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2023 President's Scholarships Award Ceremony: Speech by President Halimah Yacob

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2023 President's Scholarship Award

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Keynote Address by Minister for Education and Minister-in-charge of The Public Service, Mr Chan Chun Sing, at The Public Service Commission Scholarships Award Ceremony on 19 July 2023

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Opening Address by Mr Lee Tzu Yang, Chairman of The Public Service Commission at the 2023 PSC Scholarships Award Ceremony on 19 July 2023

Opening Address by Mr Lee Tzu Yang at 2023 PSC Scholarships Award Ceremony

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16 August 2023

Ministers

Excellencies

Chairman and Members of the Public Service Commission (PSC)

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good evening. Tonight, we celebrate the achievements of three outstanding young individuals who have been awarded the nation’s most prestigious scholarship.

They have, beyond achieving excellence in academic pursuits and co-curricular activities, exemplified the values and ethos of Public Service and demonstrated remarkable leadership qualities. Collectively, they stand ready to serve with integrity, a drive for excellence, and most importantly, a dedication to serve Singapore and Singaporeans.

This year, I am pleased to award the President’s Scholarship to:

a) Inspector Chua Jia Zhi, Edison

b) Miss Foo Yong Yee Renee; and

c) Miss Mei Feifei.

Edison will be pursuing his studies in Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Edison is a purposeful and driven leader who enjoys galvanising collective action. He has served as a leader in various capacities in school, notably leading a virtual overseas community involvement programme that taught English to students across different provinces in China. Edison also served as a peer tutor to beneficiaries from Northbrooks Secondary School. As a recipient of the SPF Scholarship, Edison aspires to contribute to the stability and security of the country when he joins the Police Force after graduation.

Renee will be going to Georgetown University to read Business and Global Affairs. She has a heart to serve, demonstrated by her active involvement with Ulu Pandan Stars and Oasis Tuition Befrienders. Renee reached out to underprivileged children through weekly reading sessions and tutoring. She also served as a Peer Aider in secondary school, spreading positivity and care for schoolmates who needed a listening ear. Renee has also led teams in various capacities. As vice-captain of the Taekwondo club in JC, she led the club to finish as overall champion in the National School Games in 2022. She also led Project Sonder as part of the Youth Expedition Project in 2021 to conduct online workshops on topics such as food and nutrition, and mental wellness for children in Cebu, the Philippines.

Feifei will be reading Economics at the University of Chicago. Feifei is an accomplished and dependable leader. As the Chairperson of Raffles Press in JC, she led the team to forge a new direction to build itself up as a multimedia press, creating and diversifying output of different content forms such as podcasts and videos. Her ability to identify problems, introduce effective solutions, and communicate effectively helped her lead the team through various challenges. These included coping with a lack of ideas, resources, or time to produce content, as well as keeping up the engagement and involvement of team members when student activities were curtailed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who know Feifei see her as someone who stands up for what is right, and one who wants to make a difference by serving. She has tutored a child from a single-parent family over the past few years, and also organised book drives, food drives and digital literacy workshops for the underprivileged.

My heartfelt congratulations to the three of you.

It must also be a moment of great pride for your families, principals, teachers, and friends who have guided, developed, and journeyed with you. Congratulations to all of you as well.

Today, as I reflect on the recipients of the President’s Scholarship whom I have interacted with over the years, I am reminded of the importance for us to work together to make Singapore more inclusive, caring, and compassionate. As a nation, we must continue to forge a shared consensus of our collective aspirations as a people and the realities that we are confronted with. If we fail to do so, we will start to fragment as a nation and become weaker as we would no longer be able to rely on the strength of the collective to take on tomorrow’s challenges.

Now, more so than ever, we need to be united to face the external challenges ahead. Singapore remains confronted with major, exacting challenges. Geopolitical uncertainties, economic volatility, and climate change will pose existential questions to Singapore. We must continue punching above our weight to stay relevant. We must reinforce the values of a multi-racial, multi-religious society in an increasingly polarised world. We must support one another, especially those who are adversely affected, to ensure that no one is left behind.

