Workplace
Harassment
and Discrimination
Advisory
The Support,
Housing and
Enablement
Project
An Award
for Mind
the Gap
Birds & Bees
Sexual Assault
First Responder
Training
Growing Up
Indian
#ShesAnIcon

Empowering Communities

Supporting the Community

Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory

Our Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory (WHDA) provides bespoke, confidential emotional support and practical advice to workers in Singapore who face discriminatory or harassing behaviours. As more people returned to in-person work in 2021, the service attended to a total of 255 cases in 2021, up by 21% from 2020.

The Support, Housing and Enablement Project

The Support, Housing and Enablement (S.H.E.) Project provided a safe, private and stable shelter for 18 low-income single mothers and 21 children from 2018 to 2021. On 31 July, S.H.E. came to a close, with residents from the last of four apartments moving out.

The project sought to better understand, through research, the barriers to homeownership faced by these families, and the impact that housing stability had on other aspects of their lives, including personal growth, work and interpersonal relationships. Thus, we tracked (via quarterly interviews) the progress of 12 families whose stay at S.H.E. lasted for at least six months. They had come to S.H.E. after living with ex-spouses or family members in overcrowded apartments or short-term stay shelters. All of them had faced family violence. Nine of these 12 mothers successfully applied for and were allocated a HDB rental flat following their stay with S.H.E.

Residing at S.H.E. enabled residents to concentrate on finding and maintaining employment without having to worry about a safe place to stay. They also had the opportunity to attend Daughters of Tomorrow’s Confidence Curriculum, a series of job-readiness workshops. Many saw improvements to their employment situations: finding a job, moving from part-time to full-time positions, or switching to better-paying jobs. Over their time at S.H.E., residents’ average and median incomes rose from $636 to $1,008 and from $500 to $1,150 respectively.

Staying at S.H.E. also gave the residents’ children a chance to grow up in an environment that was free from abuse and had significantly less exposure to conflict. As such, the residents saw improvements in their children’s mental well-being. For example, one mother, Farah*, described her preschool-aged daughter as “more happy” and “more lively”. Some residents’ relationships with family members also improved after moving into S.H.E. and getting the chance to build healthier boundaries.

We are proud of all the achievements of the S.H.E. residents and the obstacles they have overcome.

An Award for Mind the Gap

In 2020, AWARE collaborated with seven other agencies, such as A Good Space and Beyond Social Services, to form the Mind The Gap Collective. The group sought to raise funds to help low-income families that were badly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and had limited access to government financial assistance. Together, we managed to raise $1.12 million, which was disbursed to more than 700 families in 2020 and 2021. In recognition of this work, the Mind The Gap Collective was nominated for the recent President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Award (PVPA) 2021 and received a Certificate of Appreciation.

Engaging the Community

Birds & Bees

Birds & Bees is a workshop that helps parents start non-judgmental conversations with their children about sex and relationships, through case studies, role-play and facilitated discussions. In 2021, Birds & Bees continued to run online with its three-session programme. With four facilitators on board, 122 participants attended at least one session of the workshop across eight public runs.

After attending Birds & Bees, 84% of parents said that they were more confident talking to their kids about sex and relaitonships and 96% believed that all young people should have access to comprehensive sexuality education.

Sexual Assault First Responder Training

As sexual violence remains pervasive, it is crucial that victim-survivors are met with non-judgmental support from those around them. This encourages them to embark on their journeys of recovery and potentially file official reports about their experiences.

In its third year of running community classes, AWARE’s Sexual Assault First Responder Training (SAFRT) reached 418 participants across nine sessions. Through the training, participants were equipped with the skills and knowledge to be effective first responders for the victim-survivors in their lives.

Additionally, 2021 saw our first-ever Train-the-Trainer (TTT) SAFRT programme, which took place in June and July. A total of eight trainers (including social workers, lawyers, academics and a religious leader) were accredited to deliver SAFRT to their own community groups, or co-deliver training with AWARE facilitators. This was followed by a second TTT delivered exclusively for National University of Singapore (NUS) students in October and November, where six candidate trainers completed the programme.

Growing Up Indian

On 28 October, AWARE launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Growing Up Indian, an upcoming anthology of stories at the intersection of gender and the Indian experience in Singapore. With the support of 235 donors, the campaign was fully funded at $20,000 for a 500-print copy run. The anthology is due to be released in Q3 2022, with Ethos Books as the appointed distributor and supporting partner. It will comprise at least 30 personal essays and poems from established writers, including Akshita Nanda and Balli Kaur Jaswal, as well as new voices. Amid the rise in racist incidents throughout 2021, this anthology seeks to create a platform for Indian women to document their lived realities, from experiences of discrimination to those of joy and camraderie as well.

“Everyone’s stories are our stories,” said Chye Shu Wen, an AWARE member and Growing Up Indian Kickstarter backer. “Reading and hearing more communities’ different lived experiences will undoubtedly add to Singapore’s literary and storytelling landscape.”

#ShesAnIcon

One of the major initiatives we rolled out during March for International Women’s Month was a campaign with ad agency BBH Singapore titled #ShesAnIcon. Inspired by a survey conducted by BBH, in which only 1 in 10 Singapore women named another Singaporean woman as a personal “icon”, the campaign encouraged Singaporeans to give the pioneering women in our history their due via a series of online stickers. The series featured 40 local women, including AWARE leaders Margie Thomas, Kanwaljit Soin, Constance Singam and Zaibun Siraj, as well as athletes Theresa Goh and Laurentia Tan, advocates June Chua and Saleemah Ismail, media personalities Preetipls and Pam Oei, and many more. #ShesAnIcon stickers were made available on GIPHY, Instagram and messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp. By the end of March, they had earned more than 5 million views in total. “What an excellent collab!” commented an Instagram follower. “Gonna use the stickers every chance I get.”