Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Design4Impact 3 Pitch Day & Community Showcase, on 19 May 2023.

Ms Anita Fam, President, National Council of Social Service,
Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, Executive Director, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation,
Industry partners, participants and friends.

Introduction
A very good afternoon to you. I am happy to join you for the third edition of Design4Impact, or D4I for short. I fondly remember my experience two years ago at the second edition of D4I.

It was the Pitch Day presentations and I got to hear several exciting project ideas from participants.

I am heartened to know that several of those ideas are being implemented and scaled-up now.

Challenge Theme: Uplifting Vulnerable Families
The theme for this year is “Uplifting Vulnerable Families in Singapore”, to encourage us to create an accessible and inclusive environment to enable lower-income families access and navigate care, as well as supportive networks for better self-management.

The past few years have been tough for everyone, as we first faced the crisis of a global pandemic and then transitioned into a new normal of living with COVID-19.

• We have had to adapt the way we live, study, work and play.

• This took a toll on the physical, mental and emotional health of many, especially for vulnerable families in Singapore.

• Lower-income families had to grapple of a wide range of challenges.

• Many faced financial hardship, and might have difficulties in employment, housing, education, as well as caring for the health and nutrition for themselves and their loved ones.

The work you are doing is so crucial. And I am very happy to see so many of you answer the call to innovate and find creative ways to address the issue for this year’s edition:

• In just eight weeks, different teams have embarked on this learning journey together, tapping on each other’s talents and skillsets to develop many interesting projects that help address a social issue.
  I was at the Community Showcase earlier, and could see that a lot of heart, thought, enthusiasm and passion went into the whole process.

• Thank you for dedicating your time, energy and creativity to this cause.

Launch of Design4Impact Ecosystem and Community of Practice
D4I started out as a modest initiative in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Today, it is a whole-of-society movement, uniting Singaporeans from all walks of life to come together to innovate and find better ways to support vulnerable groups.

• Stakeholders from different backgrounds – including health and social care practitioners, community providers, designers, engineers, the academia, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, retirees, students – have come together to learn from one another and try out new ideas.

• Making it possible for us to form a critical mass of passionate and committed individuals, taking real action to support members of our society who are in need.

D4I has effectively brought together different stakeholders and resulted in the creation of six community pilots primed for implementation and scaling, with at least 20 other ideas ready for start-up and incubation.

• Work is ongoing to support the piloting efforts beyond the provision of funding, including industry mentor matching and linkages with community partners.

• In Yuhua constituency, community leaders are exploring a model tapping on trained volunteers to befriend and take care of seniors, based on methodology from the D4I1’s BlockBox pilot. Garden2Gather, an initiative to start conversations on mental wellness through gardening as a hobby, was launched in Boon Lay in September 2022, with support from Boon Lay grassroots leaders.

• These are just some examples that shows that design thinking has engendered a deeper culture of innovation and user-centric designs. It showcases how D4I-enabled precincts have now adopted and embedded a demonstrated activity in their local programming, with good potential for future sustainability.

It gives me great pleasure today to launch the D4I Ecosystem and Community of Practice (COP).

• The D4I COP convenes like-minded innovators to come together, offer peer support and community building, and access to resources and networks.

• The ecosystem enables D4I alumni like yourselves to interact with industry players from healthcare and social services, and participate in different aspects of solution implementation.

Besides networking opportunities, the COP will advocate learning and upskilling through curated workshops and webinars, to build capabilities in areas that would empower social innovation including design thinking, tech capabilities and volunteer management.

• The COP will also link you up with interested non-profit organisations and community groups, for volunteer and employment opportunities.

Ten D4I participants from past editions have been recruited as COP leaders to enable the ecosystem to be self-sustaining and responsive to our beneficiaries’ needs.

The Year of Celebrating Social Service Partners
This is timely as MSF has dedicated this year as the Year of Celebrating Social Service Partners, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank its Ecosystem partners and other community players for working together towards our shared purpose.

• One of them being CapitaLand Hope Foundation, the philanthropic arm of CapitaLand Group, for your generous donation of $30,000 as seed grants for three of our winning teams to use in their implementation of ideas and solutions for the community.

• I would like to encourage more businesses to contribute in any way you can, by providing seed funding, expertise and mentorship, offer pilot implementation sites, or even partner the D4I teams and alumni to iterate and scale their solutions for our vulnerable families.

• You can also support the new 4ST Partnership Fund, which aims to encourage sector partners to embrace innovation and collaboration, to develop solutions that empower service users and lead to an improvement in their quality of life.

• Unlike traditional funds that support individual programmes, the 4ST Partnership Fund will consolidate resources from different like-minded funders and allow them to collectively contribute towards larger projects that will bring greater impact.

To all the teams that participated in D4I, I congratulate you for your hard work and innovations.

• Your energy, commitment and can-do spirit is inspiring.

• I hope that your shared and collaborative experiences in D4I inspires you on a continued journey to find more innovative ways to uplift those who need more support and give them agency.

• On this note, I would like to thank the D4I core committee:

  • National Council of Social Service,

  • MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation,

  • DesignSingapore Council
    Institute of Systems Science, NUS,

  • as well as all who have made this event possible.

Even before D4I, some of you in your respective capacities, have been involved in laying the foundations for design thinking through other similar challenges. By harnessing your expertise and working together on D4I since 2020, you have helped to strengthen social-health-community integration in a much bigger way.

Through your D4I collaboration, we are seeing more ground-up initiatives and support from the community, which are valuable in complementing the Government’s efforts to address social compact.

More importantly, D4I fosters a stronger culture of innovation, user-centric design, empowerment to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of service users today, as well as anticipate and respond to the issues that will arise tomorrow.

• The launch of the COP by D4I will set the foundations of a strong ecosystem that builds capabilities and helps expand the networks of local motivated communities that want to do social good.

• Thank you for collectively working towards building a caring and inclusive society where we leave no one behind.

I wish you all a pleasant afternoon!