Every Singaporean has a part to play in shaping Singapore’s future. The ones who answer the call to serve must lead by example. Edison, Renee, and Feifei, as President’s Scholarship recipients, you must lead your generation of public officers and galvanise the strengths of different individuals, communities, and organisations to tackle the challenges of tomorrow

For you to be able to bring people on board, they must trust you and have confidence that you have the necessary tools, expertise, and resources. This must be underpinned by the instinct to do what is right for Singapore. As you embark on the next chapter of your journey in education, I encourage you to build relevant and valuable competencies, knowledge, and connections that Singapore and the Public Service needs. Always maintain a high level of conduct, even when no one is watching.

You must be able to connect with different segments of our society. Empathise with their desires, aspirations, and needs. This is why I am glad that the PSC continues to press on in its efforts to select scholarship recipients from diverse backgrounds, and to encourage and support scholarship holders in building up a rich portfolio of experiences. The Public Service is in good stead to represent the people that it serves even more comprehensively, as long as its future leaders embody a wide variety of lived experiences. Edison, Renee, and Feifei – it is your responsibility to ensure that the people who will build Singapore in the years to come will demonstrate the shared values of our nation and identify with the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of all our fellow citizens. Stand guided by this in everything that you do in the Public Service, even when it gets tough.

This is my sixth and final President’s Scholarships Award Ceremony. In the last 6 years, I have conferred the award to 19 recipients, and have met many more past recipients over the course of my Presidency. I am heartened to see many young, accomplished individuals, some having come through challenging life circumstances, putting themselves forward to serve in the Public Service. It was inspiring to hear from them their deep passion and vision for a better Singapore.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the PSC for their contributions over the years, in selecting and guiding the next generation of public officers and leaders to secure Singapore’s future. The work that goes into further distinguishing amongst a small pool of scholarship recipients, who are already a good fit for the Public Service, to decide on the few who would be most deserving of the President’s Scholarship is extremely significant. They represent the highest standards, and they will influence and inspire their fellow public sector scholarship awardees to aspire towards these standards.

Lastly, I would like to thank all President’s Scholarship recipients – past, current, and future, for taking on the hard but purposeful work of making Singapore better.

19 July 2023

Chairman and members of the Public Service Commission

Scholarship recipients and your families and friends

All of you who are here and who have made this possible

1. A very good afternoon to all of you.

2. First, let me congratulate all the scholarship recipients today. As Tzu Yang has mentioned, you are here not just because of your hard work or intelligence. You are here because of the love and support of your families and the opportunities provided to all of us by our country.

A more diverse cohort

3. Next, I would like on this occasion to particularly thank the Public Service Commission for your hard work behind the scenes all these years.

4. As you can see, this cohort of scholarship recipients is much more diverse than ever before. And this is a continuing journey that the Public Service Commission has committed itself to. Diversity not just in terms of the kinds of backgrounds that you have, the kinds of schools that you come from – be it polytechnics, A-level programmes, IB programmes and so forth – but diversity also in terms of how you are awarded a scholarship.

5. In the spirit of what we mean by truly being a continuous meritocracy, where the system is porous, we want people to know that even beyond your initial years after the A-levels or IB programme, even while you are in university, or even as you are completing your university and may have started work, you can still apply for a scholarship with the Public Service Commission. This is a mark of the diversity that we aspire to, and this is the work which the Public Service Commission is committed to do. So, I thank Tzu Yang and your team for leading us in this, to broaden the diversity that we have in the Public Service.

6. To all our recipients today, I thank you for stepping forward to serve. You are entering the service of our nation in interesting times.

Challenges and opportunities ahead

7. The world is fragmenting. The global security order that we are so used to for the last 30 to 40 years can no longer be taken as a given. The war in Ukraine and the many crises, in this region and beyond, have shown us that the international rule of law is no longer a given. How can Singapore survive and thrive in this new environment? This will be a big challenge for our generation and your generation.

8. The global economic order is fragile. The international dispute settlement mechanism has broken down. Today, under the guise of security considerations, many countries are adopting protectionist measures. What does this all mean for a country like Singapore that is so dependent on trade? How do we seek out new ways to earn our livelihoods?

9. Today, we live in a much more fractious social environment. Part of this is caused by a growing inequality — real and perceived, absolute and relative. How do we pull people from different walks of life, different backgrounds, with different aspirations, towards a common goal? We should and we must have diversity of views. But we should not have diversity of purpose.

10. A fragmenting global order, a fragile economic order, and a fractious social environment. These are the challenges that you will be confronted with as part of the team serving our nation in the Public Service. Yet at the same time, there are many opportunities for us to seize.

