RADION INTERNATIONAL is a relief and development agency that works in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Thailand; reaching street children, abused womenfolk and broken families.


We are dedicated to serving vulnerable & marginalised communities, empowering them to overcome poverty and social oppression.


Our vision is to be the catalyst for change, transforming broken lives so they can in turn touch others. RADION is currently the only Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) serving this tribal community of 14,000 villagers.

RADION has come a long way since our beginnings in 2007, started by two foolhardy (and some say foolish) Singaporeans who acted upon their compassion for the marginalised. What began simply with an act of feeding 5000 Hmong refugees locked up in a military outpost gradually became a social movement to care for the impoverished Hmong community in Thailand by providing jobs for destitute womenfolk, a shelter for abused children and emotional comfort for the neglected old.

Income generation opportunities for the Hmong is still limited. While Bangkok attracts many visitors and this has helped the Hmong community to slowly develop cultural tourism, farming land is scarce and overworked, in the hill areas where the Hmong live.

RADION is formed out of two words – “RADIATING MISSIONS”. Yes, we are on a mission to serve the poor and marginalised, radiating love and care. It is our vision to see our beneficiaries ‘pay it forward’ by doing likewise for their own communities.

In the past five years, we have established ourselves amongst the Hmong community in Phetchabun. Our outreach efforts to this group of people, included setting up micro-businesses to create jobs for destitute womenfolk, running a home for children from families torn by drug or alcohol abuse and conducting regular visits to the most needy households.

In Singapore, we have also worked to raise awareness of the social and economic conditions of the Hmongs in Thailand through campaigns like our upcoming Project LIVES 2012 – an annual campaign to gather humanitarian relief items for the poorest of poor in the Hmong community. In doing so, we hope to empower the Singapore public to look beyond the comforts of home, and lend a helping hand to those who are less fortunate.

Project LIVES 2012

At RADION, we believe that every life matters. Hence we give the best we can to bring help to as many people as we can despite our size. However as much as we try, the scope of our reach is ultimately limited to the size of the help we get. Hence, we need YOU!

Somebody once said, “Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope.”

In light of this saying, I’d like to urge you to a response – to give of your time, your resources, and even yourself, turning them into instruments of love and hope, so that others may simply live.

Project Lives 2012 is around the corner, and we are rallying all the help and support we can get. This October, we are inviting friends, associates, the corporate sector and members of the public to join us in the simple act of giving hope. We aim to fill boxes of blankers, clothes, food and medical supplies, loading them in a 40-foot container that will be dispatched to the hill tribesmen in Northern Thailand who are bracing themselves for an intense three-month cold spell from October to December (when temperatures plummet to 3 degrees celsius).

This is not yet another project or community program; it is a call to action! It is a time when as fellow humans, we make a stand for the weak, to aid the poor, and offer strength and hope to the lives who need them most.

Since Project LIVES began, we have managed, with help from donors and volunteers, to deliver aid to impoverished villagers who would otherwise suffer needlessly, or even die – simply because they cannot afford warm clothes or a blanket. You can be the helping hand to them!

To know how YOU can be a part of this life-changing effort, write to projectlives2012@radion-international.org.

Should you have any further information or enquiry regarding the Award, please email mcys_se@mcys.gov.sg or contact 6354 8552 for further assistance.

By Trina Liang-Lin, President of Singapore Committee for UN Women, a non-profit organisation working towards women’s empowerment and gender equality through a wide range of public education programs, membership events and resource mobilisation activities.

We, the Singapore Committee of UN Women (formerly UNIFEM Singapore), applaud the concrete steps being taken by the Singapore Government to fight the transnational crime of Trafficking in Persons (TIP). We commend the Inter-agency Taskforce for their consultative initiatives to date with relevant stakeholders, including Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and were happy to provide feedback on the tentative ideas for the proposed National Plan of Action (NPA) when it was out on review earlier this year.

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After being part of the launch of the NPA yesterday, we appreciate the great strides being taken, while we continue to hope for further improvements.

In the years since ratifying UN CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), Singapore has been urged by the UN CEDAW Committee to ratify the UN Palermo Protocol on Trafficking. We would strongly recommend that the Singapore government make accession to the Protocol a specific goal with necessary feasibility investigations completed within 2012, one year ahead of the NPA indicative timeline for review.

