Community Forum

This page documents the existing collaborators and ideas for a Community Forum 2020 event.

If you are interested to collaborate or co-organise, or just want to give inputs or feedback, please fill in this Form. Or, you can get in touch with Justin Lee (email: justin.lee@nus.edu.sg) or any of the co-organisers below.

Vision & Background of Community Forum

• This is meant to be a Forum About the Community, For the Community, and By the Community. The purpose is to showcase initiatives that have the potential to unlock the collaborative and collective power of community organisations and informal groups. 

• Previously, IPS organised the inaugural Community Forum 2018 but would like to partner with community organisations in running subsequent runs.  

Co-Organisers

• Beyond Social Services (Gerard Ee)
• OpenJio (Hilda & Amos)
• A Good Space (Vincent Ng)
• Institute of Policy Studies (Justin Lee)

Objectives of Forum

1. Get to know various communities and those who work with those communities. Raise awareness of less visible groups amongst us, and the ground-up initiatives that offer mutual support and build relationships. (Get to know one another)
2. Catalyse community-based and community-led initiatives through facilitating collaboration amongst relevant groups. (Do something together)

Inputs to objectives

-Consider surfacing parts of this country that is hidden, e.g. the ‘transient’ workers that have been here for years. The state wants to define community and how to do community work, and academics or researchers may have defined it, but civil society here should expand on the definition. VWOs role is to safeguard communities, not to compete or replace. Social workers may feel threatened by community development work. (Shared anecdote about how social workers expressed view that if community development took off, they would be out of a job. An example of ‘protectionist’ attitude of professionals). But should we be competing to do this job? Should community workers or social workers be competing with parents to be able to take care of their children? To rescue them? We also have a capitalist way of thinking about services: we need to pay for them.

-inter sectoral collaboration, eg with environmental causes.

-Is objective is to 1) showcase or 2) understand communities? Is objective to show how to do community development work?

-part of the objectives should be that organisations with the muscles don’t kill off other groups.

-Joy of just learning about one another, shared vision of community, let this come from the ground. Caveat: Are we part of the community just because we work with them? Sometimes the voice of the community is not strong enough because we orchestrate, we force that community to perform.

-Showcase the uniqueness of each community

-Should we narrow it down to just communities themselves rather than the organised groups who work with communities?

Tentative Theme

“Now That We Are All Here, What Should We Do?”

(This makes a light-hearted reference to 2018 theme, which was “Here Comes Everybody, and All Can Contribute!”)

Date & Venue

We are looking for a venue sponsor for a space that can accommodate 200-300 pax in a main auditorium, and breakout rooms for smaller group discussions, for a 2-day event possibly sometime in 2020 or if not, next year. 

One possibility - Singapore Turf Club (with ToteBoard's help)

Possible Programme & Activities

1. “LET’S GET TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER FIRST”

• As prelude to Community Forum, there would have been various learning journeys or community tours.
• Group sharing and reflections at Forum itself, by those who visited various communities
• Sharing from selected participants of Wiki Challenge
• Possibly booths will be set up so that participants can visit and find out more from the community organisations or groups manning their stations. (example VWOs, SNCF, Community Arts Organisations, etc?)

2. “GO SHOPPING & EATING TOGETHER”

• F&B Social Enterprises will run a stall (in lieu of lunch provided, participants will purchase their own food from these vendors.
• Retail Social Enterprises can also set up shop (to showcase and allow participants to shop)

Possible partners to reach out to:

• Samsui Group
• Timbre

3. “WHAT IS MEANINGFUL PARTNERSHIP & HOW CAN WE WORK TOGETHER?”

Articulate vision of community + com dev work

• NVPC's Community Matters Series
• Reflections on Engagement with Community Workers (Bee Leng, Hana?)
• 'Passing the resources to the community, not to institutions' (Gerard & Cynthia?).

4. “START SOMETHING, JOIN SOMETHING”

Some ideas

• Offers, Requests & Commitments (online or boards?)
• Launch Community Fellowship, if it is ready.
• Launch a Participatory Community Research initiative, if there are a sufficient number of academic mentors
• Wikithon (for socialcollab.sg)
• Speed dating (funders to potential grantees?)
• Skilled volunteerism (serve.sg)
• End with a bang: Sing Community Song??