The socialservice.sg podcast is hosted on Anchor and is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Select episodes were previously available on Singapore Airlines.

Season VII (2024): “Before the Ballot”

1. GE2024? GE2025? “Before the Ballot” preview

Season VI (2023)

Making Research Sense
Exploring Singapore-based research studies and publications and their implications

1. The community: Community development in Singapore*
2. What makes a community?*
3. Community development in social work practice*
4. “Collecting stories, discovering places, and connecting people”: Participatory research, practice research, and Photovoice*
5. The future of community work and community development*
6. Do ethnic integration policies also improve socio-economic integration? A study of residential segregation in Singapore
7. “International academic or citizen scholar?: Singaporean returnees in the global city”

* Part of “The Community” mini-series, co-produced with AMKFSC Community Services.

Civic Engagement and Action (with Isaac James Neo)
Expanding communities and spaces for sustained civic engagement and political participation

1. A 2023 preview: The “Civic Engagement and Action” mini-series
2. “Tak Boleh Tahan”: Encouraging ordinary Singaporeans to speak up
3. Representation, not just conversation and consultation: DPA’s recommendations for Singapore’s workplace anti-discrimination law for people with disabilities
4. “Beyond Fairness”: AWARE’s advocacy for anti-discrimination in the workplace
5. Politically speaking: MP’s legislative assistants and parliamentary preparations (with MP Louis Ng)
6. Much ado about “independence”, PE2023’s young voters (with Rosamund Lim)*
7. Constitution? Ceremonial? Community?, PE2023’s young voters (with Liang Weiting)*
8. A “GE2020 Jamus Lim debate moment”?, PE2023’s young voters (with Aamir Bana)*
9. Singapore’s presidential… Group job interview? (PE2023)*
10. Veteran journalist Bertha Henson on PE2023, the PEC and CPA, and the office of the elected presidency*
11. The arts and publishing as civic engagement and political participation in Singapore (a conversation with Alfian Sa’at and Ng Kah Gay)

* Part of our PE2023 mini-series.

The Future of… (with Samantha Lee)
Chatting big ideas with Singaporeans engaged in social initiatives in Asia and beyond

1. A 2023 preview: “The Future of…” mini-series
2. The future of… Asian philanthropy (I – “Scenarios for Asia in 2050”)
3. The future of… Asian philanthropy (II – “Strategies for a better future”)
4. The future of… Community and community-based governance (with Aaron Maniam)

Others

1. Leading a young direct-service charity as a young leader (Glyph Community’s Lim Si Hui)
2. The Book Club: “Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it” (Richard V. Reeves)

*

Season V (2021/22)

Making Research Sense
Exploring Singapore-based research studies and publications and their implications

1. What is “a basic standard of living”? A deeper research and methodological dive into the Minimum Income Standard study (with Drs. Ng Kok Hoe and Teo You Yenn)
2. The State of Happiness Study: So what makes the average Singaporean happy
3. Learning to listen: The Listening Living Labs and Listening Reports (A Good Space)
4. Learning to listen: “Migrant worker communities” (A Good Space)
5. Learning to listen: “Low-income communities” (A Good Space)
6. “Scaled, citizen-led, and publicness”: Improving qualitative research through citizen social science in Singapore and beyond (with researchers Amirah Amirrudin, Dr. Nicholas Harrigan, and Dr. Ijlal Naqvi)
7. “Grief doesn’t have an expiry date”: Normalising conversations around the end of life, death, and dying with dignity (Both Sides, Now’s “Kata-Kata Kita”)
8. COVID-19’s effect on children’s outdoor play and associations with family income (with Dr. Jonathan Huang)
9. “The hunger report, part two”: COVID-19’s impact on food-insecure Singaporean households
10. “It’s amazing how this project has unknowingly reunited our family in powerful ways”: The HappyUrns initiative
11. Save.Me: Singapore’s first national survey on suicide (with Prof. Rosie Ching)
12. “Seeking Shelter: Homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore”
13. Singaporean youth civic and community engagement and political participation under COVID-19 lockdown and during GE2020

The Work of Social Work
Discussing first-hand social-work perspectives and social work issues in Singapore

1. So you want to be a social worker?
2. Advocating for social work and social workers in parliament (with MP Louis Ng)
3. “Beneath the rug”: Documenting the lived experiences of the poor/marginalised/disadvantaged through Singaporean social service perspectives (with editor Lewin Low)
4. The “Social Work Made Accessible” podcast

Civic Engagement and Action
Expanding communities and spaces for sustained civic engagement and political participation

1. What’s next for youth climate change activism and action in Singapore?
2. The potential and challenges of social media civic discussions in Singapore (with assistant professor Walid Jumblatt Bin Abdullah)
3. Role-playing as a Singaporean civil servant in “What’s the Matter, Mr. Monster?” (with director Roshan Singh Sambhi)
4. “Pragmatic resistance as counter-conduct: Civil society advocacy in Singapore” (with political and security risk analyst Isaac Neo)
5. Sustaining migrant worker advocacy and volunteer involvement in Singapore (with HealthServe executive director Michael Cheah)
6. Let’s talk about “Jom”: Singapore’s new digital magazine

