Filling Singapore’s Jar - one act of giving at a time

Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth & Second Minister for Law, at the President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards (PVPA) on 13 November 2024

1. I am so delighted to join you at the President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards (PVPA) again this evening. Thank you very much to all of you for your presence.
2. This evening, of course, we honour the award winners, but I would like to start by saying that everyone here is a winner in your own right. Each of you giving, big or small; paying it back or paying it forward. All of us, all of you, have played a big role in making Singapore a lot more inclusive, a lot more caring and certainly one where we can properly call home, today as well as for the next generation of Singaporeans who come after us.
3. Our PVPA recipients and nominees embody what we call a “democracy of deeds”.  Taking action, leading by example, exemplifying the spirit that all of us, big or small, individuals, corporates, community organisations, social entrepreneurs; all of us have a role to play in making our community better. Making Singapore a society where each of us is seen and cared for, not just by our family and friends, and our loves ones, but by our neighbours and our wider community.
4. I think all of you would agree with me that Singapore is a caring, generous society. We saw all of this come to life in Covid. Caring for one another irrespective of the dangers and risks to ourselves, look after our neighbours. And when there is a humanitarian crisis overseas, Singaporeans invariably try and lean forward, to find ways in which they, despite being thousands of miles away, can play a part to contribute. And when we see media reports on individuals or families facing difficulties, many Singaporeans reach out to find out who these people are, how they can help and in what fashion they can contribute.
5. And I believe that NVPC’s surveys bear this out. The volunteerism rate rose to 30 percent last year, after dipping over the COVID years.
6. But despite that I think we all agree that we can do more. We should not rest on our laurels, and I think we should lean forward a lot more. I look at our care landscape with a metaphor that I think one usually associates with the different scenarios, and I thought it applies to us in this way— if you think of the care that we give to Singaporeans as a jar, we fill up the jar with big rocks.
7. And the big rocks will be government policy, efforts by large institutions but it will never be full just with big rocks alone. We need the small pebbles and we need the bits of sand, big and small, and when you put them all in, collectively, they become full, compact and complete. And I think this is what we are all doing, all of you, play the part of the little pebble, a little bit of sand, coming into the jar, making it full. And I think the award winners tonight, exemplify of being the little pebble that makes a difference. 
8. As the pinnacle award for volunteering and philanthropy, the PVPA plays an important role in fostering a culture of giving in Singapore. To encourage more people and organisations to give back, whether it is through structured programmes like corporate volunteering initiatives, or even more simple or informal mechanisms like when a neighbour is in need or a peer in need.
9. The stories of the PVPA recipients and nominees show us that each of us can give back in a myriad of different ways. Whether you are a young student, working adult or senior, an SME, large-listed company, small corporate, small entrepreneurship— you can make a difference.

