Speech by 2M Indranee Rajah at Friends of Our Heartlands Volunteer Engagement Day 2022
May 29, 2022
A very good morning to HDB CEO Mr Tan Meng Dui, colleagues, volunteers, friends and partners. And of course, to those of you who are tuning in via the live stream, a warm welcome to all of you too. I am very excited to join all of you here today for the Friends of Our Heartlands (FOH) Volunteer Engagement Day.
With the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, it is a good time to resume the community interactions that we had to defer over the past two years. HDB launched the Community Week yesterday. That is a platform where we showcase the many activities and programmes put together for the community, by the community, over the past years. We all know the role that HDB plays in housing more than 80% of the population. But apart from houses, HDB also seeks to build communities and
homes. To do so, it undertakes a wide range of community building and volunteering programmes.
HDB cannot do this alone and, over the years, it has gathered a wide network for friends and volunteers to participate and support its programmes. These are the passionate volunteers from HDB’s Friends of Our Heartlands (FOH) network, who have devoted their time and lent their expertise to these community building efforts, and to whom we also want to express appreciation today.
Expanding our Community Outreach Efforts
Since the launch of FOH network in 2017, our number of Friends has grown from year to year, as residents and students come forward to volunteer their time and effort to give back to their community. To-date, we have close to 14,000 volunteers. I am very heartened to hear that almost 2,230 of these volunteers were very active over the past year, organising workshops and facilitating engagement sessions to come up with creative ideas to bring the community together, despite the pandemic.
As part of its efforts, HDB also seeks to nurture a generation of youths as community leaders. Not only does this give our youth more opportunities to lead causes they find interesting or meaningful, it also helps HDB very much by providing a pool of energetic youths who can galvanise ground-up community efforts. We want to thank our Polytechnics and their students for stepping up. Since 2019, when HDB first signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Diploma in Social Sciences in Gerontology, 500 TP students have carried out activities, helping 6,300 senior residents in the eastern and north-eastern part of Singapore to stay healthy, active, and involved in their community. And today, TP will be renewing the MOU with HDB, so students may continue to plan and carry out activities tailored to help elderly residents remain healthy, active, and involved. On top of this, we will also partner Singapore Polytechnic’s School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Diploma in Integrated Events and Project Management, to promote community bonding amongst new homeowners.
The two MOUs will offer students opportunities such as seminars and internships at HDB and community engagements as part of their school practicum modules. Through these modules they will also learn how to engage residents and seniors effectively and meaningfully, and tap on their skills to design, and implement outreach activities.
Honouring our FOH Volunteers
I understand that we have today 719 individuals and organisations who will be recognised for their contributions under the FOH Volunteer Network. Amongst them is Ms Carol Koo, who is 67 years young. She has been with the FOH network since 2017 and continues to make a great impact on the Punggol Community through her contribution at various HDB-led outreaches and ground up initiatives, such as her very own Brisk Walking Community Project in Punggol. Carol is also somewhat of a celebrity, having recently participated in Channel News Asia’s Green Plan Challenge as a Green Coach, where she shared her knowledge on the green features in Punggol Town. Carol is a vocal advocate for gracious and responsible heartland living, something we really wish to promote, and we hope to have more passionate volunteers like her who consider
“no effort as ever too small when it comes to making a difference in community.”
I would also like to highlight an FOH school partner, Fuhua Primary School, who has been with the network for four years now. Most recently, in 2020, 450 Fuhua students began their FOH journey with an interactive training session to learn more about the importance of gracious and responsible heartland living. Through the training, they picked up useful knowledge and skills through video simulations, discovered common or prevalent community-related issues faced by neighbours, and identified a target group of residents to focus their outreach project. As of today, Fuhua Primary’s students have inspired over 200 residents and reached out to seniors from no less than five Senior Activity Centres. They have also clocked over 10,570 volunteering hours through their various volunteering projects such as their block visit in 2019 and 6 virtual sessions of upcycling workshops in 2021. I would like to express appreciation for Fuhua Primary School’s staff and students, in particular for espousing the values of neighbourliness from a young age. Both Carol and the student volunteers from Fuhua Primary School are testament that you are neither too young nor too old to contribute to your community.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the pandemic has seen more residents turning to social media and chat groups to interact with people in their community. With the easing of restrictions, there are opportunities for residents to finally come together again. For some, it is a chance to finally put a face to the name of the person who has been in the group-buy WhatsApp chat with you, or get to know that neighbour who has been putting up photos in the local Facebook group. I strongly encourage you to invite the neighbours you have grown to know better over the past two years to join us in our community bonding activities, and even better, to be part of our FOH network and share your ideas to make a positive impact on your community.
Thank you all for being with us today, and have a great weekend ahead!