Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Launch of HDB Community Week 2016

May 20, 2016

A very good morning to all. I am very happy to join you today for the launch of this year's HDB Community Week. In the past, we have always held the Community Week at the HDB Hub in Toa Payoh. This year, we decided to make a change and for the first time, bring the Community Week to another HDB town. I am very glad that we are doing it here in Bedok.

In fact, this is near where I used to grow up, in Marine Parade, in an HDB flat at Marine Terrace. Although I stayed in Marine Parade, I would frequently come to Bedok, because Bedok is where the nearest MRT station and bus interchange is. And of course when you come here, you would eat at the hawker centre - the chicken rice and the mee pok used to be very good, and hopefully they are still good. I remember there used to be cinemas here as well, and I used to come here to watch movies. So it is a place that I am familiar with and it is very good to be back.

It is also good to be back here today to have this double celebration – to launch HDB Community Week and to officially open this newly completed Bedok Town Plaza. If you look around, you can see how the neighbourhood has been rejuvenated and renewed while preserving its very rich and distinctive heritage. All the popular elements are still here – the hawker centre, the commercial shops, and the community spaces. But they have been upgraded and made even better.

However, not everything is new; there are still many familiar landmarks remaining. We even have a Heritage Corner nearby to preserve the memories and the heritage of this place. Soon, we will have a mobile app which is called ‘Our Heartland Trails’, which will let Singaporeans explore the interesting landmarks in Bedok town. On top of that, as all of you are aware, there will be a new Bedok Integrated Complex coming up, comprising a community centre (CC), a library, a sports centre, an eldercare centre, and a polyclinic. So this is truly an integrated complex combining many elements. All these different things will be seamlessly linked and connected through a new Pedestrian Mall, which will have shops and F&B outlets.

It is very exciting to see these plans coming together, and with all these changes, I think this place will become even more vibrant and exciting. It also deserves a new name. I understand there has been some polling done by residents, and they have chosen a new name for this place – ‘Bedok Town Square’. It is a fitting name for this new and vibrant focal point in Bedok.

HDB is responsible for the upgrading projects, but we really could not have done this work without the support of the local community and grassroots. I would like to make a special mention to thank the Grassroots Adviser Mr Lee Yi Shyan for his leadership, and for helping to oversee this project previously when he was Senior Minister of State for National Development.

We also have here many grassroots leaders, merchant associations, volunteers, and community partners. All of you have chipped in with your ideas, suggestions, and your very strong support to HDB to make this project possible. We appreciate your hard work and your contributions to the community.

Bedok Town Square is the first of our new generation of town plazas that we are building. This new town plaza is not going to be the only one. It is the first but we are going to do more. We will progressively roll this out in other HDB estates –certainly in our new towns but also in our older ones as part of the Remaking Our Heartland (ROH) programme. We aim to have vibrant town squares and gathering places in every HDB estate – old and new. These will be places where people come to meet and interact with one another, and where strong community bonds can take root and grow.

This is what makes HDB living so precious and unique in Singapore. HDB is not just about buying and living in a HDB flat. It is about the sense of belonging and community among our residents. It is about the places that we identify with – our playgrounds, the fields where we grew up playing football together, our void decks and neighbourhood corners, or even our favourite stalls in the hawker centre. It is also about the bonds we develop with our neighbours, and the friendships we forge with people of all races and backgrounds living together with us. Ultimately, it is about the common language that we have and share together that makes up the HDB experience. It is an integral part of all of us as Singaporeans.

While HDB can provide the building blocks for this very special experience, it is up to all of us to make it happen. This is why we have the HDB Community Week to emphasise the importance of community building. This year's theme is about ‘Celebrating LIFE in our heartlands’ because we want to encourage everyone to contribute to make our heartlands friendly and lively places.

In this Community Week, we have an exhibition, and you will see many suggestions and ideas to liven up our HDB estates and to build strong communities. These are ground-up ideas and suggestions from residents themselves. We also have many suggestions for Bedok town itself. For example, the emcee said earlier that “Bedok” is a Malay word that refers to a large drum. This was also something that participants in one of our innovation and brainstorming sessions mentioned, and it was suggested that we should have an annual drum making and drumming competition here to commemorate Bedok. There were many ideas from Bedok residents too – more than 1,000 have contributed their suggestions, some of whom are here. You will see the suggestions showcased at the exhibition later. They comprise different ideas of what you can do here, such as movie screening and mass yoga sessions – different ideas which we hope will be implemented and make this place an even livelier place for everyone.