Celebrating our awardees

10. This year, NVPC received 294 nominations across 10 award categories. And you heard earlier from Mr Seah that in some categories there were choices that the judges, just could not decide between and we had more than one. I am told that this is first-time in a long-time, or not at all, that we had more than one winner in three categories. 
11. There has been a significant number of high-quality nominations this year, we had: People of Good (Open) category, Leaders of Good (Adult) category, as well as Organisations of Good (SME) category where there was more than one winner. 
12. And our PVPA recipients show us what is the power of possible. I don’t think I can do justice to this speech if I didn’t at least mention, some of our recipients. 
13. Our first winner, People of Good (Student) Award, Pan Xi, illustrates this. Pan Xi shows us that, she’s 16 years old by the way, she shows that you’re never too young. She’s motivated and driven by her personal philosophy and she says that “small actions, big difference” and I think this is what she means.
1. She volunteers at Oasis Learning Centre, where she conducts regular English lessons and learning journeys for migrant children and underprivileged children.
2. While managing schoolwork and other commitments, she and her classmates have clocked 400 volunteer hours in 2023 alone. 400 volunteer hours— caring for someone else, making sure that you make a difference in society.
3. The children’s language skills have improved, they feel more confident, able to socialise and interact with their peers. And some of these children have themselves gone on to pay if forward in their own way, in their own communities.
4. I believe that this shows you the exponential power of contribution— you give, and they give more, and after a while, it cascades and makes a big difference in society. In my example, it fills up the jar. She is also an active volunteer with the North-West youth assembly under North-West CDC since 2022. An amazing young woman.
14. If Pan Xi shows us that it is never too young to give back where you can to society, then you’re also never too old. You’re never, at any age, disbarred from contributing back to society. And I want to talk about our next three winners, Mr Ellil Mathiyan Lakshamanan.
1. Ellil was diagnosed with Rectal and Testicular Cancer at the same time in 2021. He lost both parents to cancer. He has himself since recovered, but the surgeries have left him with a permanent stoma.
2. But unlike many of us, he’s not let that difficulty impede his ability to contribute and give back to society. And he says rather than letting his illnesses define him, or constraint him, he found a renewed purpose in life – that he needed to support others like himself.
3. He realised having gone through that experience, that it can be sometimes lonely, difficult and he used all that experience to decide that he wants to give back to people, who are in his position. Particularly those that are newly diagnosed with cancer or live with a stoma.
4. He believes cancer survivors can still give back and is committed to fostering widespread participation amongst the cancer community.
5. One example is the Relay for Life, a global movement which raises funds and awareness for the cancer cause which Ellil has been active since 2017 and continues to be.
6. For this year’s event, he rallied a team of more than 100 members which brought together more than 9,000 people, raising a total of $1.6 million dollars in that event alone. Thank you very much, Ellil.
15. Dr Vasoo and Mr Koh Juay Meng are our co-winners of the Leader of Good (Adult) category, and I think they are very familiar to us.
1. Dr Vasoo has been a pillar of Singapore’s social service sector for the past 5 decades. He has, of course, served as a parliamentarian as well and he is often known as the “poor man’s MP”. Not the poor MP, but the “poor man’s MP”, and “father of community work” in Singapore. And I think that is not for no good reason.
2. One of his earliest achievements was helping start the Ang Mo Kio Social Service Centre in the 1970s, which filled the gap of providing accessible services to the vulnerable.
3. Long before it was fashionable to think of social entrepreneurship, trying to help the vulnerable in society, having structures and systems, Dr Vasoo was at the forefront of all of this.
4. He is himself, a firm believer of the “Many Helping Hands” approach, and it has seen him work across grassroots, social service agencies, academia and political leadership. And Dr Vasoo was instrumental in stitching all of this together to make a cohesive form, when it comes to delivering care and delivering service. Thank you very much Dr Vasoo, we continue to learn from you.
16. Juay Meng has a long track record, and I have come across Juay Meng many times in his work at RSVP. Juay Meng says that caring and giving back (are) very much part of his family values. And he relates it with first-hand experience.
1. As a child he saw how his own father, coming from a difficult background, cared deeply for his family, his peers, and having time despite all of those challenges, to think about the community that he lives in. Despite being an immigrant in Singapore.
2. This profoundly shaped his own worldview, inspired Juay Meng to give and serve as well. To him, Singapore is his home, and the community is his family.
3. Under his stewardship as chairman, RSVP Singapore was appointed as the National Centre of Excellence for Senior Volunteerism.
4. He sees senior volunteerism as a catalyst for change and makes sure that seniors, with their wealth of experience, their skills, and sometimes, you do need to have that bit of grey hair, to have a bit of experience and show the way, mentors, leads; and that is what RSVP Singapore does. Thank you very much Juay Meng for all your contributions.
17. In the same way, like individuals, our corporates play a big part in filling up the jar as well. They play an important role in contributing to the social good and I am very pleased to report that this year, we received a surge in nominations from the Company of Good network.
1. This is a very heartening trend, one that I hope to see continue, to see more companies – big, small, from whatever backgrounds– step up.
18. I want to mention a few, one of which is Foreword Coffee. I saw Foreword Coffee earlier, they told me I should try their coffee which I will. But I want to say something about what they have done for our community.
1. Their business model is design around a conviction that we must increase social inclusion of those with disabilities and mental health needs. And they walk the talk: 80% of their staff are differently abled or have mental health needs.
2. They have made good on their mission, to mainstream disability and normalize inclusion. They developed the Employment Placement Programme with the aim of increasing employability and employment rate of persons with disabilities. So it not just talked about a theory, but they have a plan to make that work across the industry.
3. The programme has benefitted about 20 special education needs in the past 2 years and there are plans to help close to 50 more in the pipeline.
4. But more than just doing it and practising it, they play a big part in advocating it as well. I think, we sometimes underestimate how important social advocacy is. And Foreword Coffee has conducted 46 advocacy and awareness sessions to promote inclusivity for the differently abled, reaching over 2,000 individuals in two years.
5. So not just practising it, but really, sharing the mindshare, having that mindshare, philosophy behind inclusion is really important. Thank you very much to Foreword Coffee.
19. I want to mention Camp Cacti as well and I think it’s a lovely story because it’s not just one or two corporates coming together but several with different backgrounds, some big, some small. Some are newer, some are older, established, but coming together for a common purpose.
1. Camp Cacti started because partner agencies of vulnerable children found that these children were not meaningfully engaged during school holidays. Many of you are just out of school holidays now, sometimes you do need to have a good programme to educate kids.
2. While these social service agencies were keen to do something about this, there were resource constraints.
3. CapitaLand Hope Foundation came to learn of it. They stepped in, agreed to work with the Yellow Ribbon Singapore to run Camp Cacti couple of years ago.
4. While the programme started initially as a pilot to help others, many volunteers actually formed bonds with these children. So when they came to volunteer and take part in the programme, they themselves developed a bond with the participants, with the children and they came back thereafter, regularly to keep up with the children, follow-up on them, see how they were doing.
5. And I think these bonds are very meaningful, not the sort of one-off camp where you come join for a couple of days and go off, and you forget. But these occasions leave us a lasting bond and a lasting impact on our children./li>
6. And there’s also a magic that happens when you help others, you are also, in many ways, helping yourselves. A CapitaLand volunteer shared that volunteering at the camp allowed her to reflect on her own interactions with her family members. Sometimes realising that, perhaps with the hustle and bustle of going to work and the challenges of daily living, we sometimes forget who our loved ones are.
7. And perhaps it takes an occasion like this, when you are giving back to reflect on yourself. And she says that she has also applied some of these thinking and theories and principles into the way she interacts with her own family members.
8. The success of the camp has also attracted other partners to step-up and I understand that there are even talks for others to come in to host the camp in CapitaLand Hope Foundation’s space.
9. I hope that comes to fruition but thank you very much to all of you. I am not sure how four of you came to start this off, but you might want to tell that story to other corporates and other members in this space so that they can also think about collaboration. And collaboration often comes with partners from very different backgrounds, and I think together, you can collectively become better than the sum of your parts.
20. Finally, large enterprises have also been doing their part.
1. Everyone knows Singtel, our homegrown telecommunications and digital services giant. (Singtel) taps on its own strengths as a technology company to bridge the digital divide.
2. They run workshops on topics like digital literacy and very relevant today, scam awareness for seniors and migrant workers.
3. These initiatives have reached close to a million individuals and SMEs since 2015.
4. Singtel has also set up the Singtel Touching Lives Fund as a way of helping other vulnerable segments of society, supporting 6 special education schools in Singapore, among other causes.
5. They have raised over $58 million dollars since the fund’s inception in 2002. Thank you very much, Singtel, for all these efforts.

