OTGV #16 - Harmony Certs
Broadcast Date: 29/04/02
Singapore is well known as land of campaigns.
Foreign critics sometimes look at such top-driven efforts cynically, saying that the Singaporean society is over-regulated.
These same critics may have more fodder for their canons.
Singaporean community leaders now can undergo a course and can be certified as a Partner in Harmony.
Welcome to On The Grapevine with me Chong Ching Liang as I look at the programme to certify community leaders.
The first Partners in Harmony programme is just completed on Sunday.
The programme brings in community leaders from all over Singapore and train them on cross-cultural, inter-ethnic matters over two weekend.
The week before, the Acting Minister of Community Development and Sports Yaccob Ibrahim was the guest of honour.
He was greeted with a burst of frenetic drums of various cultural origins, from angklung to bangara.
ccl-OTGV-9 (fade in - Fade out)
Newsradio caught up with Minister Yaacob and the Dean of National Community Leader Institute or NACLI (pronounced Nag-Lee), Mrs Yin Hui Siang after the launching festivities to find out more.
Will the certification of the so-called harmony partners trivilise the importance of the phrase in the way that some company just simply carried the ISO badge while continuing with their bad habits?
Minister Yaacob Ibrahim.
"There is a need to share that knowledge with people on a wider audience. Give them a skill set and hopefully they can use those that they have gain effectively down on the ground and they relate to their colleagues and their friends. So I don't see it as an ISO 9000 sort of approach but I think it is a sharing of information so that there's a wider audience out there who understand. Having said that I think we also cannot lull ourselves into saying that once we have run a programme, we are alright."
Dean of NACLI, Mrs Yin says that in past there isn't a vehicle to educate inter-cultural awareness.
"In the past perhaps, we have not done enough with regards to dialogue and experiential learning. And so for this particular programme, we are thinking of three components. Basically awareness, dialogue as well as experience. So you will notice that it is a very multi-sensory sort of programme. The whole idea is that we feel that some of these national education programme is very head-knowledge, if we do not actually experience it ourselves we do not actually experience it ourselves we probably will not experience it. And when you actually experience it, it stays with us. So that was the thinking behind coming up with such a programme."
The trainees, being grassroots leaders, are not at the training to obtain yet another piece of paper.
They are expected to be harmony ambassadors, to coin a phrase.
"After this the participant will really go back to their constiuencies, even to their home to be able to spread this awareness amongst people they know. Essentially we were saying, as MInister pointed out in his speech that the grassroots leader and the staff are partners, they are leaders and facilitators. So they would have to balance when they should be a leader, to get people together to have a clearer understanding, and when they should basically step back a little and just be facilitating, and when should just be partners alongside others who are just doing the job."
The programme does have its surprises, and the biggest surprise is the inclusuion of the Internal Security Department, or the ISD in the lecture programme.
Strange, what is the role that the ISD can play in a harmony partners programme.
Quite often, ISD is an object of fear or aversion, would its participation cloud things?
Minister Yaacob Ibrahim sees the contradiction but is quick to explain that there's more good than bad.
"I know what you are trying to get at. We want to move away from a fear of each other to an appreciation of each other. Having the ISD there, is always the paradigm that be careful because of extremism and terrorism and all that stuff. But we also cannot delude ourselves that those things do not exist. The incidents around the region, the arrest of the 13, sends a very strong message home that these are real things that can happen. I think the appreciation of that is not for us to develop a sense of fear of each other but for us to develop a sense of appreciation that if you go off on one tangent, things can happen. So I see it in a more positive light more than in a negative light."
However, all agreed that racial harmony is socmething that has to be constantly worked at because it is on a constant revolution.
Dr Yaacob Ibrahim recounted an episode from his constituency's Inter-Racial Confidence Circle's meeting.
"Mr Baljant Singh told us "You know, we are a nation in a hurry. But racial harmony cannot be forced upon. It has to be evolving." I think that is a very a good point, that at the end of the day, we have a lot of gains that we gained over the last 40 years but we are not about to achieve it overnight. Things are evolving. New people are coming into Singapore. Even cultural practices of various communities are changing. So at the end of the day, we cannot force this. Wehave to be able to be sensitive, to know what is going on and move along, subtly nudged people along but not force upon. "
Subtly nudged, overtly pushed, the key point is that Singaporeans must be willing to learn and aceept differences.
If not, no amount of campaigns or course can help foster better communal relations.
This is Chong Ching Liang, for Newsradio 938.
================================
Related Websites:
Newsradio938
http://newsradio.mediacorpradio.com/
Singapore is well known as land of campaigns.
