HIGHLIGHTS

Our National Junior College Student Facilitators shared their learning and insights following their dialogues with the various RPs and POFs. To find out more about what went on, click on the buttons leading to the synopses of the various dialogues that went on below! 

After two years of virtual meetings, the 52nd Pre-University Seminar is being held physically in National Junior College this year. The Opening Ceremony marked the start of the 4-day programme, where the narratives of Harmony, Kindness, Resilience and Innovation are explored and student participants embark on their journey to understand what Service: Forging the Singapore Story truly means. Minister for Education, Mr Chan Chun Sing, the Guest-of-Honour for the Opening Ceremony, gave his Opening Speech and held a closed-door dialogue session with students from over 30 participating schools. Various issues such as social mobility, climate change and geopolitics were discussed. In his address, Mr Chan brought up the many challenges and constraints of Singapore, and called upon the students to re-angle themselves, and view such challenges as opportunities to build a better Singapore. We hope that the participants will gain deeper insight into these issues over the next 3 days, as they take on the mantle to lead the country to SG100. 

(By Joy Foo Yong Le)

Participants embark on learning journeys to be inspired by the myriad ways in which the four narratives can be actualised. Some examples of the places that our participants visited include halfway houses, City Sprouts Singapore, Enabling Village, the Housing Development Board, and Fullerton Hotel. These visits will inform participants’ understanding of the broader national landscape, enabling them to be better able to contextualise the narrative and role of their POFs. 

Harmony

Participants also visited the HDB LIVINGSPACE Gallery to learn about how HDB creates vibrant and sustainable towns and fosters social harmony in our housing estates.

Kindness

Green Haven, established in 1992, remains as the only Buddhist halfway house in Singapore. It aims to help its residents, people with criminal backgrounds and/or drug abusing tendencies, overcome their drug addiction and reintegrate into society through Buddhist core values. To achieve this, Green Haven not only engages its residents through in-house classes, but also involves them in community outreach programmes as well as family bonding activities to help them reconnect with not only their own families, but also with the community. During the learning journey, the participants and student facilitators watched Green Haven’s corporate video which summarised their mission and key initiatives after a guided tour of the halfway house. They then listened to an interesting presentation by one of the staff members about the programmes there. The students were able to interact with some of the residents as they engaged in an in-house arts and crafts activity. They also visited the community garden where the residents have gardening sessions every morning. This was followed by a lively question and answer session in which the participants asked the staff members many insightful questions. Some issues discussed include the stigma surrounding ex-convicts in society, how residents reconnect with families after rehabilitation, and the staff members’ most fulfilling experiences as social workers. The learning journey concluded after the students bade farewell to the friendly staff and residents. The experience was a fruitful one for all participants.

(By Shreya Bala Palani)

Groups also visited Breakthrough Mission and Enabling Village to learn more about Kindness.

Innovation

Groups from the Innovation narrative visited Fullerton Hotel and City Sprouts Singapore, where they learned about how innovation plays a key role in our journey towards a more sustainable future.

Resilience

Groups from the Resilience narrative visited the City Development Limited Green Gallery and the Evolution Garden. Some also had the opportunity to go on the Maritime Port Authority Trail, which saw the students visiting various maritime landmarks as a collective testimony of Singapore’s rich maritime legacy and growth. 

Students were engaged in panel discussions aligned to the four narratives of Harmony, Kindness, Resilience, and Innovation. Panellists with different areas of expertise shared their knowledge and experience, and exchanged ideas with participants.  As distinguished guest speakers and the seminar participants came together in the Lecture Theatres of National Junior College for these refreshing and stimulating discussions, there were innumerable points and perspectives brought forward. 

Harmony

The notion of harmony is founded upon by healthy civic discourse where it is pertinent to engage and communicate empathetically with all the stakeholders. Guest panelist Mr David Chua, CEO National Youth Council and Chairman of SCAPE, gave a wonderful opener to the discussion by seeding thoughts about the multipolarity that is rife in our world and our country. In such a context, there exists the risk of falling into the trap of unipolarity and of forging a singular, dominant narrative that narrows our perspectives. Mr Chua also shared about the importance of the “ABCs” which stand for "Alignment", "Bridging" and "Connection", in creating a space where the containment, recognition, acceptance and tolerance of diverse views is possible. Ms Chia Yong Yong BBM, PBM, former SPD President and a Nominated Member of Parliament of Singapore, continued by sharing the importance of empowering and supporting the people around us. Ms Chia expressed that  “I made a conscious effort, despite being the representative of the community with disabilities in Parliament, to not just focus on disability issues. As people with disabilities, we are part of the community too and we ought to be just as concerned with national issues as much as we are there to speak for the community that we represent.”. Building a community where we look at each other with our disabilities and limitations, and accept one another as such, is what harmony means, she shared. The third panelist, Dr Elmie Nekmat, Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean for Research, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS Media Literacy Council, added to the conversation by approaching the idea of harmony through the lens of social media. “New media has transformed the society, and it’s not about how or whether society was changed by it, but how new media is impacting society.” To function as a digital citizen part of a harmonious body prerequisites awareness, skills and literacy and we will be enabled by this to make our stories and share our narratives to the world. All in all, it was indeed an enlightening discussion by our three panelists. 

