Tonight, we will bid farewell to 2021. Despite the new waves of Covid-19 preventing our physical activities from fully returning, against the odds, we managed to keep Singapore’s Humanist movement going.
Throughout the year, the Humanist Society (Singapore) held several meaningful activities. In addition, we quietly but decisively enacted important reforms to our organisation to begin it’s transformation into a long-term player in Singapore’s civil society scene. We also achieved positive press coverage in the media and carried out some community work.
(Picture above: Board games at our Winter Solstice 2021 gathering)
Here are some highlights from the year.
#1 Darwin Day returns!
Darwin Day is the flagship event in our calendar.
Darwin Day returned in Feb 2021, following its cancellation in Feb 2020 due to the emerging Covid situation. For Darwin Day 2021, held online on 27 Feb, we again invited Darwin historian Dr. John van Wyhe to share some new discoveries. Dr John shared about his latest book, ‘Charles Darwin: A Companion’, the result of over a decade of collaborative research through well over one million sources.
#2 Sharing non-religious journeys at Humanist Cafe
For many years, the Humanist Cafe is our space for having freeflowing discussions in town. This year, we launched a revamped Cafe to focus on allowing non-religious people to share their personal journeys of leaving religion and receive affirmation from a bigger community. Our facilitators underwent additional training to improve the flow of dialogue and emotional atmosphere. Held every two months, the new Cafe format is well received, and we had the privilege of listening to many moving personal stories.
#3 Workshops: Combating Misinformation and Hacking
From time to time, we will hold Humanism workshops to introduce the philosophy to the Singapore public.
This year’s Humanism Workshop “Applying Humanism to our Daily Lives” (24 Jan) was a humanism workshop conducted in a deeper way. We looked at the problem of ‘toxic algorithms’ that often flood individuals with similar content after just one click, sucking people rapidly into echo chambers like a whirlpool, facilitating the spread of misinformation. We shared methods to combat this problem, such as cleaning up and re-diversifying social media accounts, learning to find good sources, confining addictive apps to PCs-only.
In the later part of the year, we held a workshop “How to Hack a Humanist” (26 Sep) to educate people about cybersecurity. Participants were taught to follow the 3 Rs: Reduce digital footprint, Do not Reuse passwords, Recycle carefully.
#4 Riveting global presentations at World Humanist Day
Our World Humanist Day 2021 theme is “Stories from around Asia”, consisting of workshops held over the weekend of 26-27 June 2021. We invited eight speakers from seven nations: Uttam Niraula (President, Society for Humanism, Nepal), Pepper Lim (Malaysian Atheists & Secular Humanists), Javan Lev Poblador (Young Humanist International, Philippines), Emma Wadsworth-Jones (Humanists at Risk Coordinator, United Kingdom), Sami Abdallah (President, Freethought Lebanon), Rashvin Ismath (Council of Ex-Muslims of Sri-Lanka), Faheema Nazhath (hash.peace), Vincent Ng (A Good Space).
A writeup of Emma’s work as a Humanists at Risk Coordinator at Humanist International can be read here.
#5 CNA coverage: One in Five Singaporeans are now non-religious
The Singapore Census 2020 showed that 20% of Singapore residents had no religious affiliation, up from 17% in 2010.
CNA interviewed the Humanist Society (screenshot above) and described us as a group that provides support for people who have no religion. CNA reported that HSS fulfils some of the functions traditionally carried out by organised religion – providing a community for its members, organising charitable activities and officiating at events like weddings and births. It is our first coverage on Channel News Asia.
#6 MCCY Feature
The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) has featured the Humanist community on 21 June, World Humanist Day. MCCY explained that Humanists are a community of people who truly believe in the potential and wellbeing of all human beings. While they have a non-religious worldview, they place importance in human welfare, experiences, science and universal values.
#7 HSS restructures into new Working Groups
To better engage volunteers, HSS restructured into several new Working Groups (above), each covering a specific aspect of the Society. All WGs (except the Secretariat) are open to volunteers outside the Exco. Each WG is managed by 1-2 WG Managers, appointed by the Exco.
Later in the year, we hired a volunteer engagement intern, Amanda, from July to September. She helped to engage around 100 individuals who expressed interest in volunteering, and moved about 20 volunteers into our new WGs. She also took part in several HSS events. You can read about her experience here.
#8 Improved Peer Support programme
The Peer Support programme is a monthly event to provide emotional and psychological support to participants. HSS began this programme in Nov 2018.
In January, the PSG took a four-month pause to revamp itself. Facilitators from the Humanist Society Exco worked hard to scour best practices from peer support programmes from around the world.
From May, the new Peer Support session involves the following processes to create a more conducive environment for healing – Setting our shared expectations, peer sharing of 3 topics that rotate every month (stress, emotions, and caregiving), and following a year-long peer learning schedule, where participants will learn about 1 mental disorder every session, and learn 1 fact about Singapore’s mental health support system.
In May 2021, we also launched a new mental wellness portal to provide mental health support to our members.
#9 Community Work: Read for Books and food delivery
In 2021, the HSS continues to help the less fortunate in small ways.
In July, the Humanist Society (Singapore) was a participating organization in the Read for Books movement, in collaboration with the Humanist Book Club (Singapore). Read for Books is a charity book drive to raise awareness and share the gift of reading with the less privileged. From 10 to 26 July 2021, for every 10 people who read for 15 minutes, one book will be donated to selected beneficiaries. In total, 30 humanists spent time reading books to donate 3 books to selected beneficiaries. Check out the photos here!
In September, some HSS volunteers joined in to help deliver food and NTUC vouchers to some needy families in the Jalan Besar and Geylang area. This initiative is organized by the Community Service WG, with the food and NTUC voucher was generously sponsored by the Madasamy family. Read about it here!
#10 Palliative Care WG holds the first Death Cafe
On 20 November 2021, the Humanist Society (Singapore) Palliative Care Working Group held its first Death Cafe to help the non-religious converse more easily about death. It is not easy to talk about death, given that many humanists and atheists do not believe in the afterlife. In addition, discussing death is still regarded as taboo in many Asian cultures.
So it was a pleasant surprise that a refreshing and poignant discussion emerged at the two-hour Death Cafe. Read more here.
#11 Exploring non-religious philosophies of Asia
As part of broader efforts to show the Asian side of humanism, we explored:
Confucianism, considered the philosophical backbone of East Asia. We held a sharing session in April.
Samkhya and Carvaka philosophy, non-theistic philosophies that developed in India. Both philosophies are unique in having a strong non-religious / atheist slant to it. We held two talks on it, one on 29 August (Samkhya) and another on 2 October (Carvaka).
#12 Voice of Reason
We continue to be a voice of reason to the best of our abilities, carrying out the following interviews / forum responses.
- Tackling Anti-Vaccine Sentiments in a time of Covid-19 (23 Feb)
- ST: Good that many interfaith dialogues include the non-religious (6 Dec)
- A guide to discussing race and religion in Singapore (21 Jul)
We have also attended several interfaith dialogues!
- Engagement with MUIS (30 Nov)
- Engagement with Harmony Centre (20 Feb)
The Humanist Society wishes its members a Happy New Year, and hopes that 2022 can be a better one for all of us.