Prosecution

In terms of prosecution, it is our very firm belief that Singapore needs to go beyond a review of current legislation. We strongly urge the Singapore Government to enact specific anti-trafficking legislation incorporating the UN definition of TIP and comprehensively addressing all aspects to clearly signal, both nationally and internationally, how seriously the issue is being taken. Specific anti-TIP legislation will also raise the profile of the issue within Singapore, avoid the risk of gaps resulting from piecemeal amendments to existing legislation and put a stop to the unethical treatment of victims as perpetrators of criminal acts (e.g. immigration offences). TIP specific legislation would also set the definitions and parameters of classification and coverage for consistency and continuity in prosecution. We also strongly believe that the legal review should be inclusive and involve victim rights groups and civil society in general.

The importance of prosecution of TIP cases cannot be understated and we appreciate the set of initiatives proposed by the Inter-agency Taskforce, while acknowledging the difficulties faced in implementation and successful prosecution. We ask that at all stages of the prosecutorial process, laws, policies, strategies and actions be firmly victim-centred and from a human rights approach and within the CEDAW framework i.e. the victim and their experiences are the paramount focus and concern of actions taken. This means the collection of evidence beyond physical, but also include mental and emotional abuses as in the case of domestic violence under the Family Violence Act. Difficulty of prosecution should not be an excuse for ignoring the rights and needs of the victims.

During the investigation and prosecution of TIP cases victims will need to be supported with legal and financial assistance (either direct or as an opportunity to earn a living). We believe it is essential that victim support during these stages is unconditional, i.e. that legal assistance and other support are provided regardless whether the victim agrees to be a prosecution witness or not.

The horror of human trafficking reaches into every corner of the globe, including the Asia Pacific region. Singapore is affected by all manifestations of human trafficking much like other developed countries around the world. As an attractive hub of economic activity with high people flows and international travel, Singapore is no less vulnerable than other countries. The city state is primarily a destination (not transit or a source) country for women, children and young people trafficked from other countries in Asia.

UN Women globally works to further women’s empowerment and we campaign on behalf of vulnerable women, in particular migrant women who leave their communities and countries with the hope of making a better living abroad. In the region outside Singapore, UN Women is working to facilitate safe migration practices as well as local livelihood programs, so that young women in desperate financial need do not have to take the risks that sometimes results in them being trafficked for sexual purposes. Indeed, poverty is at the root of child prostitution and sex trafficking. Lack of education and values surrounding women are further contributing factors.

The Singapore Committee for UN Women Singapore is a non-profit organisation working towards women’s empowerment and gender equality through a wide range of public education programs, membership events and resource mobilization activities. Established in 1999, it supports programs that provide women and children with access to education, healthcare, economic independence and a life free of violence and abuse.

By Project Mix & Mold (M&M), an eight-member Community Problem Solving (CmPS) group from Raffles Girl’s School (Secondary) working with children with autism in Rainbow Centre (Margaret Drive), a specialised institution catering to the more severe cases of autism.

“They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there’s a wider one to explore. But try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn’t know how.” House Rules – Jodi Picoult

Most would recognise this bestseller book “House Rules” from renowned author Jodi Picoult. Revolved around Jacob Hunt, an eighteen year old with Asperger’s Syndrome, many realise that he is “different”, not quite the average young adult – he cannot look at people in the eye, is exasperatingly neat, and hopeless at reading social cues. But this is not a story full of air and fantasy. Such people do exist in the world around us, and these are just some of the symptoms of the wide spectrum we know as autism.

What is autism?

Autism is a developmental disability, which means that autism is inborn, and the child will continue to have autistic traits through his adulthood, though it may become less obvious with age. We must hence be able to recognise some of these symptoms, to prevent discrimination or the denial of opportunities for a condition they cannot control.

“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.”

- Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

So ask yourself this question. Are children with autism really all that different from other children? Just like any other child, they deserve opportunities to grow and develop.



We, Project M&M, will try our best to give these children this opportunity, by helping them to uncover their hidden talents.

