SINGAPORE - A series of Straits Times stories about how the pandemic has affected the job prospects and life plans of young people across the region has been honoured by philanthropic group The Majurity Trust.
It rated the reports in the Insight feature "Will Covid-19 create a 'lost generation' in Asia?" as the best story for November in the group's monthly Stories of A Pandemic (Soap) Awards.
Ms Yuen, 28, said: "We hope these stories can help readers better understand the psyche and perspectives of youth who are coming of age amid an unprecedented crisis, and who will be the ones showing us the way forward in a post-Covid-19 world."
ST also bagged two other wins and three merit awards at the Soap Awards, which recognise contributions by writers, photographers and artists who provided impactful stories related to the pandemic.
The awards span three categories - best story, commentary and visual - with the latest batch for entries published between last September and January this year.
The judges are veteran journalists and editors in Singapore.
These images were an ode to how the pandemic affected people from various walks of life and accelerated everything digital.
They were produced for Home in Focus, a weekly series of visual features by The Straits Times Picture Desk that documents various facets of Singapore.
PHOTO: ST FILE
PHOTO: ST
<p>Mr Jamaludin Othman and his wife Madam Rahmah Abdul Rahim. Married for 45 years, the couple have two daughters and four grandsons. During the circuit breaker, Mr Jamaludin learned how to use video call so he could call his friends and learnt how to use Zoom because the Arabic class he attends had to go online. His family had to celebrate Hari Raya together over Zoom.</p>
PHOTO: ST
Ms Neo, 37, said: "When Covid-19 hit last year, the immediate focus at first was on the medical front. As time passed, there was a need to look at how the pandemic has impacted everyone in the community."
She added that the pandemic has forced everyone to embrace a "virtual reality" as people moved online to learn, work and communicate. "It changed the way we lived as we learned to deal without physical presence."
<p>Ang Mo Kio resident Jessie Teo (left), teaching her 73-year-old neighbour, Madam Ong Lee Toh, how to make video calls using her phone at the Touchpoint@AMK 433 community hub. Madam Ong is now able to make WhatsApp video calls to her daughter and grandson, who live in Switzerland.</p>
Meanwhile, a cartoon by artist Sonny Liew and the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health infectious diseases expert Hsu Li Yang won best visual for December.
#TAPED is one of ST Picture Desk's pictorial representations of words they associated with 2020, which won a merit award for best visual.
PHOTO: ST
<p>Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Li Huarong preparing Chinese herbs at Yu Sheng Tang (TCM) Clinic in Bishan on May 5, 2020. The pandemic has impacted human health and well-being around the world, and healing the body, mind and spirit will take time.</p>
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PHOTO: ST
The work, which explains the science behind the coronavirus and vaccinations, was carried in the ST's science pages and offered exclusively to the paper.
Other Soap award winners include a team from Channel News Asia who bagged January's story of the month for their feature on how people's lives have been changed a year into the pandemic.
Journalists Navene Elangovan and Tan Yin Lin from TODAYonline also won the same award in January for their story on how TraceTogether users responded when the Government first said their data can be obtained by the police for criminal investigations.