To ensure that these ideas turn into reality, Bedok Town Square will also be the first HDB town to have an Activation Team comprising HDB and PA officers, as well as representatives from different community stakeholders. The team will work with residents to activate the town to create more buzz, excitement, and programmes so that people will come together. We will do this here, for the first time in Bedok town, but we will also be doing it in other towns progressively.

With all these efforts, I hope all the residents in Bedok will step forward to participate, support the grassroots, and support HDB in the programmes that we are doing. But even better, I would like to encourage all of you to initiate your own community projects and activities. In fact, HDB already supports many ground-up projects today. You can see some of these projects at the exhibition as well. For example, in Potong Pasir, residents came up with an idea to do an art project. They painted tiles with ideas of what Potong Pasir meant to them. This was a project initiated by the residents, and HDB supported it with some funding and facilitation. Now, these artistic tiles have been assembled and displayed at the Potong Pasir CC. This is one good example and we have many more of such ground-up projects all over Singapore.

We want to encourage more of such ground-up participation, so we will do more. In MND and HDB, you often hear us talk about upgrading, in the context of hardware and infrastructure – upgrade your flat, your home, your common facilities, and your lifts. Today, we are going to upgrade something else. We are going to upgrade our software. As mentioned, HDB already supports many ground-up projects. We have a fund to support projects that we call Good Neighbour Projects. We are going to upgrade this fund, and we are going to call it the ‘Friendly Faces, Lively Places’ fund.

We will be upgrading the fund in several ways. First, we will provide more funding for ground-up projects. In the past, each project is funded up to $1,000 per project. With this new expanded and upgraded fund, each project can apply for funding of up to $10,000, ten times more. This shows that we are serious about this. However, the projects do not have to cost a lot and applicants need not use the maximum amount. These projects do not have to cost a lot of money, but it requires a lot of work and effort for people to come together. We want to encourage residents to come forward and initiate your own projects.

The second upgrade is more administrative. Under the previous scheme, the request for funding is only within a limited window – there would be a call for proposals by HDB, and you have to apply within the specified application period. This is a bit restrictive because people may come up with an idea not during the application period and as a result, could not apply at a later stage. What we will do is we will make it easier for everyone to apply. Instead of having to apply only within the specified window, we will do it all year round. Anytime you have a project, go to the HDB website to apply, and your application will be considered.

All these will be part of the expanded ‘Friendly Faces, Lively Places’ fund which HDB will put up more details. We encourage everyone to apply and tap on this new fund for a whole range of projects. We do not restrict the kind of projects you can do. For example, you can come up with creative ways to make use of the common spaces in our HDB towns, like the town plaza and amphitheatre. Come up with creative ways to activate these places to bring residents together and to build strong community bonds, and apply for funding to get your project going.

Our key criteria is quite simple – projects must bring diverse groups of people together, have active participation and contribution from the community and through the projects, foster better neighbourliness and strengthen community bonds. This is not a project for you to say “my friends want to come together to play football, so please give me $10,000 so that we can set up a football team”. This is not a project for your own friends. As mentioned, the funding is usually not the limitation in many of these projects. It is about the ideas and effort in implementing the ideas. Now that there is more funding and a longer window to apply, please spread the word around. I encourage everyone to make full use of this opportunity and come up with something meaningful for the community.

In closing, I think all of us will recognise that we have come a very long way in our HDB home ownership programme. I related to you what it was like when I was growing up – this was in the late 70s and 80s. Some of you would have grown up earlier than me. You would have seen the changes from the 50s and 60s. We know how different it is. Bedok never used to look like this. We have come a long way in our HDB home ownership programme, and we can very proud of what we have achieved. But remember that HDB's success is not in building flats. It is about bringing people together and building communities.

And that is why for 50 years, the HDB experience has become an integral part of who we are as Singaporeans. It has shaped our identity and our collective experience, and it has provided us with a sense of familiarity and belonging. You may not be in the same place where you grew up in but when you go back to the town where you grew up in, you feel a sense of home. That is what makes HDB special and that is what the HDB experience is about.

I hope we will continue to work together in our next phase of development. We are going to build more HDB flats and new HDB towns, but we should also focus on community building. Let us continue to work together to keep the HDB experience a special one, and forge an even stronger community spirit in all our HDB towns.

I wish all of you a very fruitful day and a very productive HDB Community Week.