Special grant, handbook to spur PA women executive committees to plan initiatives, attract new blood

SINGAPORE – Last year, Ms Niki Aqisyah, 21, and her sister Nadia Natasha, 28, spent two weeks designing and making the clothes for a Countdown 2025 event showcasing recycled clothes at Keat Hong Community Club. They also choreographed the dance item for the event.

As members of the CC’s Women’s Executive Committee (WEC), the duo are also helping the WEC to recruit and engage young women, to keep it relevant to evolving needs in the community.

Their mother, Ms Tuty Adilah Sapri, 50, chairs the WEC, and is keen to attract young blood to ensure continuity. She said she gives the young committee members the freedom to work on programmes that are of interest to them and their peers.

Her main focus is getting young women to join them in working to empower women in the community, she told The Straits Times. Her 27-member WEC works with more than 100 volunteers.

“What is most important is to see what kind of programmes can attract them. We would not be able to attract them by continuing with the same activities that we have been doing for many years,” said Ms Tuty, who works as a research assistant in a pharmaceutical firm.

WECs organise programmes on various topics relevant to women and family, from health to parenting to financial literacy and employability. They also help to form interest groups for residents to interact with one another and make more friends, as well as recruit more volunteers to serve the community.

The committees, located at community clubs and centres islandwide, come under the People’s Association and are guided by the PA Women’s Integration Network (WIN) Council. 

In celebration of SG60 – Singapore’s diamond jubilee – this year, 106 WECs, including Keat Hong CC’s, can tap a special grant to expand their programmes and attract new blood. Each WEC can apply for up to $3,000 in grants.

Ms Sim Ann, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and National Development, announced the grant at the PA WIN Council’s International Women’s Day event at One Farrer Hotel on March 2. She is adviser to the council.

Ms Sim also launched an e-handbook that showcases the council’s “Better Me, Better Us” programmes and acts as a guide to help WECs curate workshops or activities that address the needs of women and families in their respective areas.

There are now 32 such programmes, including eight new workshops or courses on topics such as guiding parents on healthy eating, common gynaecological conditions and breastfeeding. The majority of the programmes centre on financial planning.

In 2024, Ms Uthara Venkatachari, 26, a data and AI presales engineer, attended a financial planning workshop organised by Fengshan WEC with her mother. She said she learnt how to grow her savings, which will help with her future plans as she plans to buy a place of her own before she gets married.

Ms Sim said the WECs can work with individuals or groups of residents who advocate protecting the environment. Other areas that they could go into include women’s health and employment.

She said the grant will galvanise more of their women volunteers, particularly their 106 WECs across Singapore, to reach out to new partners and focus on the process of renewal.

“Many of them talk about looking for new blood to take over their committees. They talk about finding new ideas so that even more people can join their activities. And I think this spirit of self-renewal is something that the grant is really going to help,” she said.

Ms Niki, for instance, will next be helping to organise a Mother’s Day event and a nationwide competition on upcycling fashion for tertiary institutions, while Ms Nadia, who is pursing a master’s degree in psychology and the neuroscience of mental health, is mentoring a group of university students working on a community programme on women’s health issues.

And recently, a volunteer who is also a freelance professional dancer ran a dance workshop for women aged 15 to 35, said Ms Tuty.

In Bukit Timah, a resident, Ms Esther Goh, 39, an advocate of plastic recycling, and her husband co-lead the plastic recycling initiative there, said Ms Sim in her speech.