Farid was born and raised in Singapore. He graduated from National University of Singapore with an Honours Degree in Law. After serving as a Deputy Public Prosecutor and State Council, he decided to develop his passion for education & personal growth. He has over 23 years of experience in training and development as well as consulting. His has designed & delivered customized programmes for a wide range of clients in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Bhutan, China, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Guyana. Farid and his family moved to Australia in December 2009.
Prior to setting up Shorea, he was a Deputy Director with Singapore’s People’s Association’s (www.pa.gov.sg) Inter-Ethnic Engagement Unit and the founding Director with the Singapore International Foundation’s (www.sif.org.sg) Youth Expedition Project. He was an Adjunct Faculty member at Singapore’s National Institute of Education (www.nie.edu.sg) (A school within the Nanyang Technological University) and Republic Polytechnic (www.rp.edu.sg)
Farid’s key focus since 2005 has been Citizenship Education (referred to as National Education (NE) in Singapore) & Diversity/Cultural Competency Training. Since 2007, Farid has been engaged by the Office of Teacher Education, National Institute of Education to design and deliver training workshops for pre-service teachers (Diploma, Degree and Postgraduate Diploma) in the facilitation of “National Education”. He does similar training programmes for the Ministry of Education (HQ), Singapore Discovery Centre (www.sdc.com.sg) , Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (www.mcys.gov.sg) , Onepeople.sg (www.onepeople.sg) , the People’s Association and directly with various educational institutions. The details of these workshops are listed below.
Although resident in Mandurah, Western Australia since December 2009, Farid still volunteers as a board member of the Harmony Centre (www.harmonycentre.sg) and as an EXCO member of the Singapore Canoe Federation (www.scf.org.sg) . He is involved in conservation of Singapore’s coral reef marine heritage as chairman of the Singapore Blueplan Committee as part of the 2008 International Year of the Reef (www.iyor08singapore.blogspot.com). In 2006, Farid co-founded the Explorations in Ethnicity (EiE) initiative, now administered by Onepeople.sg (www.onepeople.sg) . In 2007, he co-founded the Explorations into Faiths (EIF) interfaith engagement programme (www.eif.com.sg) under Southeast Community Development Council where he continues to be active in organizing regular monthly interfaith dialogues (since 2007). Farid is also a life member of the Inter Religious Organisation, Singapore (www.iro.org.sg) where he volunteers as a facilitator.