11. New technologies and connectivity have allowed Singapore the opportunity to transcend our geography and our geographical location. If we look back at the history of Singapore in the last 700 years, this is the first time we are trying to defy the odds of history as an independent and sovereign nation without a conventional hinterland. Therein lies both our challenges and opportunities. With the new technologies and new connectivity, we must think about how we can entrench our relevance to the world, earn our keep and keep our people together through thick and thin.

What is required of those in Public Service

12. Having said that, what do we need from you? Today, I would just like you to remember a simple imagery – the iceberg. Whenever we see the iceberg, most of us will see the beautiful part that is above the water. But the true strength of the iceberg is actually beneath the water. For every inch of iceberg that we see above the water, many more inches of ice lie beneath the water. What has that to do with the public service and your future?

13. Above the surface, people will look at your capabilities and connections. All those are essential. We talk about the different skillsets that you must acquire within the Public Service – the ability to make good policies; the ability to execute good operations; the ability to communicate and mobilise stakeholders to work with us; the ability to build networks both domestically and internationally, to leverage our collective strength as well as the strength of our networks for us to overcome any crisis. These are all important and I have no doubt in time to come you will build up these capabilities and connections.

14. But today, I want you to remember that these are but what you see on the surface. What we are looking for in all our public officers and in our public sector scholarship holders goes beneath the water – people with the conviction to help Singapore defy the odds of history, the commitment to do the right things, whether people are watching us or not, and ultimately, the right instincts for Singapore and Singaporeans.

15. Let me just share two lessons that I have learnt from Mr Lim Siong Guan, who was once Head of Civil Service, and was my Permanent Secretary in Defence. He always reminded us that success was not just when we got the job done; and success was certainly not when we got the job done when we were around. Success was when the job was done, and everyone involved felt that we had done it together. Success was also when everyone could get the job done even when one particular leader was not around. I hope you remember that success is not about what we have achieved for ourselves in our time, but what we enable everyone else to achieve together.

16. There was a second lesson that Mr Lim used to share with us – and this is particularly salient to those of us who will be in the security agencies and armed forces. Again, what is success? Once, he told us success was when the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) had built up a capability, trained it, honed it, retired it and never had to use it. From there, I learned a few things.

17. First, the work in the Public Service is not just about the here and now. I learned in my life in the Public Service never to give media interviews for my first 100 days, because I never believed that our work could be measured in days. When I was in the Ministry of Social and Family Development, people asked me after two to three years how many people I had helped. I humbly replied, our key performance indicator (KPI) was not how many people we had helped, but how many people we need not help going forward.

18. Because for every child whose life we have touched, it will only be a success one generation later when the child grows up unshackled from his past, and is able to stand up independently and confidently, and contribute to society. Just like in the SAF and in education, we never measure success by how well we do now. We must have this sense of perspective if we want to help Singapore and Singaporeans defy the odds of history.

Conclusion

19. Finally, you will be the generation that will be present when Singapore celebrates her 100th birthday. The Commission Members and the senior public officers seated in front with me today just have one simple wish – that you have the guts and the gumption to see us through to SG100.

20. I am not saying this lightly, because I know the journey ahead will not be easy. I have never taken it for granted that Singapore will be around effortlessly. Your generation has the chance to join all those who have come before you, to work at helping Singapore defy the odds of history. But you need not worry because you will not be working alone. Our greatest strength is in the collective.

21. Achieving success for Singapore is a team sport. You are part of the team and you must bring more people to be part of that team. With that, I am confident that Singapore will continue to exist and thrive as a strong country in 2065.

22. Thank you very much.

19 July 2023

Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Education and Minister-in-charge of the Public Service

Mr Leo Yip, Head, Civil Service

Fellow Commission Members

Distinguished Guests

Families, Friends, and Scholarship Recipients,

Ladies and Gentlemen

1. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to all.

2. Every year, my Commission members and I look forward to the scholarship season. We are delighted to play our part and take our role seriously. We look hard and wide to select promising young individuals who are prepared to serve in the Public Service, and who wish to grow to become custodians of Singapore’s future. This work requires the collective effort of the Commission as well as our community.

3. Our partners, many of whom are here today, encourage and identify prospective applicants with the right fit to serve. Together, we bring some of our finest in Singapore to contribute to the Public Service. Our schools and universities do not just provide information that helps in selection; they have also nurtured and developed the candidates we meet. I would like to thank our key partners in education for their dedication to developing talent.

