Speech by Senior Minister of State for Communications & Information and Information and Education, Dr Janil Puthucheary, at N.E.Mation! 12 Awards Ceremony

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to join you here today. The last time I was in this room I was watching The Last Jedi on the screen so it's a slightly different experience. There was quite a lot of animation, and a fair amount of this type of animation work happens here in Singapore. The work that the students do; the work that you do to produce these clips, these animated videos, these graphics, is really quite incredible. I joined this event last year and was really quite amazed at the quality of storytelling, and this year's submissions are no less impressive, in fact I would say even more impressive. The excellence that our students display in this field would not be something that my generation finds very easy and it would not be something that my parents' generation even imagined was possible.

And I can just think, if I had to explain to my parents or my grandparents that I would be standing in front of a group of students to talk about the animation that they have done, and that the majority of the students were actually girls – a few more boys this year than last year, last year it was almost all girls, but I can imagine trying to explain to my grandmother, who grew up in a time when education for girls was not always a given, access to employment for girls was not always given, and to my parents and my mother, where the idea of women would go into technical fields and learn about programming, learn about coding, learn about animation, (and) learn about video-making (and how it) was assumed to be something unusual, and how normal it has become today -- it's quite incredible the journey we have made over just a handful of generations.

Why am I spending a little time saying this? When we look at what Total Defence means to us today, the wonder and the incredible nature of what has changed in Singapore, the technological advance, has significantly impacted what your generation can do when it comes to some of the pillars of Total Defence. When you think of the economic opportunity, what you will do with your start-ups, your ideas, your technologies, your disruptions, and when it comes to the way our military and civil defence pillars will work, the kind of tools you will bring to bear, to care for our society, and to keep our society and our sovereignty safe and secure -- my generation, (it is) hard to imagine, impossible to imagine, (and) for my parents, for my grandparents (too).

But when it comes to social and psychological defence, it is the other way around. Anxiety of the older generation, looking at you the students, (is) do you have the grit and the resilience and the resolve to do these things? Every generation worries about this -- my parents' generation worried about it for my generation, (and) my generation will worry about it for my children. But for the issue of Total Defence, and for the issue of Singapore's safety, security and sovereignty, the reason (why) the older generations, the seniors worry, is because they lived through very tough and turbulent times. They lived through those changes and they passed those values and ideas, and that resolve, those grit and resilience down to their children. And they tried, as best they can, to pass those values down to their children. So when they see a generation growing up in peace and prosperity and plenty and stability, the way they got their grit, their resolve, their fundamental basis for social and psychological defence is not available to you and your generation.

And that's a good thing. But they must be reassured that this generation, who can produce wonderful works of art; who can turn their minds to the technology and technical issues, the coding and creative issues in ways that we could not imagine; who can give opportunity to every student regardless of their gender, race, language or religion, in ways that was not imagined when Singapore was founded -- they need to be reassured that they can drive that intensity, that passion, that skill and focus on just not the easy things or just on the things that they were taught on some of the fundamental basis of Total Defence, the social and psychological pillars of Total Defence, that you will have and you will demonstrate that grit and that resilience to do what Singapore needs, to what your generation needs. I have full faith and confidence that this is so, because I get to come to these types of events and hear what you say and see what you do and enjoy the good works that you do, but we must take that out to the wider Singapore, to reassure generation after generation that the next generation can, and will do, what it takes for the benefit of Singapore.

To all the participants who (have) come here today, thank you very much for your involvement. Some of you are returning; we have a new Youth Crowdsource competition category, last year at the tea reception afterwards I was fascinated to meet so many of the students that have returned to help their juniors and returned to help their school teams in competing in this and I think that the idea that they enjoyed it so much that they were to come back and help their juniors benefit and continue to participate in the process is a testament to the success that we have had in developing this competition as our way of demonstrating our commitment to Total Defence.

So to organisers and teachers and to everybody involved, congratulations to yet another successful year of N.E.mation!. Thank you very much.

More Resources

Youths Showcase Total Defence in 30 Seconds

Facsheet: About N.E.mation! 12