Introduction and Welcome
Mr George Pan, Vice President,
Mr Arthur Ling, Chief Executive,
Mr Leng Chin Fai, Co-founder and Senior Consultant, Fei Yue Community Services,
Mr Nicholas Gabriel Lim, President, Youth Work Association Singapore,
Distinguished Guests both from Singapore as well as overseas – a big welcome to all of you, and the fraternity of the youth work community, a very good morning to each and every one of you.
1 I am indeed very privileged to be here today for the inaugural Youth Outreach Conference, organised by Fei Yue Community Services in collaboration with Youth Work Association Singapore (YWAS), and am heartened to see such a wonderful turnout. Now when the video ended, the last few seconds got me thinking. I think that the video succinctly captures many of the things that our youth confront today, and many of the issues that are not quite right today. I first want to thank all of you by sharing my admiration for all your passion and commitment to uplift and support our young ones in the community. Every youth matters, and every single one of them holds tremendous potential. I have worked with ITE students for eight years before I joined politics in 2020 and each and every one of them gave me the belief and hope that our youth really do hold that tremendous wealth of potential, assets and talents.
Global trend of NEETs
2 The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (or OECD) reported that the average percentage of youth aged 15 to 19 who are Not Engaged in Education, Employment and Training (or NEETs) have increased from about 7.3% to 8% from 2012 to 2022. For older NEETs aged 20 to 24-year-old, the average percentage has decreased from about 18% to 14.3% in the same period.
NEETs in Singapore
3 In Singapore, according to the Labour Force Survey conducted by the Ministry of Manpower, the percentage of NEETs aged 15-24 has increased from 3.7% in 2013 to 4.1% in 2023. While it might not sound like a significant increase and is indeed lower than the OECD average, it is still of concern to us because this figure equates to about 17,000 youths, who have been unable to reach their full potential and may be at risk of being excluded from society. Our youth agencies such as Fei Yue and Care Corner have put in significant efforts to help our vulnerable youths, through programmes like Youth GO! and the Hidden Youth Outreach Services. While we have achieved good progress including successfully re-enrolling some of our youths back to school or journeying with them to secure employment, we can still do more as a community to support them. We should aim to reduce the percentage of NEETs like other OECD countries. For example, the Netherlands has seen a drop in the percentages of NEETs from 2012 to 2022. For those aged 15-19, the percentage has decreased from 2.4% to 1.8%. For those aged 20-24, the dip was from 7.1% to 4.4%.
4 A recent research study done just last year by Professor Groot, Mr Hamed Rahmani and Mr Amir Mohammad Rahmani at Maastricht University has shown that being NEET affects the individual’s personal well-being, as well as economic growth adversely. Furthermore, due to their situation, NEETs may experience poor health and relationships and face the risk of being socially excluded by their peers. As a result, they may end up facing long-term unemployment and being involved in crime.
International best practices
5 Therefore, it is timely that social service practitioners, educators, researchers, and policymakers from Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and Canada are here at this conference to discuss this pressing issue.
6 Every generation of young people have their unique challenges. When I grew up in the 80s and 90s, I did not have to contend with managing my social media profile. I did not have to scroll through endlessly social media platforms - just at the end of the day to realise how much time I’ve actually spent and also how much more depressed I feel at the end of it compared to the start. Simply because everybody is just putting their best picture forward on social media platforms to show how good a life I am having. How much of that is real, I am not sure, only the purveyor of those content knows. But it creates that deep sense of lack amongst us. I have no doubt we are living in an age of excesses – excessive information, excessive consumerism. We are made to think or feel that we want a lot of things, a lot of things that actually we do not need in order to feel full, to feel wholesome, to feel happy, to feel content. And these feelings of lack stem from the environment that we are in. But very strangely and perversely, we are also in a time of acute lack.
7 We lack emotional anchors in our life, we lack actual physical face-to-face social interactions in our lives. We are also lacking that emotional anchor of safe harbours like our family, our trusted family members, seniors figures in the household and there is much to be thought about in how strong our family unit is. Not just in Singapore, but I believe is a global phenomenon. Because there is plenty of literature going around to examine and dive deep into how the family structure has evolved, I would say, has awakened over the past few decades and there is much more that we can do in this respect.
8 Which is why I am hopeful, even though “hope” is a rare and a scarce commodity in today’s society. But we want to buck the trend and make sure that hope continues to be our guiding beacon for society. We want our young ones to feel hopeful for their future as we want the young ones of this generation and future generations to feel the same. We might not have all the answers right now but one thing for sure is we can only do that if all of us put our heads together. And that is why I am so hopeful that I am here before you, many of whom are passionate individuals in this space and I am looking forward to the extensive sharing that you will have over the many hours to come. This is really what it is all about. This is really what also Forward SG is all about because it is only when everyone comes together to build on what we have in this country, to build on what we owe to our future generations of Singaporeans. It is only when we come together, that things can happen.
Closing
9 I want to end by wishing everyone an enriching time learning from one another’s experience, build partnerships, and at the same time, hopefully develop better ideas on how we can maximise our youths’ potential.
10 So a big thank you to all of you, and here’s wishing all our youth workers amongst us here today a very happy Youth Work Day in advance. Thank you very much.