socialservice.sg presents: "Before the Ballot"

The Nine Days is a socialservice.sg podcast covering the 2020 general election in Singapore (#GE2020), through daily five-minute news summaries, conversations with young voters, and interviews with academics and experts. It’s Day 2 of GE2020, Debates Day. In five minutes, hear about the two televised debates - in English and in Mandarin - between the top four political parties with the highest num...

The Nine Days is a socialservice.sg podcast covering the 2020 general election in Singapore (#GE2020), through daily five-minute news summaries, conversations with young voters, and interviews with academics and experts. It’s Day 1 of GE2020, Nomination Day. In five minutes, hear about East and West Coast plans, other constituencies to watch, and the main campaign issues of GE2020.

With the general elections on the horizon, this is set to be Singapore’s first pandemic election, or the country’s first true “Internet election”. In the next few weeks leading up to Polling Day, we speak to voters, observers, and researchers, with the hope of better understanding what is at stake and making an informed decision. What is “the Opposition” in Singapore? Today, we speak to Loke Hoe-Y...

With the general elections on the horizon, this is set to be Singapore’s first pandemic election, or the country’s first true “Internet election”. In the next few weeks leading up to Polling Day, we speak to voters, observers, and researchers, with the hope of better understanding what is at stake and making an informed decision. Today, we focus on the historical roots of electioneering and campai...

On June 15th, A Good Space - Singapore's first community-owned co-operative - organised a discussion involving speakers from four non-profit organisations: AWARE , or the Association of Women for Action and Research; Beyond Social Services ; ReadAble ; and SG Assist . The discussion, which I had the privilege of moderating, was titled, “Beyond COVID19: The future of social services for low-income...

This is a special series of episodes, created in collaboration with “Our Class Notes” ( ourclassnotes.com ), a website of both reporting and research on the electoral, parliamentary, and political scene in Singapore. Today, we focus on how the public has assessed the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, Liang Lei and Sean Lim , both graduates of the National University...

This is a special series of episodes, created in collaboration with “Our Class Notes” ( ourclassnotes.com ), a website of both reporting and research on the electoral, parliamentary, and political scene in Singapore. Today, we speak to veteran journalist Bertha Henson , currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the National University of Singapore and formerly with the Singapore Press Holdin...

This is a special series of episodes, created in collaboration with “Our Class Notes” ( ourclassnotes.com ), a website of both reporting and research on the electoral, parliamentary, and political scene in Singapore. Today, we focus on the clarity of election and electoral regulations by speaking to Christalle Tay and Ethan Tay , both recent graduates of the National University of Singapore. They...

Community initiatives emerged spontaneously - even before the pandemic - to build connections among overseas Singaporeans. We hear from two overseas Singaporeans who have been running independent initiatives during the pandemic, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jasmin Young has been organising weekly community forums as part of the volunteer-run Singapore organisation, SingaporeConnect, while Wilson...

The coronavirus pandemic has been described by some as “the great equaliser”, yet we now know the disproportionate impact of the virus. Individuals from low-income households and communities of colour are at higher risk of infection, serious illness, and death. And in this vein, the pandemic has revealed the persistent inequalities in our societies, including in Singapore. In one of the most insig...

Before the pandemic, building communities was difficult. Maintaining and sustaining these communities, after they were built, was even more difficult. And now, with a pandemic and a circuit breaker in Singapore, community organisers who run social initiatives and programmes have had to adapt, so as to remain connected to and engaged with their communities. We hear from three such organisers: Debra...

Amidst the pandemic and the ongoing circuit breaker in Singapore, the needs and concerns of foreign domestic workers deserve greater attention. Groups such as the Humanitarian Organisation for Migrant Economics and A Good Space have highlighted these issues, yet many of these needs and concerns had surfaced even before this pandemic. If “business-as-usual” was already problematic, what are the nec...

Countries around the world have brought attention to domestic, family, or intimate partner violence in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, especially since rising unemployment is associated with a higher number of personal crises. In Singapore, cases of family violence, child abuse, spousal abuse, and elder abuse were documented even before the pandemic, and now - amidst a circuit breaker in Si...

The discourse surrounding the universal basic income (UBI) and its experiments has gained traction around the world, including in Finland, which just announced, last week, the findings of its two-year UBI evaluation study. And while Finland was preparing to launch its UBI experiment in 2016, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Singapore cannot afford a basic income. And yet, in April this year, in...

Singapore faces a rapidly ageing population. And before the pandemic, social service interventions to address isolation and loneliness revolved around community befriending programmes, counselling services, as well as day activities and rehabilitation. However, what happens during a pandemic, especially with a virus most deadly to the most vulnerable? How do we overcome the risks of social and emo...

The late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain described Singapore’s food scene as having: “More variety, more options, more specialties from many lands. And cheap”. Yet, since the first coronavirus case was announced in the country, F&B businesses have had to adjust. Through conversations with an F&B owner and a team which created a crowdsourced hawker directory, we want to understand...

The rapid spread of the coronavirus among migrant workers has reflected serious lapses in Singapore’s pandemic planning in the country, but it would be remiss to not discuss the policies surrounding migrant workers and immigration in a more systemic or structural manner. For this, we turn to Professor Kenneth Paul Tan of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at the National University of Singa...

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in Singapore, I’ve been closely following the Facebook updates of former colleague Brenda Tan , with whom I used to work at the former news site “The Middle Ground”. A few days ago, she posted a powerful reflection about her personal experience, which you will hear in this episode. Singaporean blogger mrbrown also shared Brenda’s post on Twitter. On regu...

In the context of the pandemic and the circuit breaker in Singapore, the designation of psychological treatments as a non-essential service is an obvious starting point. Yet, it also seems appropriate to both consider the state of mental health wellness and advocacy in the country before the pandemic, as well as our aspirations for where we want mental health wellness and advocacy to be. Nominated...

Singapore is expected to enter a full-year recession, and the ripple effect of pay cuts and hiring freezes is just beginning. Even with the Unity, Resilience, and Solidarity Budgets, graduating students from the institutes of higher learning and the universities are justifiably anxious. We focus on the internship and employment challenges faced by Singaporean students. We speak to Adriel Yong , wh...

Not having a computer or an Internet connection, it might be argued, is symbolic of the many challenges faced by low-income Singaporean households (with school-going children). And even with government assistance - beyond the provision of such technological necessities - individuals and community groups have also stepped up, offering other forms of assistance to Singaporeans who may have fallen th...

Mutual aid initiatives - facilitating the exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit - started as Google spreadsheets, but could potentially evolve into virtual and ground communities which last beyond the coronavirus pandemic. We speak to Rachel Ooi ( Mutual Aid Hub : aidhubsg.com ) as well as Abhishek Bajaj and Vincent Ng ( A Good Space : agoodspace.org ) to learn more about their wor...