Dear friends,

Thank you so much for coming for our Big Ball. It was great to catch up with old friends and meet new supporters, and we hope that you had as much fun as we did.

We are very pleased to announce that AWARE has exceeded our fundraising target of $200,000. We couldn’t have done this without your help.

Because of your support, we now have sufficient funds to carry out our initiatives for 2012, which include expanding our counselling facilities at the AWARE Centre, increasing our Helpline outreach to Mandarin-speakers, building our support services for sexual assault victims and carrying out various research and advocacy programmes.

Many of you have told us how much they enjoyed the food, wine, company and performances. A big thank you to our generous sponsors and talented performers for making this lovely evening possible.

We have also taken note of the feedback about the spotty sound quality at the venue. Please keep your comments and suggestions coming, so that we can do better next year.

Speaking of next year – we would love to hear your ideas about how AWARE can continue to improve on our fundraising initiatives in 2012. Do drop us a line if you would like to help us make next year’s Big Ball even bigger and better. We welcome your ideas and talents.

We hope you enjoyed being a part of the very first AWARE Awards. We are very excited about the road ahead for all our nominees and winners, and feel certain that they will continue to improve the lives of women and men in Singapore. We’d also like to thank the members of our judging panel for taking the time to participate in this initiative.

To encourage more sensitivity to and discussion about gender equality and sexism, we are now accepting nominations for the next AWARE Awards and the Alamak! Award. You can submit nominations at any time over the course of the next year. Simply click the Awards button on the right sidebar of this website, and fill up the nomination form.

See you again at next year’s Big Ball, where we will continue to celebrate the heroines, heroes and young wonders working for the cause of gender equality.