Giving across life stages

Madam Chair, with your permission, I would like to show some slides on the screens please.

Minister Lawrence Wong shared that our Jubilee Year should also be a year of reflection, about who we are as a society, and what we want to be. MOS Sam Tan just earlier spoke about an inclusive Singapore that celebrates our multicultural multiracial diversity.

In the next ten minutes, I will be sharing about our desire for Singapore to be a Giving Nation where every Singaporean participates in a culture of giving and giving becomes a part of our lives, part of our DNA.

And like what Mr Seah Kian Peng has mentioned earlier, giving is not just about making donations. It is also about giving our time, our efforts and also our skills and our competency. Giving enriches our lives with purpose and perspective. As a Chinese saying goes, “施比受更有福”. Generally, it means it is more blessed to give than to receive.

For giving to become part of Singapore's DNA, we should start with our young like what various members have mentioned earlier.

So, I thank Ms Penny Low for her thoughtful comments on youth volunteerism. Youth Corps Singapore, which we launched last year, is a major new platform to amplify and support the desire and energies of our youth to contribute to building a better Singapore together.

Please allow me to update the House on what has been happening with regards to Youth Corps Singapore.

Over the past year, the 200 aspiring Youth Corps members received mentorship and training. And they have launched various projects in a wide range of areas, such as education, special needs, and the environmental sustainability.

Each and every aspiring Youth Corps member has a unique story to tell. I have met them in action, and they never fail to inspire me with their passion, with their boundless energy and also creative ideas.

Hui Yee is one such volunteer who I had the pleasure of meeting on two separate occasions. Hui Yee is a fulltime Special Education teacher at Eden School. Her passion for helping those with learning difficulties motivated her to volunteer with Youth Corps Singapore.

As a teacher of students with ASD, Hui Yee is in a job that is both rewarding and challenging. Yet Hui Yee has also chosen to devote her free time to help out at an adult day activity centre for the intellectually challenged.

Hui Yee and her fellow aspiring Youth Corps members noticed that the clients and the centre staff communicated through very vague hand gestures. So, her team set out to improve the communications by using symbols on a specially designed board. And over a couple of months, this mechanism helped everyone, the clients as well as the centre staff better understand each other and communicate better such that the client have enough courage to venture out of the centre and interact with the community.

Youth Corps Singapore is about bringing together passionate individuals like Hui Yee to benefit the community. Even though each aspiring Youth Corps member has many commitments to juggle be it work, study, family, and even marriage.

What unites and motivates each and every one of them is their desire to be part of the change they wish to see in our nation. At MCCY and NYC, we are very heartened by the passion and the way they are impacting our society, our Singapore.

Indeed, with this new platform to do good, the Youth Corps Singapore is sowing seeds of service during the most formative years of life. These seeds could germinate into a lifelong journey of service and giving sets us apart as a Giving Nation.

Mr Alex Yam earlier asked how we intend to enhance youth spaces to better support our youth's aspirations. Through a consultation exercise that stretched from October to December 2014, that involved more than 1,000 youth, the youth indicated most interest in music and dance.

To better support youth interest in these areas, we shall be revamping *SCAPE in the coming year.

The physical spaces at *SCAPE will be refreshed. There will be more spaces and better equipment for our young Singaporeans to hone and display their talent.  For example, we envisage an alfresco bandstand where young musicians can regularly perform in front of their peers.

Programmes at *SCAPE will be organised by our youth for the youth. *SCAPE will further spotlight our youth talents by hosting events like the inaugural National Youth Film Awards, the YouTube FanFest, and the 10th edition of the SHINE Festival. *SCAPE will connect young musicians, like “The Sam Willows” and “Gentle Bones”, to the wider youth audience through school performances with the *SCAPE Invasion Tour.

So to inspire our youth to help the less fortunate in our backyard, *SCAPE will expand its community-specific programmes and community trails at different neighbourhoods.

Next, our young working adults are also getting into the spirit of giving. I give you an example. Take the “50 for 50” ground-up initiative is one good example. I was just at their closing ceremony in early February, where I witnessed for myself the positive energy that 50 young adults generated alongside with their corporate donors, the VWOs as well as the beneficiaries. This initiative brought together 50 young adults to partner with companies, like UOB and Banyan Tree, to fundraise for 50 worthy community and social causes.

And one of the “50 for 50” participants is Mr Jesher Loi, who is a Board member of *SCAPE and also Director of Branding and Market Development at Ya Kun International. Not only did he rally many business owners to contribute to his cause, he also got his company, Ya Kun, to pitch in by donating 50 cents to charity for every Christmas Frostyz drink that sold during the Christmas season.

Companies like Ya Kun see themselves as part of a giving nation. They recognise the role businesses can play in building up a community with their contributions. Corporate giving strengthens our society.

Companies in Singapore have indeed been responding to community needs. For the past 10 years, gross donations by companies to Institutions of Public Character have doubled between 2004 and 2013.

To step up corporate giving, we hope to see many more companies not only donating, but also rallying and also enabling their staff to contribute their time, their skills, their talent, their competencies.

Like what Mr Seah Kian Peng has mentioned. Companies have enormous influence in nurturing a culture of giving in our working adults. Mr Seah spoke passionately about urging the top leadership of companies to drive giving efforts. And we agree with him. This is indeed what our partner, the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre or NVPC, aims to do. NVPC is engaging C-Suite executives so as to broker partnerships amongst like-minded corporate leaders and match the companies to charitable causes.

