My Wyndham: Phebe Yeo has lived in Point Cook for 10 years. She is a volunteer with the Point Cook Cultural Community and also runs a multicultural education business called 8Senses.
What do you like about being involved with the Point Cook Cultural Community?
Through the Point Cook Cultural Community, I’ve gotten to know other communities, not just Asian ones, I’ve got to know people who are so committed to the community.
I also completed the Building Blocks Community Leadership Program, which is supported by Wyndham council and Victoria University. For that, me and two other ladies did a project which reached out to senior citizens.
What inspired you to start 8Senses?
I started 8Senses because I love to do community work. My community work blossomed when friends invited me to join the Point Cook Cultural Community. I am a bilingual worker, I deal a lot with young kids and I love to tell stories, I realised people enjoy my stories and I do make them laugh.
I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but never had the chance. I give children an opportunity to come and learn and to teach others, they enjoy it. When I teach and I see that children want to teach others, I am very, very happy.
I wouldn’t have been able to do this without my family, especially my sister. She is a ceramic pottery artist and she sends cultural things across to me.
She sponsored two of her friends to come here to help me, who helped me to learn different things. They gave the confidence to do lantern-making workshops. We learned how to make traditional red packet lanterns, called hong pows, together.
What do you like about Point Cook?
The people. I have made more friends in my 10 years living here than 38 years in Singapore. We are so open about getting to know each other here. Most of us don’t have extended families here. At Indian festivals there are not just Indian friends, but people from all cultures. My husband is a car salesman. He says to people: ‘If you buy a car, my wife will cook you Hainanese chicken rice.’ We have made many friends this way. Also, when we miss local foods, we have people who say, ‘We cook for you, come over’. I can easily say there are 200 families I know who live in Wyndham.
