The SIF held its Connects! Event in Hanoi on 2 November 2023 to celebrate almost three decades of collaboration between SIF and the Vietnamese community.
More than 150 guests from 11 countries attended the event which also celebrated 50 years of ties between Singapore and Vietnam. Ambassadors and members of the ASEAN diplomatic community joined SIF programme alumni and partners, Singaporeans based in Hanoi and 40 Fellows from the 2023 ASEAN Youth Fellowship (AYF) programme (*) to make new friends for a better world.
Highlights of SIF Connects! Hanoi included a hip-hop dance performance put together by Mr Nghia Nguyen Hoang, SIF Arts for Good Fellow and Hip-Hop Dance Teacher at the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, and a sharing session by participants from the fifth cohort of the AYF.
Apart from learning about the SIF’s work in Vietnam at an exhibition, guest also visited booths set up by SIF alumni from AYF, the Young Social Entrepreneurs Programme and Our Better World story subjects.
The successful turnout reflects the warm friendship between the Singaporean and Vietnamese communities, and the power of such connections in bringing people together to enable collaborations to enrich lives and effect positive change.
(*) the AYF is an initiative co-organised by the SIF and National Youth Council (NYC) Singapore
Over 65 of our Vietnamese friends attended SIF Connects! Hanoi in May 2019. The event marked 25 years of friendship and collaborations between Singapore and Vietnam - on initiatives ranging from education and healthcare to social entrepreneurship. Recent SIF milestones in Vietnam included Words on Wheels, the mobile library programme that gave over 14,000 Vietnamese children access to more books.
At the event, a commitment to new joint efforts was sealed through a five-year renewal of a Memorandum of Understanding between the SIF and Vietnam-Singapore Friendship Association.