Advocacy Awards 2014
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The Award (Photo: Theresa Teng)
All Things Bukit Brown is pleased to announce that it is the first recipient of the Civil Society Advocate Organisation of the Year Award in the inaugural Singapore Advocacy Awards. This is our acceptance speech at the ceremony on August 30, 2014.
“We are honoured and humbled to have been deemed deserving to receive this award by a dedicated and diverse panel of activists, many of whom have worked tirelessly and for a much longer time on a variety of causes such as foreign worker abuse, AIDS awareness and education, the protection of women’s rights and the championing of the local arts scene.
While we are very much the “new kids on the block” among causes highlighted today, we have stalwarts before us who championed the cause of heritage preservation and protection. We look upon this award as encouragement and affirmation, that what we do in promoting awareness of the Habitat, Heritage and History of the iconic Bukit Brown Cemetery is contributing to the growing voices of concern about how rapid development has resulted in the loss of our old places and a growing sense of alienation of what is home.
Our encounters on the ground talking to and documenting stories from tomb keepers to descendants have been enriching, and our wider Bukit Brown experience has led us to places we have never been, to temples and other areas of cultural and ethnic significance, and in observing the customary rites and rituals which are being practiced today, and further afield to maritime port cities linked to our past. By celebrating the rich diversity of a shared past which is being kept alive by sheer dint of devotion and effort, we find ourselves sharing in a larger collective act of preservation of our culture and identity. We are far from alone.
In receiving the honour of this award, we pledge to continue to engage in conversation and in concert with all stakeholders to make heritage a part of the development paradigm, and to re-imagine spaces which will reinforce memory and identity from one generation to another generation.
We would like to thank especially Raymond and Charles Goh, for leading the way and sharing with us so generously and so passionately all your research from when both of you started exploring Bukit Brown eight years ago. Our abiding gratitude goes to the community especially on Heritage Singapore – Bukit Brown Facebook group which have encouraged and supported us, and which enlivens Bukit Brown daily with the members’ sharing of interesting articles and stories, anecdotes and sometimes grave discussions. It is your enthusiasm that led us all on this journey; unlike most online communities, we are glad to have met many of you face-to-face in on- and off- site events.
We thank the Singapore Heritage Society for nominating us and finally we thank the SAA for this honour, which we will endeavor to live up to. We have much to live up to.
We acknowledge and congratulate all the other nominees. For us, it was enough to have been nominated.
This initiative by SAA makes all of us nominees winners because it celebrates the acts and sacrifices made by volunteers across different communities. Volunteers are the heart of many communities, raising awareness, lifting spirits, affirming shared values, shaping aspirations, and connecting the different threads of society into a fabric that is stronger for weaving its constituents together. Volunteerism is often driven more by passion and purpose than resources, and demands us to be creative, persevering and collaborative. It is often, especially in the nascent stages, lonely and intimidating, confusing and almost crippling in the face of lofty expectations of what a few individuals can and should achieve.
We acknowledge and endorse the efforts of the SAA to bring voices to the communities that need encouraging, causes that need acknowledgement and affirmation, and issues that benefit from airing in public discourse. We do ourselves a service by taking ownership of issues and responsibility for making dreams a reality. This is our contribution to our society. It is humbling to be acknowledged.
Next year, we as a country will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Singapore as a republic, and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Singapore from occupation during WWII. We salute all the communities and civil society activists before us who have taken our country to where it is today.”
Claire Leow & Catherine Lim, Co-Founders, All Things Bukit Brown
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The Brownies with Constance Singam, one of the judges and a highly esteemed civil activist and writer
- T. Sasitharan (Panel Chair) – Arts educator and Cultural Medallion winner
- Cherian George – Academic
- Richard Ho – Architect
- Faizah Jamal – NMP & Environmental Activist
- Sharon Siddique – Consultant
- Constance Singam – Civil Society Activist and Writer
- Wong Ting Hway – Medical Doctor
- Geoffrey Yu – Arts Supporter and Former Diplomat
“Activism and advocacy are the cornerstones of an active and vital civil society movement and the need to establish and protect free space for civil society has never been more urgent than it is now,” said Mr Sasitharan. “A strong civil society will lead to healthy, functioning democracies. Conversely, healthy, well-functioning democracies must allow strong civil societies to exist.”
“If civil society in Singapore is to grow and mature, then it is crucial that good advocacy work that makes an impact on society, that is engaged with the community and that empowers people, should be properly recognised, acknowledged and applauded.” (Source: TOC article here)
The Honours List:
ACRES * All Things Bukit Brown * Braema Mathi * Chan Li Shan * Damien Chng * Eugene Tay * Jeremy Boo and Lee Xianjie * Louis Ng * M Ravi * Pink Dot
SAA honorees
Advocate of the Year: Braema Mathi (President of Maruah, a human rights advocacy group)
Advocate of the Year: Louis Ng (ACRES – Animal Concerns Research and Education Society)
Advocacy Organisation of the Year – All Things Bukit Brown
Most Promising Advocate – Chan Li Shan (mental health advocate, author of A Philosopher’s Madness)
Most Promising Advocate – Damien Chng (We Believe in Second Chances)
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The citation:
Postscript: It is worth mentioning that we acknowledged fellow nominee Eugene Tay, who supported us from the early days, and blogger Jerome Lim of The Long and Winding Road fame, for bringing us together. They inspired us in their railway walks, a precursor to the Green Corridor campaign.
Jerome Lim and Eugene Tay at SAA, with us and Constance Singam
We received the award from William Lim, one of the greatest honours we have experienced.
(Photo: SAA)
William Lim and his wife at the SAA
Lim Su Min, a Brownie and a descendent of Tan Tock Seng and Lim Boon Keng, sketched the historic inaugural awards:
Related Posts:
Bukit Brown named World Monuments Watch site
So wait … let me get this right: the social movement Pink Dot and the animal welfare group ACRES lost out to a rag-tag group of tree-huggers talking about an old graveyard that’s standing in the way of development????
WELL. What has this rag-tag bunch of people done to deserve this?
It can’t be just volunteering time to guide tours around old graveyards. Who really wants to go see these stones. Can’t make money out of them.
They didn’t protest the constuction of the highway – heck, no one chained themselves to the trees. Or lay down in front of the lorries and trucks.
Can’t be some letter-writing campaign. Or some demonstration in front of Parliament…
Could it be… could it just be, that this rag-tag bunch of people, have succeeded in sparking an interest not in the hard stone – although there is certainly interest in the tiles – but instead, the interest in the history and heritage that can be found scattered throughout the forgotten cemetary of Bukit Brown?
Could it be .. could it just be, that 11.000 have heard the stories of chinamen risking their lives for a better future, and then – only to end it buried in faraway places? Stories of people who lived in the past, but whose lives are part of what makes Singapore today?
Could it be … could it just be, that many people are discovering parts of their ancestry, their heritage and are now trying to reconnect with their past because of the stories they have heard?
Could it be,.. could it just be, that in the Brownies, activism has found another way? Not of confrontation – for that would be futile. But that of engaging with everyone who is willing to listen?
Could it be… could it just be, that these volunteers – by their very success (and successful they are – they are mentioned in the local and foreign press) – could inspire more groups for different causes?
I do not know. They work hard, and yes, they play hard.
What I do know is that this group has achieved so much, and so richly deserve this recognition.
Congratulations!
Darren,
“This initiative by SAA makes all of us nominees winners” 🙂 All winners here but we understand the wry humour 🙂 Thank you, you are among the stalwarts, supporting us and encouraging us and adding to “grave discussions” – this award is about us as much as it is about the community who lends meaning to what we do.