The Future of…
Chatting big ideas with Singaporeans engaged in social initiatives in Asia and beyond

1. The future of… Water and water scarcity (with Wateroam’s Lim Chong Tee)
2. The future of… Marrying purpose and profit (with StoneSoup Partner’s Samantha Lee)
3. The future of… Eye-care and eye-health (with Eyeviser’s Chen Weiwen)
4. The future of… Finance and leaving nobody behind (with Givfunds’ and Masref’s Edward Yee)

Other Episodes

1. COVID-19, over 716 days later: Confronting Singapore’s long-term, pandemic-linked social challenges
2. Sitting by the fire.place: Positioning an AI therapist chatbot in a broader constellation of mental health and wellness support

*

Season IV (2021)

Civil Society Groups, Efforts, and Issues

1. SchemesSG: A searchable, indexable directory of aid and assistance schemes in Singapore
2. AWARE’s “Saga” podcast: Conceptualisation, production, and challenges
3. The Birthday Collective: Going beyond the essay-writing crowd and holding conversational space upon uncommon ground
4. Mental health at the Singaporean workplace
5. OpenJio and the challenge of sustaining youth volunteerism and interest in social causes
6. Students for a Safer NUS: Centring survivors, centring the community, and centring the margins
7. Intersectional climate justice, climate change and its unequal effects, and aspirations for a low-carbon Singapore
8. Burnout and self-care experiences of two young Singaporean social workers

Researchers

1. On the researcher’s privileged position, community partnerships, data and research advocacy: Postdoctoral fellow Rayner Tan
2. “Hard at Work: Life in Singapore”: Prof. Gerard Sasges on the book’s conceptualisation and the power of interviewing and stories
3. The history of the making of youth – and the history of the present – in youth-conscious, youth-centred Singapore: PhD candidate Edgar Liao
4. Macro inequality and mobility trends, felt inequality, and the case for a healthy degree of equality of outcomes: PhD candidate Nathan Peng Li
5. “The hunger report”: Singapore’s first nationally representative food insecurity study
6. On homelessness and housing insecurity, income insecurity and minimum income standard, and bridging research, practice, and policy: Dr. Ng Kok Hoe
7. Scarcity, the bandwidth tax, and the effect of debt reduction in low-income Singaporean households: Dr. Ong Qiyan
8. Contested framings of climate change and climate governance in Singapore: PhD student Belicia Teo

Both

1. “Mind the chasm”: The pandemic’s devastatingly uneven impact and the insecurities of low-income families across multiple, intersecting dimensions
2. Advancing the rights of LGBTQ+ Singaporeans
3. Building solid ground for those in Singapore facing online harassment, abuse, and harms
4. Ground-ups in Singapore (Part 1): Emergence and impact, activator journeys, and funding
5. Ground-ups in Singapore (Part 2): Building synchronicity among communities of communities
6. AreWeOkay and the proposal for a Mental Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Office in Singapore

“Thinking about futures”: On the application of futures thinking and futures studies in Singapore

1. “Thinking about futures”: A preview
2. “What if we’re wrong?”: Interdisciplinarity, education, and higher education in Singapore
3. “No one group has a monopoly on good ideas”: Building anticipatory capacity and democratising, diversifying futures thinking
4. “People buy into what they help create”: Citizen foresight work and the influence of language and metaphors on futures thinking
5. “Thinking about futures”: Taking stock (with Eddie Choo)

COVID-19, one year on

1. Sustaining an ecosystem of ground-ups and changemakers (Abhishek Bajaj)
2. Sustaining the muscles of active citizenry and ground-ups for a more participatory democracy (Vincent Ng)
3. “Are we listening?”: Coalescing around downstream and upstream mental health action (Anthea Ong)
4. Advising career and further education choices through a pandemic (Mock Yi Jun)
5. Beyond the laptop: From digital access to digital inclusion and literacy (Lim May-Ann)
6. Long-term lessons from the pandemic: Government interactions and online/offline civic engagement (Adriel Yong)

*

Season III (2020)

1. The minimum wage, the Progressive Wage Model, and low-wage labour in Singapore (A conversation with Prof. Linda Lim)
2. COV-AID: NUS law students seek to make legal complexity, simple
3. NUS Developer Student Club: #TechForGood within and beyond the university
4. BeTheWire: Bridging the digital divide for persons of all abilities
5. “GE2020: Fair or Foul?”: Bertha Henson on levelling the electoral playing field
6. “PAP v PAP”: Cherian George and Donald Low on balancing elite governance and democratic deliberation in Singapore
7. Gift for Good: Galvanising in-kind donations and completing wishes in Singapore

(Archived link to old list)

*

Season II (2020): The Nine Days #GE2020

The Nine Days is a socialservice.sg podcast covering the 2020 general election in Singapore (#GE2020), through daily five-minute news summaries, conversations with young voters, and interviews with academics and experts.