As the year rolls on, punctuated by traditional festivals such as Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival, Cheryl is guided by her family members through preparing and cooking many dishes such as mooncakes and the pyramidal bak-zhang. Showcasing the traditional dishes, in the prelude to preparing them, is a vehicle for exploring the legends and myths that provide the backdrop for the festivities.

Making Aunty Khar Moi’s Snow-Skin Mooncakes

The family stories that Cheryl knew from her childhood are peeled away like an onion to reveal deeper truths. With trust built through shared cooking experiences, older family members bond with Cheryl and show her how the family as it is today came to be. The passions, the quirks, the prejudices that are handed from grandparent to parent are teased forth in conversational manner and provides a window into the social and political norms of the Singapore’s early days.

Beyond the prism of Singapore’s history, there are side trips that dig into other cultures and demonstrate life’s little lessons; how cooking for a loved one can sunder cultural and formal values when Cheryl visits her Korean mother in law; a visit to Cheryl’s ancestral village in China that show how people are products of their current social and political environment and even a little jaunt with friends in the heart of America demonstrate the true power of chicken rice, no matter how poorly it is made.

Adventuring with friends to discover food is a common and theme that riddles the book. The need to find the best foods, shared by the stereotypical Singaporean, leads Cheryl to befriend some of the best chefs in Singapore and other mere mortals. Together they come, they see, they eat, they comment, they share recipes and it is detailed with a whole lot of fun. Passion, energy and the excitement of the food hunt and the joy of discovery is as close as it gets to what it means to be a Singaporean.

So do you want to salivate over this book? Moderate English fluency is handy for appreciating the little gems that are secreted into the accessible passages. Some very good recipes are handily unveiled at the back of the book that should provide inspiration for Dear Reader’s next cooking adventure. It is also interesting to see how one can turn the act of cooking into a novel format, something that stands out in literary landscape dominated by crime, fantasy, conflict and romance.

A Tiger in the Kitchen exposes what it means to be a Singaporean and how it works in practice. There are threads that run from our forefathers to us, and food is a daily ritual where we reinforce the legacy and use it to thread with the people around us. This is Cheryl’s journey of exploring her roots and offers many practical tips on how to win friends and influence family.

Let us tuck in!

By Debbie Ng, a marketing communications manager at NVPC, who gets a lot of fulfillment working in the non-profit sector. A self-confessed animal lover, she recently started a blog to rehome dogs.

Take a step back and look around you on this tiny island. What likely greets you is an urban environment made up of modern buildings, clean, neat streets and well-dressed people rushing through their busy lives at a frantic pace. How often do you pay attention to the disabled lady outside the train station, trying to make a decent living from selling tissue paper, or the old man pushing a cart laden with cardboard on the busy road?

We do not often take time to think about those who are less fortunate than us and what we can do for them, because we are caught up with our daily lives. The fact is, in Singapore, someone does go hungry every day, even as you and I are enjoying our lunch. Another may be going through a family crisis while another is on the brink of suicide. Others may be struggling with mobility issues.

These situations seem bleak. But, the good news is, they do not have to face this alone. Not if you can lend a helping hand.

Research done by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) has shown a steady rise in volunteerism from 9.3% in 2000 to 23.3% in 2010. This shows that more people in Singapore are giving their time. But imagine if the remaining 75% stepped forward. So many more could be helped.

Inspiring more people to step up

That is the aim of “Walk with me”, this year’s International Volunteer Day celebrations organised by NVPC. It aims to inspire more people to give by volunteering towards a cause they are passionate about. “Walk with Me” will take you beyond the glitter and glamour of our urban streets to a side of Singapore that is hardly ever seen. Featuring an interactive exhibition showcasing various social needs in Singapore, participants can experience the challenges beneficiaries face daily through hands-on experience, simulation through their five senses and the use of multi-media technologies.

‘Experience with me’ – An Interactive Exhibition

The interactive exhibition, “Experience with Me” covers five areas – Animals and the Environment, Community, Special Needs, Elderly and Health.

The exhibits in the Animals and the Environment feature interesting concepts including a wildlife enclosure by the Animal Concerns and Research Education Society (ACRES), a forest trail by National Parks (NParks) where participants will learn tree tagging, try their hand at guiding and find out about how unique images of animals are captured.