Foreign critics sometimes look at such top-driven efforts cynically, saying that the Singaporean society is over-regulated.
These same critics may have more fodder for their canons.
Singaporean community leaders now can undergo a course and can be certified as a Partner in Harmony.
Welcome to On The Grapevine with me Chong Ching Liang as I look at the programme to certify community leaders.
The first Partners in Harmony programme is just completed on Sunday.
The programme brings in community leaders from all over Singapore and train them on cross-cultural, inter-ethnic matters over two weekend.
The week before, the Acting Minister of Community Development and Sports Yaccob Ibrahim was the guest of honour.
He was greeted with a burst of frenetic drums of various cultural origins, from angklung to bangara.
ccl-OTGV-9 (fade in - Fade out)
Newsradio caught up with Minister Yaacob and the Dean of National Community Leader Institute or NACLI (pronounced Nag-Lee), Mrs Yin Hui Siang after the launching festivities to find out more.
Will the certification of the so-called harmony partners trivilise the importance of the phrase in the way that some company just simply carried the ISO badge while continuing with their bad habits?
Minister Yaacob Ibrahim.
"There is a need to share that knowledge with people on a wider audience. Give them a skill set and hopefully they can use those that they have gain effectively down on the ground and they relate to their colleagues and their friends. So I don't see it as an ISO 9000 sort of approach but I think it is a sharing of information so that there's a wider audience out there who understand. Having said that I think we also cannot lull ourselves into saying that once we have run a programme, we are alright."
Dean of NACLI, Mrs Yin says that in past there isn't a vehicle to educate inter-cultural awareness.
"In the past perhaps, we have not done enough with regards to dialogue and experiential learning. And so for this particular programme, we are thinking of three components. Basically awareness, dialogue as well as experience. So you will notice that it is a very multi-sensory sort of programme. The whole idea is that we feel that some of these national education programme is very head-knowledge, if we do not actually experience it ourselves we do not actually experience it ourselves we probably will not experience it. And when you actually experience it, it stays with us. So that was the thinking behind coming up with such a programme."
The trainees, being grassroots leaders, are not at the training to obtain yet another piece of paper.
They are expected to be harmony ambassadors, to coin a phrase.
"After this the participant will really go back to their constiuencies, even to their home to be able to spread this awareness amongst people they know. Essentially we were saying, as MInister pointed out in his speech that the grassroots leader and the staff are partners, they are leaders and facilitators. So they would have to balance when they should be a leader, to get people together to have a clearer understanding, and when they should basically step back a little and just be facilitating, and when should just be partners alongside others who are just doing the job."
The programme does have its surprises, and the biggest surprise is the inclusuion of the Internal Security Department, or the ISD in the lecture programme.
Strange, what is the role that the ISD can play in a harmony partners programme.
Quite often, ISD is an object of fear or aversion, would its participation cloud things?
Minister Yaacob Ibrahim sees the contradiction but is quick to explain that there's more good than bad.
"I know what you are trying to get at. We want to move away from a fear of each other to an appreciation of each other. Having the ISD there, is always the paradigm that be careful because of extremism and terrorism and all that stuff. But we also cannot delude ourselves that those things do not exist. The incidents around the region, the arrest of the 13, sends a very strong message home that these are real things that can happen. I think the appreciation of that is not for us to develop a sense of fear of each other but for us to develop a sense of appreciation that if you go off on one tangent, things can happen. So I see it in a more positive light more than in a negative light."
However, all agreed that racial harmony is socmething that has to be constantly worked at because it is on a constant revolution.
Dr Yaacob Ibrahim recounted an episode from his constituency's Inter-Racial Confidence Circle's meeting.
"Mr Baljant Singh told us "You know, we are a nation in a hurry. But racial harmony cannot be forced upon. It has to be evolving." I think that is a very a good point, that at the end of the day, we have a lot of gains that we gained over the last 40 years but we are not about to achieve it overnight. Things are evolving. New people are coming into Singapore. Even cultural practices of various communities are changing. So at the end of the day, we cannot force this. Wehave to be able to be sensitive, to know what is going on and move along, subtly nudged people along but not force upon. "
Subtly nudged, overtly pushed, the key point is that Singaporeans must be willing to learn and aceept differences.
If not, no amount of campaigns or course can help foster better communal relations.
This is Chong Ching Liang, for Newsradio 938.
================================
Related Websites:
Newsradio938
http://newsradio.mediacorpradio.com/
posted by CHONG Ching-liang | 2:10 PM
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