(By Emeline Riana)

Kindness

The panel discussion for kindness was held in LT1, where prominent figures in the kindness movement were invited to speak. The notable panellists were Mr John Lim, the Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Social and Family Development, and Dr William Wan, the General Secretary of the Singapore Kindness Movement. Both speakers took to the stage to offer their sentiments on kindness displayed individually, as well as by Singapore as a society. Following their speeches, a short break was given, during which the students returned to the Lecture Theatre (LT) to find the panellists seated on stage, ready to answer any queries from the audience. One question which sparked several whispers across the LT was on the relevance of kindness to certain policies such as the death penalty, and whether empathy should be extended to those under such a sanction. This notion was promptly refuted by Dr Wan, who stated that kindness is not synonymous with softness or weakness, and capital punishment to those who deserve it has nothing to do with kindness. 

(By Lee Shi Yi)

Resilience

The theme of resilience has played, and continues to play, a paramount role in forging our Singapore story. Guest panalists Mr Bilahari Kausiken PJG, PPA, PBS, the Chairman of the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mr David Koh, Commissioner of Cybersecurity and Chief Executive of the Cyber Security Agency (CSA), shared their perspectives of resilience in the aspects of international relations and cybersecurity respectively. Mr Bilahari recollected that “Our generation can remember and experience a poor, messy, unhygienic and unstable Singapore with absolutely no assets of any type but people and location. Singapore did not succumb to Fatalism then.” He highlighted that recognising that "there’s always something to be done" is foundational to resilience, as is the ability to recognise that you have done something wrong. Quoting Thucidydes’ “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” as the inverse of resilience, he spoke of a spectrum where there is ‘can’ and ‘must’ on either side and that in between the two extremes is where a small country like Singapore survives. Mr Koh continued the discussion by sharing his view of what resilience means, “Resilience, as what Mr Bilahari, said is to be able to get back on our feet. It’s not that we are tough and we can withstand… if you’re too strong and too tough, it means that you’re brittle and when you’re brittle and you break, you can’t put it back together.” He added that the lack of security related instincts in digital users and the inherent lack of geographical boundaries in cyberspace may cause spillover effects from cyber wars that we have no part of, as well as rampant misinformation, which can all threaten our cybersecurity. “When you’re overseas and you’re walking, you recognize instinctively that if you're in a dark neighbourhood, that you want to be a bit more security conscious. In the digital domain, we have none of these instincts. No one taught this to us.”. The panelists prompted a truly enriching discussion, with the participants bringing back home key takeaways from the conversation. 

(By Emeline Riana)

The panel discussion with the groups focused on Innovation featured a star-studded selection of panellists: Peter Ho (CEO of HOPE Technik) and Lien Choong Luen (General Manager of Gojek Singapore). Both panellists provided meaningful insights into their innovation-centric industries, and how creativity and persistence has contributed significantly to structural development, hammering home the importance of hard work not only to ensure efficient and feasible innovation, but also to gain a competitive advantage. Ho and Lien also emphasised the importance of innovation in addressing social contexts and necessities, where Ho’s technologies have been deployed to streamline automated agriculture in land-locked, resource-starved Singapore, while Lien’s Gojek overcame structural issues to do with infrastructure limitations and the bridging of the digital divide. Inquisitive students presented particularly thought-provoking questions during the question-and-answer session - the panellists detailed their experiences in dealing with creative block, both citing the necessity of context change in breaking out of a rut. Both panellists briefly discussed their decision-making process, citing the necessity in risk-taking to remain relevant. Lien provided philosophical ponderings when asked about the importance of curiosity in the innovative process, citing the need for internal and external innovation, as well as presenting the differences between transformative and derivative curiosity. When asked about his acquisition of various skills that lent him his competitive advantage, Ho provided intimate insights into his history as a Chief Engineer for racing team Petronas which fostered a particularly competitive spirit, as well as the diversification of his portfolio of skills, citing the importance of versatility in a broad field of knowledge in order to fulfil more unique niches. The quick-fire question-and-answer session culminated in a final question on industry ethics: both panellists were strong proponents for maintaining humanity and encouraging others to do the right thing, and their brief but lively dialogue closed with thunderous applause. 

