Chief Executive Officers of our Self-Help Groups
Board and Committee Members of the various Self-Help Groups
Award Recipients and Family Members
Good afternoon.
I am very happy to join you today to recognise the hard work and achievements of all our students.
We celebrated Singapore's 57th birthday last week. We cheered together, sang together, and reflected how far Singapore had come since independence. And indeed, we have come a long way.
Before 1965, we were not yet one people. We are a migrant society, with ancestors who hailed from different places, held different beliefs, and spoke different mother tongues.
But in 1965, our founding leaders promised that independent Singapore would be a meritocratic and multiracial society, based on justice and equality.
They willed such a nation into existence, and since then, the Government has worked with generations of Singaporeans to ensure this promise continues to be a lived reality.
Our leaders also knew from day one that for Singapore to survive, Singaporeans had to become a resilient and robust people. Every one of us had to pull our weight, because no one owed us a living.
We were taught to count on each other, and that we could not rely on external parties to bail us out in times of trouble. Hence, step by step, we built a culture of self-resilience and mutual support.
On the national level, the Government looks after all Singaporeans, regardless of race, language or religion.
This philosophy flows through all our policies, such as housing and healthcare, and in terms of providing quality education to develop the potential of every Singaporean child.
But at the same time, we recognise that each ethnic community has its unique needs.
These are supported by the respective self-help groups that we have here today, which have leveraged their cultural affinity, ground sensing capabilities and established stakeholder networks to support vulnerable segments in their respective communities.
Through the years, the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), the Eurasian Association, the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) and Yayasan MENDAKI have remained steadfast in carrying out their vital mission of improving social mobility and strengthening families.
While our self-help groups are ethnic by nature, they are multicultural in outlook.
In fact, the four self-help groups here today have often partnered each other to help out and help all our communities to progress together.
One example is the Collaborative Tuition Programme – an initiative that began twenty years ago, which allows students of all races to enrol into any of the self-help groups' tuition centres for academic support, at very accessible rates.
There are now 175 such centres, up from just 11 centres in 2002 when they started, and the centres currently support more than 430 students across Singapore.
I was glad to learn that our four self-help groups are embarking on two new initiatives to better support their communities.
First, the self-help groups will organise dialogues centered around the themes from the ongoing Forward Singapore exercises. These dialogues aim to bring together youths who are different in background, but similar in their passion and aspiration for making a difference in society.
These youths will get opportunities to develop ground-up solutions to emerging issues in our society, and play an active role in charting Singapore's future.
The second initiative involves increasing opportunities for volunteers to interact and serve with each another across the four self-help groups. Depending on interest and skillsets, volunteers can also be cross-deployed to various programmes run by the self-help groups.
These efforts complement a whole-of-society initiative to mitigate inequality, and to prevent disadvantage from being entrenched across generations.
One such example is the Uplifting Pupils in Life and Inspiring Families Taskforce (UPLIFT), which I chair.
UPLIFT works hand in hand with public and social service agencies, corporates, volunteers and our self-help groups to strengthen upstream wraparound support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
MOE has recently expanded UPLIFT initiatives to increase support for these students.
For example, we collaborated with the Ministry of Social and Family Development and rolled out the UPLIFT Community Network in more towns. This network coordinates support at the town level for students and their families, based on their needs.
We also expanded the UPLIFT Enhanced School Resourcing to support whole-school approaches and targeted interventions for students with greater needs.
Ultimately, all these efforts are in service of our goal to empower all students to discover and develop their strengths and achieve their full potential.
The fact that we can be gathered here today, at a joint awards ceremony celebrating the academic achievements of all our students across races, is a strong testament to our multiracial meritocracy.
It shows that we are not a society where the majority takes the largest cut of the pie, while marginalising the rest.
Instead, we are a society of equal opportunities, where members of even the smallest communities know that they will get full and equal treatment, on the basis of their merit and contributions, just like any other Singaporean citizen.
This is our social compact.
We celebrate our friends, colleagues, sons and daughters who do well and achieve success due to their hard work and merit.
And I must emphasise here that this definition of success is not just based on academic terms – because no single examination can define a student's life, nor does a single grade or paper qualification determine our worth.
We put in great effort, through our education system, to create many promising pathways for every Singaporean to find their own choice and their own niche, and achieve their own success throughout life.
And as a society, we count on those who have succeeded to give back, help those in need, and enable them to stand taller, see farther and achieve even more than their predecessors.
This is a virtuous cycle, which we must cherish, preserve and strengthen for the next generation.
This is how we will make Singapore a land of opportunity.
This is what will enable us to progress as one people.
This is how we build upon our social compact, and enable the next generation and beyond to take Singapore forward.
My congratulations to all award recipients here today.
I am sure that your parents, teachers and friends are very proud of you, as I am, personally, proud of each and every one of you.
Keep up the good work, chase your dreams, and in time to come, pay it forward to those who need it.
Congratulations again. Thank you.