Tatt Si (right) at World Humanist Day 2016
What am I up to these days? Officiating weddings, god-parent ceremonies, on top of hosting deep philosophical events which discuss the interaction between the religious and the non-religious. I’m a busy man but that’s how I roll. I am determined to really expand HumanistSG’s influence on my watch. [Read more…]
I’m Dan Dan and I’m the webmaster for HumanistSG. This doesn’t just mean that I run the IT system day in day out – our system is actually fairly mature for an NGO so there isn’t much to troubleshoot.
I see myself as more of the guru for all things digital for HumanistSG. I collate and send out the monthly electronic newsletter to our members and subscribers. I am also constantly thinking of ways to improve the digital experience for our members and users.
For example, how can we ensure a smooth membership registration and renewal process? As different people sign up/ renew their membership at various times of the year, there has to be an easy way to track all these users for the Society and the users themselves. Unfortunately, a good solution would cost money (which we don’t have a lot of!) so I’m thinking of more cost-efficient ways to get this done.
Being webmaster also ties in very nicely with my current degree at SMU – I’m a final year student in Bsc Information Systems (Information Assurance & Security), so I get to put what I learn in school to use here.
I’ve been with the society for over five years now and volunteered on and off as time permits. I do this because I see that HumanistSG provides a unique community for all the non-religious folks in Singapore. I’m proud of how the society has grown from our initial days as an unregistered group. We are now a well-run organisation and looking for more people to continue this great work we do.
If you have experience running a website, and want to deepen your skills and knowledge while supporting this unique NGO, get in touch! 🙂
I’m Shamima and I’ve been the events director of HumanistSG for 3 years. I organise the logistics of events and delegate work to the volunteers of each event.
I think our events are the glue that allows us to meet in person and form rewarding relationships within the community. I manage an events agency as my day job and the skills I have learnt allowed me to contribute effectively to HumanistSG. I like shaping each individual event, finding the right venue, bringing all the different moving parts together to create a great event experience. I have other people on the team to provide the content, the speakers, the programme flow, and together we bring well-received humanist events to the public.
My biggest achievement in 2016 was to bring in an independent American filmmaker and his beautiful film about the joys of an atheist’s life. I was personally very inspired when I watched that movie and was completely determined to share it with a wider audience in Singapore. In the end, we had 3 screenings, 1 at NUS and 2 for the public. It was very well received by audience members. This was the biggest event which I directed with the HumanistSG exco and volunteers. I’m really psyched up by the result and inspired to do more!
I am on the lookout for new people to own individual events for the HumanistSG community. We work collaboratively using event templates and have a network of contacts and vendors built up over the years. But what we would love are new voices to help us bring a different perspective to our events. Get in touch if you’d like to help create exciting event experiences!
Hafiiz joined the HumanistSG executive committee in 2014 as our assistant secretary. In 2015, he was elected as our secretary. Hafiiz is an educator at heart. At many of our field trips, he would volunteer as our guide, relying on his own scientific knowledge and passion for nature. During our visit to Lee Kong Chian museum, he helped to provide explanations about natural history and wildlife. [Read more…]
On January 17, the Humanist Society (Singapore) organised a post-event discussion about the dangers that hate spin could pose to Singapore. We also invited members from the Leftwrite Center, including Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, who had already blogged about the new book. About 15-20 people took part in the discussion, which lasted about 1.5 hours. [Read more…]
In multi-religious, multiracial Singapore, many Singaporeans will not hesitate to stand up on behalf of countrymen at the receiving end of racist jokes, insults and discrimination. From young, Singaporeans have been taught the importance of respecting different religions and cultural practices. Where public education is insufficient, the government has an array of legal tools to tackle instigators of religious and racial conflict. [Read more…]
The Humanist Society (Singapore) is a non-profit NGO. All NGOs are rooted in causes, often gaps in governance.
Gaps in governance occur because no policy is perfect. Trade-offs happen. In a democracy, there is always a pressure on governments to serve the majority.
Sometimes the private sector can step in to fill voids in public service, but sometimes the void is due to existing regulations and societal norms.
No amount of money, for example, can easily change how Singaporeans view atheists and apostates.
Nonetheless, any successful cause has to be rooted in tangibles. The tangibles that attract the most concern are always about your physical safety, your livelihood, your loved ones and your identity.
The Humanist Society, even as a non-profit society, must link its efforts to the tangibles enjoyed by the non-religious demographic.
The Society must explain why the losing the rights to be non-religious, results in physical harm, loss of livelihood, separation from your loved ones and loss of your identity.
Examples abound in neighbouring countries where atheism have been declared illegal or unconstitutional.
The Society must be understood as a safeguard for the non-religious to lead the lives true to themselves.
Example:
An esoteric cause: A cause to promote humanism as a philosophy and clarify misunderstandings about it.
A tangible cause: To protect your freedom to work openly as an atheist, to walk around as an atheist without getting killed, to be safely accepted by religious loved ones as atheists.
According to our experience, two powerful forces pull people to Humanist events. The first is a powerful cause. The second is star personalities.
Based on existing evidence, good speakers draw the most attendants at Humanist events. The top 5 events above 100 participants all involve good speakers.
Singapore is a small and young country, we do not have many famous Humanist thinkers and celebrities.
However, Singapore is a very connected global city. The Singapore government and universities pay huge sums to fly famous humanists into the country.
By collaborating with them to host these famous humanists, our local programme will be enriched tremendously. Examples include visits by A.C Grayling and Jerry Coyne.
What you can do
There is no such thing as too much money. There is also no such thing as too many people an event.
An over-attended event may suffer, but an under-attended event is worse.
The no.1 rule of organising any Humanist event is getting a critical mass of attendants. Never take pride in an event so esoteric that nobody comes.
A critical mass of event attendants leads to:
Poorly-attended events lead to:
As a general rule of thumb, Humanist events should strive for at least 30-5o per gathering.
The critical mass rule can be broken if the meeting is aimed at decision-making, or sealing a deal. Too many cooks spoil the broth, so keep the decision-making team lean. (<10, <5).
If you don’t believe in having proper events and wish to form small cliques just for self-expression, the Humanist Society is not for you.
Eventually I realised I was being stubborn and stupid in equal measure. I saw my religion as a rotten tooth. Just cos it’s not killing me or giving me cancer doesn’t mean it’s good. It may have chewed some good food for me in the past, but that’s irrelevant now; it’s rotten and I should remove it.
So I did! And I got a shiny replacement implant which is much better. And it fulfills all the good functions of the old tooth, while losing the baggage of the rotten decay.
Actually, it was indescribably liberating to leave my religion. I felt a sense of freedom and exhilaration that has not left me since. My mother was extremely disappointed in me and we have had many fights, but overall our relationship is going strong. Which shows the power of love is universal and requires no silly stories of burning bushes or flying horses; just human acceptance and understanding.
I have replaced religion with the values of humanism, reason, human rights, democracy, secularism and pluralism. These values are really important to me and always have been. And when I see how religion threatens all these things, I feel a great and urgent responsibility to make the case for secularism and do my part in strengthening the opposition to theocracy and enforced ignorance.
Bryan Gan