In the Community exhibit, a typical one-room flat in Singapore will be reconstructed. Often, many occupants of one-room flats live in cluttered, accident-prone environments that pose health risks caused by beg bug infestations and lack of personal hygiene. Supported by Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society, participants will experience the living conditions of such flats and learn interesting facts about assistive devices used in these homes.

The area on Special Needs includes experiencing the challenges of the hearing-impaired, physically-handicapped and the visually-handicapped. Participants will learn sign language and lip reading skills taught by the Singapore Association of the Deaf and experience using various handicap assistive devices.

Based on Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Dialogues in the Dark programme, a dark room will be constructed where participants will use their other senses to go through life without their sense of sight. They will be led by a visually-handicapped guide through various activities in the dark, in various settings including a living room, kitchen and shopping centre.

Participants will also get a chance to experience the ageing process, what it is like to not be ambulant and suffer from common elderly ailments like stroke, gradual loss of sight and touch at the exhibit by Bright Vision Hospital.

The exhibition aims to raise awareness of these needs and inspire participants to pledge their volunteer hours with one or more of the close to 50 non-profit organisations from the five areas, present at the larger exhibition area “Connect with Me”. They can easily do so through pledge cards or online at the event.

Walk, Pitch and Rock for Your Cause

Apart from pledging their hours, participants can inspire others to volunteer towards their preferred cause through a symbolic walk for causes. This is where participants show their support for charity by wearing a T-shirt supporting a cause they are passionate about and rallying others to join them on a walk along Orchard Road, to the event at SCAPE. The walk happens every hour on the hour from 10am to 3pm and is open to anyone who wants to make a difference to the community.

Non-profit organisations will also get a chance to raise awareness for their cause through a live “Fire Pitch”. The pitch will be made to a corporate audience. The two organisations with the most creative or compelling pitch will walk away with sponsored funding for a proposed initiative or programme.

To complete the celebrations, the day will culminate in a rousing rock concert organised by YMCA of Singapore, to appreciate and thank volunteers for all their efforts and contributions towards the community.

Please Walk With Us

“Walk with Me” hopes to bring awareness to Singaporeans of the countless needs in the community we live in and of the fact that we can play a part, even with our busy schedules.

Every bit of effort adds up. Whether you are an individual, a corporate organisation or a charity, you can play a part to give and inspire others to give.

At the IAVE World Volunteer Conference held in Singapore in January 2011, Dr Kenn Allen of Civil Society Consulting, a Washington DC-based consulting firm, presented an executive summary of the Global Corporate Volunteering Research Project, a multiyear research project that conducted in depth interviews with 47 of the biggest global companies in the world. These companies included luminaries such as Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Samsung, Standard Chartered Bank and The Walt Disney Company.

This was the first project of its scope and kind and its purpose was to look at:
—Differences in corporate volunteering trends across the world;
—How global companies organise and manage their volunteer efforts.

Click to zoom in

7 trends identified in organising corporate volunteering in global companies.

Corporate Volunteering is now a strategic asset that is specifically used to meet business goals. It can build effective teams within the workplace and strengthen employee loyalty and pride in the company.

Inspiring practices is a better way of describing great corporate volunteering ideas since it allows for practices that best serve each situation. On the other hand, “best practices” usually describe popular practices which may not serve well sometimes.

Global and local partnerships with NGOs is an essential element of corporate volunteering because NGOs provide expertise that can guide corporate involvement such as leveraging employees personal professional skills and using existing metrics.

Different philosophies and operations drive corporate volunteering across different companies. It is usually better to implement programmes locally, based on the framework which has been set by the company.

Skills based and International volunteering are new trends. Results are highly effective as employees enjoy the opportunity to use their personal & professional skills and they enjoy travelling; however there are major hurdles in scaling these types of programmes up.

Many companies are not doing due diligence in measuring and evaluating the impact of employee volunteering programmes and seeing if they are meeting their goals. NGOs often can provide their own metrics when companies feel that it is too expensive to do their own impact evaluations. There is no global standard for measuring employee volunteering.