(By Athena Thang)

Participant met in their groups to reflect on and share their learning from the Learning Journeys and Panel Discussions to facilitate the exchange of perspectives. They also worked on their deliverables, in preparation for the Exhibition during the Closing Ceremony Festival. 

From confession booths to skits: these are just a few of the ways participants have chosen to deliver their final product for Seminar. As we visited the various seminar rooms, many were still executing final preparations. In a bid to find out more about the various groups’ deliverables and their key takeaways, we spoke to some groups from the four different narratives. In particular, Harmony 8 took a more unique approach, choosing the form of a self-produced video. Participants will enter a confession booth thereafter, where they would write their thoughts about the video down on a piece of post-it note. Subsequently, they can stick their post-it note on a board, and also read the responses of others. Through this activity, the group hopes to encourage empathetic communication with others. In another classroom, Innovation 6 worked fervently on their final product. They considered breadth as well as depth in terms of their deliverables, producing three forms of media for their presentation. They created a video, a comic, and a physical model capturing a scene from the video and the comic. Their rationale behind this was to reach a wider audience via the three different mediums, and also to craft an immersive experience that extends beyond the screen. As Day 3 drew to a close, the participants wrapped up their discussions and primed their proposals in anticipation of the final day.

(By Lee Shi Yi and Victoria Tay) 

As this year’s Pre-University Seminar began to draw to an end, the Resource People (RP) and People of Focus (POF) walked around during the Special Preview segment of the Exhibition and immersed themselves in the numerous deliverables of the groups that they mentored. Hushed whispers and shuffled feet filled the air as Harmony 2 lined up outside their room to welcome their guests: Ms Genevieve Chye, Director, Partnership and Engagement Development, with the Resilience and Engagement Division of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, as well as Mr Mohamed Irshad, Founder of Roses of Peace. They then introduced their project, which comes in the form of a card game titled ‘We Are Strangers (Not Anymore)’, inspired by the popular card game ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’. Drawing additional inspiration from speeches given by Ms Chye and their POF Mr Didi Amzar, they meticulously created a card game with four varying levels of intimacy and closeness. The guests got to try their hand at the card game, and engaged in meaningful conversations about sensitive topics like race. Another group tackling a social issue is Kindness 11, bringing light to a topic less frequently talked about — the reintegration of ex-convicts into society. This group produced a short film titled ‘A Day’s Work’, which follows a father and daughter across two timelines, featuring the rehabilitative process inmates undergo and touching on heartwarming familial love. Mr Matthew Wee, CEO of Yellow Ribbon Singapore, and Mr Jabez Koh, an ex-convict now successfully running his own transport and logistics company, were both present to offer their valuable insights and perspectives. With the feedback and expertise provided by the personnel invited, the groups were able to attain bountiful takeaways. 

Later in the afternoon, groups gathered in the Oasis for a final sharing, where they were joined by Minister of State for Culture, Community, and Youth, and Trade and Industry Mr Alvin Tan, who was the Guest-of-Honour. From board games to stop-motion art pieces, representatives from the four narrative groups – Harmony, Kindness, Innovation, and Resilience – proudly presented the culmination of their work over the three months, from when they first met their RPs and POFs. Participants showcased their understanding of service through the narratives as young people and leaders who play important roles in the Singapore Story. The passion of today's youth, evident through the buzz of the various presentations, certainly inspired confidence in the future development of our Singapore.   

At the Closing Ceremony, MOS Tan gave his speech and held a closed-door dialogue session with the participants. Issues such as racial tolerance, creativity in teens, and democracy were all discussed. In his address, MOS Tan highlighted the four narratives: Harmony, Kindness, Resilience and Innovation, and reminded that these narratives will help us frame and establish Singapore’s next chapter. Throughout the four-day programme, the student participants were engaged in writing their own narratives with each group presenting a unique and powerful story that answers this years theme: Service: Forging the Singapore Story. We hope that the culmination of these efforts will allow our participants to continue to serve and make our journey to SG100 a bright and glowing one. 

(By Lee Shi Yi, Victoria Tay, Julia Yap and Joy Foo)