportive environment.
This eventually led to the creation of ABC Hangout under Ark Social where persons with disabilities could interact and learn through shared activities in dedicated spaces.
Belong: Creating Spaces That Feel Safe and Real
Access alone is not enough. While a programme may be available, it can still feel distant. Families are often seeking something that is harder to define: a sense of belonging.
ABC Hangout was designed with this in mind, creating a community where children, youths and young adults feel accepted and included. Sessions are kept intentionally small, usually around eight persons, so each participant is seen, understood, and supported closely. Youth volunteers shape the experience by consistently engaging with participants, encouraging interaction, and creating a space that feels like a natural social community. For many children, these relationships become just as rewarding as the activities themselves.
Every eight weeks, the programme rotates its focus to a new sports or arts theme. Each session combines one hour of evidence-based social skills and life skills development, coupled with interactive games and an hour of the featured sport or art, with activities structured progressively to help children build confidence over time.
The focus is not only on teaching skills, but on helping children experience friendship, trust, and participation in ways that feel real and enjoyable. Behavioural strategies are customised, and progress is measured through clear, practical milestones.
Can a child hold a floorball stick correctly? Can they kick the ball into the correct goal? Can they regulate their emotions and respond appropriately when they lose a game? Can they take turns? Can they respond to a peer? Are they able to chat with others about what they did during the holidays or what they like to do for fun? Can they work as a team by collaborating with their peers and youth volunteers to plan and prepare for events that benefit our community?
These steps may seem small, but for many families, they represent a significant change.
Over time, the environment becomes familiar. The participants begin recognising faces, anticipating sessions, and feeling comfortable enough to express themselves freely. They began showing up not just because they have to, but because they want to.
For Zhengquan, a 15-year-old participant, this sense of belonging has been transformative.
After joining about a year and a half ago, he became more confident and expressive. He now recognises friends from the programme in school, greets them, and sometimes takes photos together. More recently, he stepped up to become an emcee for an ABC Hangout event, he also led and guided his peers in a song-and-dance performance that showcased the talents of our participants and even organised a scavenger hunt with his peers to provide participants with clues to the various locations.
What began as a weekly activity has become part of his social world.
“I look forward to coming,” he says. “I get to play sports with my friends.”
Belonging is not something that can be taught. It is something children experience through relationships, consistency, and being part of a community that welcomes them as they are.
Connect: Bridging Communities Through Shared Experience
If access opens doors and belonging creates comfort, connection is what allows inclusion to grow beyond the programme itself.
At ABC Hangout, these connections are built not only among participants, but also through the volunteers who take part in each session.
Working with junior colleges, secondary schools and community partners, Ark Social recruits and trains student volunteers to take part in sessions and build positive connections with children with special needs. To date, nearly 200 student volunteers have been part of the programme.
More than just assisting facilitators, the student volunteers become part of the social environment. Their presence helps sessions feel more natural, energetic, and peer-driven, creating opportunities for children to build friendships and interact with others in ways that extend beyond structured activities.
And sometimes, these connections reveal themselves and make a difference in unexpected ways.
In one football session, a young boy struggled to participate and stay engaged. While it was suggested that his parents consider activities better suited to his interests, his mother chose to continue bringing him to sessions.
A student volunteer later noticed the boy’s strong interest in mathematics and began incorporating numbers into the activity. Gradually, the session was adapted to engage him in a way that felt natural.
Over time, the boy began participating more actively and eventually joined friendly matches with his peers.
What changed was not simply the activity itself, but the relationships around him: a parent who persisted, a volunteer who paid attention, and a programme willing to adapt to the child rather than expecting the child to adapt alone.
It is through these shared experiences that connection becomes inclusion.
The impact of ABC Hangout also extends beyond the children.
As families return week after week, parents and caregivers naturally begin forming connections through shared experiences and mutual understanding. Over time, these interactions grow into informal support networks and a stronger sense of community, where families feel supported, and seen.
The Role of ELI Grant
Behind every session of ABC Hangout, is the support that helped turn the programme from an idea into a sustained community initiative.
The ELI Grant did more than fund a programme. It enabled Ark Social to subsidise participation for lower-income families, including those holding blue and orange CHAS cards. Today, around 40-50 per cent of participants come from these groups. It also made it possible to secure venues, engage facilitators, and run sessions consistently during its early stages of growth.
The SG Enable backing behind the ELI Grant also gave Ark Social the stability to strengthen its model and expand its community network over time. Through engagement with the broader ecosystem, Ark Social was able to build relationships with schools, volunteers, community partners, and potential supporters who could contribute to the programme’s longer-term sustainability.
This has been especially important as ABC Hangout continues to grow and serve more families. Rather than remaining a short-term initiative, the programme has gradually developed a wider base of community support through partnerships, volunteer involvement, and ongoing collaboration.
The guidance and ecosystem support surrounding the ELI Grant also helped Ark Social refine its approach and strengthen programme delivery as it scaled.
A Community That Continues To Grow
To date, ABC Hangout has engaged around 70 to 80 children, youths and young adults and nearly 200 volunteers, but its impact goes far beyond numbers. It is reflected in how these children grow, not just in what they can do, but how they feel – more confident, more comfortable, and more connected.
“It has become a community,” Min Yee shares. “And you can’t just stop a community.”