Innovative technology has been used for some volunteering projects, but many times its use is routine and limited. In many cases the workplace may create challenges in accessing technology that supports corporate volunteering.

By Terence Chong, a sociologist and Chua Ai Lin, a historian, writing on behalf of the Singapore Heritage Society.

In land-scarce Singapore, the tension between heritage and modernity is not unusual, as the on-going debate over Bukit Brown Cemetery demonstrates. This debate is the latest in a long line of struggles over important national spaces such as the National Library building in Stamford Road and Bidadari cemetery in Upper Aljunied Road, both of which have been irretrievably lost to the nation.

In July this year, the Urban Redevelopment Authority announced that Bukit Brown Cemetery would be needed for future housing and in mid-September, the Land Transport Authority revealed plans to begin constructing a dual four-lane road through Bukit Brown Cemetery in early 2013. The road will affect about 5,000 of the approximately 100,000 graves.

Troy Chin’s Loti is the textbook we wished teachers would force us to memorise back in the day. In a word, it endears us to remember everything that was fun about going to school, without the perennial dread of exams and homework. The premise is simple: Loti revolves around Huang Shuwen and his adventures with his friends both in and out of school. The title of the novel gets its name from a dog that Shuwen later encounters and befriends.

Throughout the story, we as readers are slowly taught to look at the world through the eyes of a young boy; and that world is a strangely familiar one.

It is not only that Shuwen asks questions we ourselves have once always wondered but perhaps never got answered, (like, would the ceiling fans ever come off their hinges?) it is that the questions he asks are very much the questions we might have asked. The people that populate the school and home of loti, likewise add plenty of personality to creating an authentic prepubescent growing up phase. It is a phase that many of us look back on fondly, whilst at the same time recognising that it can be both an exciting and dangerous time for any child growing up.

It is not only Shuwen that is growing up here, however.

There is without a doubt a charm in the world that Chin creates, a charm that resonates with the inner child inside all of us. His thoughts on the way life works and how it should work might have once been our thoughts. Loti reminds us of how we ourselves once viewed our surroundings and the people around us with such child-like naiveté.

Not childish, mind you, for not everything in Shuwen’s world is seen through rose-tinted glasses. Loti tackles some deep issues in a light-hearted way; things such as the perception of Mother Tongue, global warming and even having a foreign student in class. These are issues that constantly surface in Loti and are often relatable to students; for let us be honest with ourselves, who has not gone through our local education without once experiencing the berating of parents’ with regards to grades, or the dull drone of a teacher’s voice?

Chin’s art direction for Loti removes any doubt that this is a world yet untouched by the constant cynicism present in ‘adult’ realities. Reminiscent of Japanese Manga styles, Loti emphasises innocence, so do not expect hyper realistic characters, flashy styles or detailed rendered environments. Instead, the drawing is cartoon-like, peppered with the familiar use of Manga tropes; and this actually works in its favour. We are, after all, invited into the mind of a boy at the cusp of Primary 2. The end result is a lovely hearkening to the flavour of yesteryear’s comics like Archie or Peanuts.

Loti is an addictive read, not only for children of all ages, but it makes for fantastic parent-child reading time as well. For the children, Shuwen’s search is a magical story of discovery and growing up; and the lessons Loti teaches are both heartfelt and memorable. For adults, it is a invitation into a world once thought buried in the past – an invitation that asks Loti’s readers to don their old uniforms and reminisce about an innocence that can only stem from one’s schooling days.

A World of Loti

Loti is a daily, four-panel, slice of life comic strip that began its run on September 30, 2008. The story follows the inquisitive Huang Shuwen and his five Primary 2 friends as they go about their adventures in and around their neighbourhood. The comic strip has been released as books with bonus comic strips added.

Meet the cast of Loti.

You can also download the character themed emoticons and wallpaper from Loti website.

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Each book captures 1 term of the school year, depicting all the Singaporean festivals and activities that punctuate each quarter of the local calendar. Terms 1, 2 and 3 are out.

You can also get your Loti from the online store.

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Build your own Loti! All you need is a colour printer, scissors, some PVA glue or glue tape, patience and lots of LOVE. Take a picture of him at your favourite places and contribute to the Loti sightings album on Facebook!