Description

I designed two conversations for citizens to meaningfully engage with Political Officer Holders in support of the Forward Singapore movement.

Conversation 1

In the first conversation, I gathered 30 changemakers from diverse communities to have deep discussions across four pillars of the FSG movement: Equip, Care, Steward and Unite. They generated almost 40+ ideas that the government, community and private sector could do - from funding alternative programs like forest schools to strengthening caregiving in the national Skills Future framework, that were captured in a report submitted to the Forward Singapore Secretariat.

Conversation 2

While several ideas were raised in the first conversation, there was also an overarching question: as social changemakers, how can we partner the government to bring these ideas to life, so that we can go beyond talking to action? What are the best practices when engaging in partnerships with the government? What should we do and what shouldn’t we do when we try to collaborate?

So I hosted a second conversation, this time with a Political Office Holder, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua and a senior civil servant, Ms Dawn Yip, Coordinator Director of the SG Partnerships Office in MCCY, to enable changemakers to have a better appreciation of how to strengthen partnerships with the government and discuss their positive experiences and challenges in trying to do so.

45 diverse changemakers came, each with experience leading a changemaking project or volunteering regularly for a particular social issue / community. They discussed their past partnership experiences with the government, elements they thought would help changemakers to form better partnerships with the government and shared their top partnership idea.