However, not every girl leaves the system on such a positive note. Some continue to struggle and search for safety, security, love and their place in the world. But Tan believes the refuge is nonetheless important for these girls.
“I asked myself many times, what does success look like in my role? I still don’t have an answer,” she admitted.
“But I believe if a child doesn’t have parents who can care for them at the moment, then someone else will have to step in and perform that role as best as we can,” she said.
“Of course, try as we might, it’s not possible to replace their parents. And if they have lived all their lives having to fend for themselves, what can we expect of them, except to patiently sow into them, helping them to re-learn functional ways of living and functional ways of responding,” she added.
“Quoting from author Robert Louis Stevenson, I tell my staff: Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant,” she said.
It is Tan’s belief that as long as she has done her best for each child, she would have planted the seeds for a different and better life in the girl’s future, even if it does not manifest at the moment.
“That is the hope we place in our girls when situations may seem hopeless,” she said.