4. Families and communities, too, play very important roles. They support their individual members in their aspirations to take on differing pursuits. To the parents and loved ones of our scholarship recipients, thank you for supporting them and giving them the love and confidence to step forward in this pursuit to serve the nation.

5. The joint effort of many groups brings about the promise we see in each scholarship recipient today. That is why, I wish to congratulate both our 66 recipients and everyone who has played a part in building their potential for the future. To our recipients, we say this, and it can never be said too often – every one of you is here not just because of your own efforts but because of the support from those around you. You can be proud to be awarded the scholarship today, but it is not a prize. The scholarship offers you the opportunity to further develop your potential to serve others, and those who have helped you along your way.

6. We are encouraged by the diversity of this year’s cohort. The 66 of you came from 19 different pre-university institutions, the highest number to date. The nine mid-term award recipients will take up PSC scholarships in medicine, public administration, sustainability, and engineering. In total, all of you will also be reading courses in 25 different universities, both locally and globally. We will continue to build on these. Today, mid-term scholarships are not offered for the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and Singapore Police Force (SPF) scholarships. PSC is working with the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on the possibility of extending the mid-term option to give outstanding candidates, who may decide on an SAF or SPF career during university, the opportunity to apply. You, too, can help us by encouraging your peers, who have the capacity and heart for public service, to apply for mid-term scholarships. Let them know that they are eligible, even if they have begun their degree and whether they are in Singapore or overseas.

7. Last year, the PSC introduced the sustainability scholarship. I am happy that we have three recipients for the scholarship – two mid-term awards and one master’s award. Ernest, Li Zhe and Freda, as the pioneer batch, you play an important role in shaping this opportunity and setting the direction for future batches of recipients. We look forward to your progress as you contribute to Singapore’s sustainability.

8. Earlier this year, I spoke to your seniors on their reflections of what the scholarship means to them. Let me share some of their points with you.

9. First, today you commit to be the best possible version of yourself. You have accepted responsibility to take on developmental opportunities that prepare you to contribute to others. Be trailblazers!

10. Your seniors have heeded the call. In this last academic year, they explored opportunities in 16 countries outside Singapore, including Antarctica, Belgium, Israel, Norway, and South Korea. Seven in 10 of those reading a master’s degree are doing so in a country different to their undergraduate studies. One is pursuing a dual degree with Sciences Po in France and Fudan University in China. Another a master’s across three countries – Austria, Greece, and Sweden. Three of your seniors are in the Yenching Academy of Peking University. Two are undertaking work stints in Kenya and Thailand through our Gap Year programme. Through these stints, they connect with other talented young people globally and forge connections that will benefit Singapore.

11. Second, today you commit to make Singapore and our society better. Beyond your familiar social circles, meet and learn from new communities. Gain insights on their institutions, beliefs and values. Empathise with how they interact with and want to help shape Singapore and the world. It is a humbling experience to realise that there are many ways to view the world; even in Singapore. The Youth Corps Singapore Leaders’ Programme provides you with the tools to interact with different communities. This will help you become a better public officer – one who closely understands those you serve.

12. Finally, today you commit to bring the Public Service, and Singapore, to greater heights. Never underestimate what you can achieve. When you start at university or work, it is easy to feel powerless. However, the path of least resistance leads to lesser results. Find the levers that will set positive changes in yourself. When you meet obstacles, as you will, keep your sights on the value to be gained. Even amidst failure, do not lose heart, and find ways to keep moving forward.

13. Your journey of self-discovery will be exciting, but daunting too. There are new challenges to discover and overcome. Your cohort mates, with whom you have forged ties, are there for you. Do the same for them.

14. Each of you was selected because you have the potential to do all that I have spoken about. You are entrusted with the responsibility to grow into leaders who serve others. It is with this mindset and attitude that you will enter the Public Service and bring the nation forward.

15. To end off, I ask that you remember the meaning of public service – to serve Singapore and Singaporeans. You already have many commitments – to family, friends, loved ones, schools, community. But the biggest commitment that you make today is to yourself; because the person whom you aspire to become tomorrow must deliver the promises made by your younger self today.

16. I wish you all the best for the journeys that lie ahead. Thank you very much.