National movement to encourage more caring S’poreans
Pedestrians at Orchard Road. TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — A new national movement to get Singaporeans to help the less fortunate is on the cards, even as the authorities wrapped up a series of engagement sessions on shaping Singapore’s future.
And Singaporeans can also tap a S$25 million fund announced earlier to continue developing their ground-up projects to benefit the community.
The new movement, called SGCares, will be jointly launched by three ministries — Social and Family Development; Health; and Culture, Community and Youth.
Speaking at the launch of the SGfuture report yesterday, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, Grace Fu, co-chairman of the engagement series, said the three ministries would coordinate their resources to encourage volunteerism.
“(We want) to do a stocktake of where are the needs … and also look at how can we encourage the VWOs (voluntary welfare organisations) and community partners in these sectors to embrace more volunteers,” said Ms Fu. This would involve managing, training and engaging volunteers, and creating a more meaningful experience for them, she added. More details will be spelled out when SGCares is launched later this year.
Held from last November to last month, more than 8,300 people participated in 121 SGfuture engagement sessions organised around four themes: A caring community, a cleaner, greener and smarter home, a secure and resilient nation and a learning people.
Over 60 project ideas thrown up during the sessions have since been implemented, and some 1,300 participants are working on these projects. They include a total defence crisis simulation game that puts students in role-playing activities.
Come Thursday, those who intend to initiate projects that help build national identity or serve community needs can also apply to the S$25 million Our Singapore Fund announced during Budget in March.
Citizen groups, non-profit organisations and youth social enterprises can apply for funding at www.sg. The project should promote the Singapore spirit and shared values, foster a sense of ownership in the community and be sustainable over time. Projects can receive up to S$50,000 or 80 per cent of their expenditure.
Differentiating the SGfuture series from previous engagement sessions, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Mr Chan Chun Sing, the other co-chairman for the series, said they reflected a “gradual evolution” in how authorities engage Singaporeans. “We are not just talking about something, we want to start a movement whereby Singaporeans come forward to do something together. It’s not just about a dialogue, conversation, but it is a movement to create the capacity for us to achieve together,” he said.
The SGfuture report — which features selected projects from the sessions, the project owners and volunteers — is “less about policies, but what people are coming together to do”, he said.
While Mr Chan noted that the move towards “co-creating” solutions is partly due to a more educated population, Ms Fu said the SGfuture series had taken a cue from the Our Singapore Conversation series, where “a very loud voice has come from participants that they want to participate, they want to have a say, they want to understand, they want to be involved”.
There will be difficult decisions for Government, she said, but through consultation more people would understand the background, the information and trade-offs involved.
Quoting a participant, Mr Chan said: “Nobody feels a sense of ownership or attachment to a country just by taking things and receiving things that’s given to them. But everybody feels that sense of ownership when everybody participates in creating that country of ours.”
