Dear Friends and Partners of Honour (Singapore),
Thank you for your encouragement, support and standing with us over the years and especially during these challenging times. Take care. Be safe. Keep well. We remain steadfast in our mission to promote a culture of Honour and Honouring for the well-being of our nation. In an interesting way, COVID-19 has made everyone more aware of what a nation has to be prepared to do to keep well, for example, looking out for the health and well-being of those around us, being willing to accept some discomforts for our own selves for the sake of enhancing the sense of safety and security for the nation as a whole - a process of “enlightened self-interest” -, helping neighbours and the elderly get food and groceries when we can help, and so on.
In this quarterly update, I write to provide a few key updates and share a new initiative we are working on which we hope many would raise their hands to participate in.
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We continue with our "What Next?” outreach. It consists of a workshop to elicit participant consensus on what a sustainably successful Singapore needs to be like so that future generations of Singaporeans may be the best they can be according to their talents and abilities. The idea is to help participants think for the long-term without being distracted by the challenges and difficulties we face today in our personal and national lives. We need to be able to deal with the Unknown Unknowns rather than limit ourselves to the Known Knowns and the Known Unknowns.
Some needs for the long-term may well take 20 or 30 years to bring about. In 2020, we conducted three pilot “What Next?” workshops with the following groups: community leaders, university undergraduates and young working adults, and a group of educators. We hope to similarly reach out to business leaders, religious groups, and other communities this year. Should you be interested in organising a group or attending one of these sessions, please get in touch with us at admin@honour.sg
Despite the restriction on film screening events, we have persevered with the Honour Film Initiative, holding our film pitches remotely and continuing to commission new films. Our filmmakers too have soldiered on with their film shoots with safe distancing measures in place. As more participants are gradually allowed to attend live events, we look forward to holding our in-person film screenings again, hopefully later this year with suitably restricted numbers.
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I am pleased to announce a new strategic initiative to extend the active support base of Honour (Singapore), and hope many of you would decide to participate in it. The idea is to create a virtual community of Honour Champions (“eHCs” for short), seeing how much of work and activities have had to migrate to cyberspace due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let me summarise a number of points which will set the foundation for the new initiative.
Honour (Singapore) has been founded to promote the virtue of Honour and Honouring for the well-being of the nation, starting off with Honour being understood in its two dimensions of:
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Honouring Our Word, and thereby continually reinforce the brand image of Singapore and Singaporeans as being trustworthy, reliable, and dependable, where the nation and her people believe in integrity and incorruptibility, and work diligently at delivering products and services of quality and excellence; and
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Honouring Each Other, where we recognise and appreciate the multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious nature of our society and, through mutual respect, we contribute towards preserving peace and security for the benefit of all.
As we look into the future, we see a mix of geo-economic competition and geo-political contestation, where the best chances for the survival and success of the nation and her people will lie in Honouring our Talents and Abilities, both at the individual and collective national level, wherein motivation and achievement will depend much on innovation, enterprise, leadership, and best development of, and benefit from, the individual and total capacity of Singaporeans.
Honour (Singapore) thus sees its mission, going into the future, as acknowledging and encouraging people to Honour their Word and Honour Each Other, with the latter including the fullest development and deployment of Talents and Abilities at the individual and collective organisational and national level.
Promoting these dimensions of Honour – Honour Our Word and Honour Each Other – needs to see the consistent practice of Honour at the level of the individual, the family, the community, the organisation or business, and the nation. Honour will need to permeate every facet of life.
Honour (Singapore) believes that the best way to promote the practice of Honour in such an extensive and comprehensive manner will be to reach out to the people who are in position to be Influencers and Multipliers, and to have them promote Honour within their respective spheres of social and economic influence.
Observation and experience in managing the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that a good way of doing this would be to use the virtual platform of the internet and its many applications for facilitating communication, discussion and sharing of ideas and practices. Hence the proposal now to launch the eHCs.
The eHCs will be an open community where anyone who believes and wants to actively participate in promoting Honour for the well-being of our nation is welcome to join the community. eHCs will make up interest groups that we can call “Honour Community Groups (HCGs)”, where everyone who joins the eHCs will have to be a member of one of more of the HCGs.
Each HCG will have its particular area of interest where members may benefit from interaction with others having the same interest. Possible areas of interest can be Schools, IHLs, Small Enterprises, Environmental Sustainability, Corporate Governance, Families, HR Management, Corporate Strategy, and so on. The field is wide, and the possibilities are enormous.
Each HCG will be headed by a Convenor, appointed by Honour (Singapore), who will initiate and guide discussion. As the eHCs movement grows, the only real limit will be to make sure that the HCGs are never too small e.g. less than 10 members, or too large e.g. more than 100 members. What is critical is for members to be able to benefit from the interaction in the HCG. The interaction may be meetings in person, though most of the time it will likely be virtual using platforms like Zoom or some other as may be convenient.
Membership will be free for the first year, though donations will always be welcome. What is important is that each eHCs member has to affirm their support and commitment to an Honour Code when they join the eHCs. They will renew their affirmation each year. This is to ensure that we remain united in purpose and effort.
If you are interested in participating in the eHCs, please write us at ehcs@honour.sg indicating your area or areas of interest. We will then get back to you with further details on the Honour Code and membership of the HCG we propose to assign you. There will be no obligations from your expression of interest. We hope to get pilot HCGs going by 1 June 2021. I very much look forward to hearing from you.
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