Growing and Strengthening the Giving Ecosystem

21. Finally, I want to touch on a special award, the City of Good award. This special award recognises the power of cross-sector partnerships for good.
1. When different stakeholders partner with each other, complementing and building on each other’s Time, Talent and Treasures, Ties and Testimony./li>
2. And I spoke about Camp Cacti earlier together with CapitaLand Hope Foundation, they are the winners of the City of Good award, and I thank them very much for all the work that they have done in this space, encouraging and inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.
22. Our awardees this evening inspire us to see well beyond ourselves, beyond our comfort zones, pushing the envelope and seeing if from a different lens and different perspective. How do we take a step forward to help a neighbour, to support another in need, to make a positive impact on the community.
23. But we also, in doing all of that, need to ensure to put in the right supporting structures.
1. It’s very easy to easy how do we gift more but we do need to start with a structure that is workable, that connects the giver with the give and overall benefiting society.
24. NVPC plays a key role in this. Through its Company of Good strategy:
1. Working with corporates not only to match them with meaningful volunteering opportunities.
2. But also helping them design and structure their own operations in ways that amplify the impact and their contributions to society.
3. Growing the eco-system by having larger companies mentor SMEs on how they can grow their own social impact.
4. In other words, leading them, those who are younger and newer in their journey, carrying them up to someone more experienced, to be able to mentor them.
25. And through its BAGUS Together initiative, supporting ground-ups looking to make a difference to their local communities by connecting them with information, networks and other resources. And in others, as I said, magic them up.
26. The PVPA is therefore more than a celebration of award winners and their efforts. It celebrates the importance and impact of volunteerism and philanthropy in Singapore.
27. In that vein, we will make some changes to the PVPA awards next year, to underscore the importance of this and reinforce its status as the pinnacle award in volunteerism and contribution to society.
1. We will introduce a new award – the Communities of Good award – to recognise non-profit organisations that have contributed significantly to the social good.
2. Today, non-profits are recognised under the Organisations of Good award category, alongside corporates and social enterprises.
3. But we believe that the approach that non-profits, as you have seen in some of the examples I have cited, take is quite different and can be quite distinct from that of corporates and social enterprises.
4. We therefore think they should be assessed and recognised for their efforts and impact separately.
5. So the new Communities of Good award will consider the impact and influence that nominated charities have had on the community, and also on their forward agenda, amongst other things.
6. We will refine the criteria, and we will introduce the award next year.

Conclusion

28. Finally, let me once again come back to the award winners. They have done tremendously well and their contributions to the community is not just impactful in filling up the jar that I spoke about but has a deep resonance in inspiring others to also step forward.
29. When you look at their stories and hear about how they can make an impact, despite their own difficulties and backgrounds, I think we all feel inspired to step up ourselves, to make that difference and pay it forward.
1. It might seem daunting, looking at our PVPA recipients’ track record of contributions. To imagine how we might ourselves, be that person or be that contributor to make a difference.
2. But it really only starts with the first step; once you’ve taken the first step, the rest is easy. One gesture. One action. Whether it is contributing – in NVPC’s terms – Time, Talent, Treasure, Ties or Testimony. Our own time and skills, resources and networks, or to lend our voice to the causes that we care about.
3. Imagine if all of us were to take that first step, what we could achieve collectively if each person in Singapore just did that one step, one week, one act of giving. It will make a tremendous difference.
30. On that note, I want to say that next year will be SG60, Singapore’s 60th year of independence.
1. To mark and celebrate SG60, I can really think of no other more meaningful act, than for each of us to find it in ourselves, to take that first step, to contribute and to give back
2. To play our part in building a “democracy of deeds” in Singapore. And each of us playing the role of the little pebble in the jar so that collectively, we will fill up that jar, that makes Singapore so special, so inclusive and one that we are proud of to pass on to the next generation of Singaporeans. Thank you very much.