Flagging The Day

It most definitely has been some time since I’ve written anything on here.And it’s definitely not due to the lack of things to write about what with all the occurrences that keep popping up either globally or locally on a seemingly hourly basis, thanks to the various means of instant information sharing that the internet provides. This is more due to the author’s, ergo my need to filter these at times overloading streams of issues, ideas and the various opinions and related facts with regards to them to ascertain the most salient of them all.

And at this point in time, there is nothing more prominent than fund raising events and activities that act as much needed financial stimulus for the daily operations of the majority if not all of the voluntary welfare organizations in Singapore. One of the more popular or rather well known of such events are these uniquely Singapore Flag Days. Most countries would have a particular day marked in their calendar to commemorate or celebrate either the adoption or first flying of their national flag while a Flag Day in Singapore would mean a day on a weekend allocated to a particular Voluntary Welfare Organization (VWO), which are a fancy if somewhat technical term used to refer to non-profitable and charitable organizations in this island nation, specifically for the soliciting of donations from the general public. These VWOs would need to apply for a Flag Day slot for the coming year through the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) the pseudo national governing body for VWO activities in Singapore.

To those who are non-Singaporean residents or those generally unfamiliar with the culture of this island city that may happen upon this blog entry and find it intriguing enough to read, Flag Day in Singapore to a casual observer could simply be described as a group of people carrying marked tins and going around in an attempt to solicit donations from the general public be it in terms of coins or notes nearly every weekend. Those who would be kind enough to part with their spare change would be given a sticker bearing the mark of the organization that said particular Flag Day event belongs to as is shown in the following set of pictures:

The individuals tasked with the above are usually employees and/ or members of the organization and volunteers which may include students attempting to fill up their Community Involvement Programme (CIP) hours.

So in essence, there are no flags involved in any way, shape or form and most definitely no celebrations or commemorative trinkets issued out on the day. That is unless one would consider the stickers as such trinkets in which case I would, in turn need to consider said person’s state of mind. As such the reasons as to why these events are known as Flag Days seeing as no flags are involved, escape me. And doing searches on the web in an effort to decipher this particular mystery did not also yield any insight. Though I do admit that I did not go into full research mode and unearth the paper printed annals of this nation’s past quadruple decades to make clear the ambiguity, I do at the same time also feel that it should not require such an effort given how widespread the understanding of what a Flag Day in Singapore entails in the first place.

This particular vehicle of soliciting for donations though seemingly simple enough is anything but that as most of those who have been “tin can bearers” would attest to. The amount of planning and coordination in terms of acquiring of permits, registration of participants and their allocation of location and the logistics in the allocation and collection of tins and stickers as well as other related materials, which would include permits for solicitation, mobility aids, banners and tags for the respective centres is, for a lack of a better word, challenging. Also taken into account would be the same coordination and planning for the sensitive nature of the storage of funds acquired and the counting of them. This is clearly evident from the way my colleagues and I have been metaphorically dashing to and fro and most times in a roundabout fashion to ensure that everything that needs to be arranged has been arranged prior to the event itself. A coordination of such massive scale that I’ve only experienced during my term in National Service (NS) when major exercises were being run by various military specialist units on Pulau Tekong. Such an endeavour though an excellent experience that I would recommend for all to experience at least once in their life, does not sit well my ideas and concepts of how VWOs should primarily acquire their funding.

Personally, I have always been an advocate of a more hands on governing of the funding for VWO’s. In other words, it is my strong belief that such organizations should be fully funded by the government directly, if not a majority of their operating cost. And yes this does sound like and would operate much like socialism, whereby the nationalization of social services would be inherent within such an approach. I mean part of the reason why we are paying taxes is so that such services which addresses the needs of the society would be available and could remain available for the foreseeable future and hopefully beyond. At the same time however, I do agree with the Singapore government’s policy and approach towards having the community itself bring about the creation of VWOs for the purposes of addressing the needs within the community, either generally and specifically. However, what I do not agree is the limitation of funding for community created VWOs that have already established its services that addresses those needs. Such limitations however are inherent possibly due to, and I am only basing this on heuristics as I’ve not actually done any actual studies, the huge number of duplicated, if not replicated services and VWOs which if left unchecked in some way, would lead to a strain of the national budget for social services. As such a regulating body for these VWOs be able to identify such duplicated services and streamline or merge them, perhaps such a socialistic approach would be possible. And before any naysayers would point out on the deficiencies of such a nationalized system, I would as easily point out Singapore’s successful implementation of its nationalized mainstream education, military and police force. There would of course still be some fund raising activities on the part of these VWOs, but it would not seem as if the very survival of these organizations would primarily depend on such means of monetary acquisition given a more focused, if not also intrusive, method of regulation. Given the reduction in corporate tax by as much as 9% from 2000 to 2010, one would expect a correlation between the reduction in tax to a reduction in overall corporate donations and ultimately a tooth and nail battle between VWOs to acquiring the remainder of these corporate monies.

However, till the time when such a system is implemented fund raising activities as the one mentioned above, of which I would be involved in this 2^nd of October would remain the norm and a constant sight on nearly every weekend.

Note: Edited to remove some weirdly concocted phrases and sentences as well as to include some ideas and facts that were missed out. Serves me right for writing this out in the middle of the night while being half asleep.