It is also developing a Singapore Roadmap for Corporate Giving, which will guide companies in their journey of giving back. As well as recognising some of the best practices.

Now, I talked to the NVPC colleagues and they shared with me that what they aspire to do is for each and every company in Singapore, over time, to make, and I quote, “goodness the business of every organisation”. That is their aspiration.

An example of one such company is Changi Airport Group, or CAG, that is trying to make goodness part of its business.

CAG has partnered Northlight School through SportCares, a Sport Singapore programme that links those in need with passionate volunteers and community-spirited donors through sports programmes and life-skills workshops. CAG fully funded Northlight School's participation in a football programme called Saturday Night Lights. In addition, its employees volunteer as trainers and mentors in the programme. Every Saturday night is the time when CAG staff and Northlight students look forward to.

SportCares has touched the lives of more than five thousand students and youth over the past three years, through such corporate partnerships.

And one such youth whose life is touched and changed is 13year old Zul. Last year, Zul thought that his dream of becoming a competitive runner was really over when his school changed its focus from running to football.

And he took out his frustrations on his parents, and back then fell in with bad company.

His father, an ambulance driver was really at his wits' end. Then he read about the SportCares CareRunners. He put Zul under the SportCares programme and soon Zul was training under the guidance of national coach Elangovan.

Elangovan immediately recognised Zul's running potential and began developing Zul in sprints and middle distances. In less than three months, Zul won his first-ever race in the 800-metre event of the Akira Swift Championship with a time of 2 minutes and 19 seconds.

Zul caught the attention of the Singapore Sports School and in January this year, he earned a coveted place there, and we're all very happy for him.

Now, the story doesn't end there. Zul is now a volunteer at the 28th SEA Games.  Just last Saturday, Zul and his sister helped out at our 90 Day Countdown to the SEA Games. So as you can see, how Zul is giving back to society because he has experienced first-hand how SportCare has made a difference in his life over a course of one year.

Besides NVPC and SportCares, the Community Development Councils, or CDCs, are also actively promoting a Culture of Giving Back. Earlier Mr Patrick Tay had asked about the role of the CDCs.

In 2014, the CDCs worked with more than 500 companies that gave back to the communities.

For example, the Southwest District has joined hands with many civic-minded companies in partnership with the VWOs in the district to help the less fortunate.

One example is Amos International, a logistics firm in Southwest. They volunteered in food deliveries and outings for less privileged children. Since 2010, it has reached out to more than six hundred people.

Now, switching the attention back to the individuals. One is never too old to volunteer and I can give you a very interesting example. Let me share very briefly about Mr and Mrs Pang, our pioneer generation.

Mr and Mrs Pang have been married for 50 years (they got married in 1965). They ran a provision shop together and now their partnership at work has evolved into a partnership of volunteerism at O'Joy Care Services, an eldercare service centre.

Mr and Mrs Pang head to the centre four days a week for three hours each time and help out in exercise and drama activities for elderly.

They also manage the logistics of these activities, with the managerial skills they have gained when running their provision shop.

At MCCY, we hope that there will be more volunteers like Mr and Mrs Pang, as we create volunteer opportunities that appeal to our seniors' motivations, our seniors' strengths and our seniors' interests.

Our seniors, they have a lifetime of skills. In mandarin, we say “人生经验”. They have a lifetime of skills and experience to contribute to our society. Our seniors can also benefit from volunteering. In fact, studies have shown a positive association between volunteering and both mental and physical well-being.

To find out how to better support our seniors in their interest to volunteer, we have sought the feedback and views of over 100 senior volunteers. The key motivating factors we realise for volunteering or related to, are the desire to learn new skills, their desire to a positive example for the younger generation and to escape from boredom at home.

Some of the challenges that they faced were getting a good match between the skills that they have and the volunteer host organisations that is need. Family and personal commitments as well as health, and the ease of accessibility to the locations where their help was needed, were also factors that influenced their volunteering decisions. We can well understand that.

The feedback helped MCCY and Southwest CDC to pilot the design of a pipeline of initiatives to engage our senior volunteers in Southwest District. This includes matching our volunteers with the needs in their local community, and a training grant for senior volunteers.

Now on this note, let me wrap up with a very interesting story of an eighty-seven-year-old volunteer, Mr Wee Char Lee.

Mr Wee is a father of three and a grandfather of six. He was a cash register technician for forty years before retiring in 1987.

As a youth during World War II, he was an air observer. His job back then was to patrol the streets at night during the World War II, and to look out for bombers.

Whenever he saw any bombers, his job was to run and warn everyone else to shut off their lights to avoid detection. Very important job!

And more than seventy years later, Mr Wee is still volunteering. Kudos to him! Twice or three times a week, Mr Wee lends a listening ear to seniors at the Presbyterian Community Services. So as you can see giving back is really part of Mr Wee's DNA. And we asked him and he said “I find it satisfying to be able to help others in need, and to see people happy. If I don't do this work, I would be very bored.”

Like what Minister Lawrence Wong and also Minister of State Sam Tan has mentioned, this year, as we celebrate SG50, many Singaporeans have expressed the hope that giving will increasingly be part of our national identity. Giving will become our way of life.

So if we continue to nurture a culture of giving from the young to the old, at every stage of our life with every opportunity, we can certainly make giving part of our Singapore's DNA.

On this note, we hope everyone in the house will join us in realising this vision of Singapore as a Giving Nation.