GovCamp SG – More than just a little victory.

I beat sleep-deprivation yesterday, managing to shift myself out of my bed and office chair and out to The Rock Auditorium at Suntec City for GovCamp SG. When I first signed up for the event I had not anticipated that I would have worked over 30 hours the previous day, and so it was a pretty major victory that I made it there at all, although I did miss the keynote speeches and panel discussion. (Thank goodness for the #govcampsg on Twitter!)

I believe it’s the second time GovCamp SG has been held in Singapore, although this is the first year it has adopted such a format – after speeches and a panel discussion, attendees split into groups to have “breakout” sessions, moderated by other attendees and based on topics that were crowdsourced and voted upon by the public in advance.

The focus of the whole event was to get people together and talking about what the future of Singapore and its governance will be, what we want to see and how we want to progress. This year’s theme was “Connecting People, Data and Ideas”, and there were two tracks of discussion: Open Data and Engagement. Breakout sessions included topics such as “Active Citizenry One App at a Time”, “Facebook/Twitter Engagement By Public Sector” and “Social Tools for Emergency Preparedness”.

Having failed to foresee a very crazy marathon week of work, I had volunteered to be the facilitator at the discussion “How can citizens make a difference?” In a stroke of scheduling genius/serendipity this discussion was right after James Gomez’s session on mainstreaming civil society, so we managed to dove-tail the two sessions and continue the discussions and conversation – this was lucky because I hadn’t actually prepared much (read: anything), naïvely thinking that being a facilitator meant not having to talk that much.

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry on GovCamp SG, Singaporeans often appear to feel helpless or disempowered, as if there isn’t anything that they can do to change things they’re unhappy with. Yesterday we discussed this and more at the sessions, going into issues of self-censorship, peer censorship, fear (or at least the perception of there being something to fear) and whether society is really changing.

If you decide to join civil society in Singapore, or become an activist/volunteer, chances are that you’ll end up hanging out with the same lot of people a lot of the time.

Anti-death penalty campaign supporters invariably show up at meetings calling for the abolishment of the ISA, or at events organised by migrant worker rights NGOs. Everyone knows everyone else and although it is great to have that sort of support network and like-minded friends, one can feel isolated sometimes, as if we’re the only little group of people in Singapore who are actually trying to do something. Which is why it was incredibly encouraging to not only meet new people yesterday, but to hear them speak out and voice their opinions. Knowing that you are not alone is a much bigger boost than can be defined in simple words.

It was also wonderful to be able to meet people who never really knew much about civil society and “lesser-known” Singaporean issues before, but who made the effort to find out.

I had the pleasure of meeting Catherine, a middle-aged mother of four daughters who had decided to just drop by GovCamp SG to see what it was all about, since her second daughter is now interested in doing some volunteer work or joining civil society.

“‘Civil society’ is a new buzzword I learnt today, okay!” she said as she gave me a ride home (I might be a cool activist but I don’t have wheels). “I used to just call them ‘fringe’.” Before last night, she hadn’t realised that there were human rights issues in Singapore.

And this is why I support events such as GovCamp SG. There isn’t a huge focus on human rights issues in Singapore, but I don’t believe that it comes from malice, apathy or cold hearts. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of my fellow Singaporeans lack compassion or kindness or caring, because I have personally seen proof to the contrary. I believe that the lack of focus on human rights in Singapore comes from a lack of awareness – why care about something you don’t really know about, when you’re already worrying about job security, retirement, mortgages and your children’s education?

To move forward and – to borrow James’ phrase – to “mainstream civil society”, we need to make more Singaporeans aware that breaches of fundamental rights do not occur in foreign countries rules by misguided despots, but that they also occur right here at home. We need to make them realise that bread-and-butter issues are not disconnected from human rights issues, that everything is inter-connected and working to rectify these issues are all part of the same journey towards making Singapore a better country and better home for us all.

“But has there really been much change at all?” was a question asked yesterday. “All this civil society, and what have we seen?”

Well, it’s all a long game, and one learns to acknowledge little victories. And forums, discussions and events like GovCamp SG are more than just a little victory.

P.S. Apologies for the lack of photos. I actually managed to completely forget that I had a camera, and didn’t take a single photo. I blame the sleep-deprivation.