On the Wild Side

Former national athletes Zhang Tingjun and Joscelin Yeo share how they are instilling the spirit of adventure in the young through their survival camps at Into The Wild

- Hashirin Nurin Hashim

W hen they first became friends three years ago through a shared interest in mountain biking, former national athletes Zhang Tingjun and Joscelin Yeo realised that they had a lot more in common. Among them are the little ones in their lives—Yeo’s four children and Zhang’s eight nephews and nieces—whom the duo would take on various adventures on the weekends, either separately or together, and ever so often that their friends and family started asking, “Can you take our kids?”.

So when her sister suggested they run adventure camps, “but in a more structured way, so that people can send their kids to us”, Zhang says, “we [Yeo and she] sat down and asked ourselves how we can add value to what was already available in Singapore”.

They started by looking at their own experiences and background. Zhang, who played netball for Singapore, is the former executive director of disaster relief agency Mercy Relief, where she responded to earthquakes, tsunamis and countless natural disasters. Yeo is a four-time Olympian and Singapore’s Swim Queen, who still holds the record for the most golds in the history of the Southeast Asian Games. “We were looking to bring all of these elements together,” says Zhang.

And that was how Into The Wild came about. Through a series of three-hour-long adventure camps, often held in the forests of Bukit Timah, Into The Wild brings children, four to 12 years old, closer to nature and equips them with first-aid skills to respond to wilderness emergencies.