“What happened today?”: Daily five-minute news summaries focusing on social services, social work, and social policies

1. Nomination Day (Day 01): East and West Coast plans and the main campaign issues of GE2020
2. Debates Day (Day 02): Your preferred party won the English TV debate; the PAP swept the Mandarin debate
3. A Muted, Rally-Less Campaign (Day 03): Bland party political broadcasts, lack of physical rallies are hurting opposition parties
4. Still a Pandemic Election (Day 04): The pandemic in the background, the NCMP scheme, and the 10-million-dollar question
5. The Pofma Election (Day 05): Pofma correction directions; youthful glimmers of hope
6. #IStandWithRaeesah (Day 06): WP’s Raeesah Khan in the news; Pofma, again; coronavirus still in the community
7. The Issues, Please? (Day 07): Two days to get the campaign back on substantive track; the ruling party campaigns for a mandate
8. The Sengkang Spotlight (Day 08): Sengkang GRC as a microcosm of GE2020
9. Silver Linings in a Post-GE2020 Singapore (Day 09)
10. Five takeaways from #GE2020, in five minutes and five words: Mandate, leader, consolidation, COVID-19, weathering

“What’s going on with young voters?”: Conversations on policy perspectives and their constituency observations

1. Volunteering with the political parties (Clarence Ching and Joel Sherard)
2. Following the elections as a young environmentalist (Woo Qiyun)
3. Evaluating the parties through a design perspective (Muhammad Al-Hakim bin Dasuki)
4. The national view from Holland-Bukit Timah GRC (Klinsen Soh)
5. On lowering the voting age and the “Singapore Votes” initiative (Nigel Li)
6. Raising socio-political literacy and civic engagement in Singapore (CAPE’s Huang Runchen and Joel Yew)
7. The national view from Aljunied GRC (Royston Long)
8. Raising awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in Singapore (Heckin’ Unicorn’s Teo Yu Sheng)

“What can we learn?”: Analytical interviews with academics and experts

1. Nomination Day, the debate, and mid-campaign impressions (Dhevarajan Devadas and Mohamed Salihin Subhan)
2. A brief sketch of social welfare policies and discourse between GE2015 and GE2020
3. A mid-campaign report card of the opposition parties (Researchers Loke Hoe-Yeong and Dr. Elvin Ong)
4. “It’s a damp squib”: An assessment of the GE2020 campaign (Veteran journalist Bertha Henson)

(Archived link to old list)

*

Season I (2020)

COVID19 Community Chronicles is a socialservice.sg podcast which documents community initiatives and discusses related structural or systemic challenges or issues.

1. Mutual aid: From spreadsheets to virtual and ground communities
2. Disadvantaged or low-income families: “Every student should have a laptop. Full stop.”
3. Internship and employment challenges for students: Making space and adding value
4. Mental health: Awareness, acceptance, and action (A conversation with NMP Anthea Ong)
5. Voices of the circuit breaker: Singaporeans in their 20s
6. “Moral panic and the migrant worker folk devil”, in neo-authoritarian Singapore (A conversation with Prof. Kenneth Paul Tan)
7. F&B in Singapore: Where cheap food comes at a price
8. Elderly Singaporeans living alone: “I cannot watch TV the whole day”
9. On the Majulah Universal Basic Income, UBI experiments, and the design of social welfare policies in Singapore (A conversation with Dr. Ong Qiyan and NMP Walter Theseira)
10. Domestic and family violence: Before, during, and after the pandemic
11. Foreign domestic workers: Challenging dominant cultural ideas and perceptions in Singapore
12. Community-building while circuit-breaking: “What does community mean to you?”
13. “Of the margins of the margins”: COVID-19, marginalisation, and the role of academia (A conversation with Prof. Mohan Dutta)
14. The community of overseas Singaporeans in the Bay Area: “Wherever you go, you can create a family”
15. The clarity of election and electoral regulations (A “Our Class Notes” and socialservice.sg collaboration)
16. Singapore’s “silly season” is upon us: Veteran journalist Bertha Henson on election reporting (A “Our Class Notes” and socialservice.sg collaboration)
17. Public assessments of the government’s pandemic response (A “Our Class Notes” and socialservice.sg collaboration)
18. “Beyond COVID19: The future of social services for low-income youths and families”
19. The historical roots of electioneering and campaigning in Singapore
20. On opposition “unity”, party credibility, and electoral strategies (A conversation with researchers Loke Hoe-Yeong and Dr. Elvin Ong)

(Archived list to old list)

*

Episodes on other Podcasts

1. Research for good (“Save the Social Worker”), July 2020
2. Climb the academic ivory tower (“But Then How?”), March 2022
3. Founders Series: Kwan Jin Yao, socialservice.sg (“The Messy Truths”, The Majurity Trust), May 2022
4. Doing research in Singapore (“Social Work Made Accessible”), December 2022

How changemakers can use evidence-based advocacy to drive action (“The Modern Elders”, A Good Space), June 13, 2022