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Together
Green Drinks (Singapore): Connecting the Community
For Olivia Choong, community building and effective communication is imperative to addressing environmental issues. Find out how she facilitates community engagement through informal events.
01 7 November 2018: We explored Singapore’s food security, insecurity and food waste in this session co-organised
with Foodscape Collective. The panellists included
Huiying Ng, Foodscape Collective (Moderator), Manda Foo, co-author of Food Matters, founder of Bollywood Adventures, Bjorn Low, Edible Garden City, Daniel Yap, Yihong Minimart, Daniel Tay, SG Food Rescue, Abhishek
Bajaj, from a charity working with the low income
community, and Max Yeo, Eco-Wiz
02 14 November 2013: PUB’s Chief Engineer for Drainage
Planning, Ridzuan Ismail shared the government agency’s strategic approach in drainage design and ood manage- ment in Singapore. A discussion on ooding in Singapore followed, moderated by Grace Chua of The Straits Times,
Olivia Choong President & Co-founder, Green Drinks (Singapore)
What inspired us to start?
O: The catalyst to start Green Drinks occurred around mid 2007, when Wilson Ang and I discussed the possibility of a Singapore chapter of the international movement to bring together likeminded individuals to discuss eco issues. Wilson was already actively running his own youth environmental NGO, ECO Singapore, while I was learning about climate change and felt that it was an urgent message that needed to be communicated to the public.
Green Drinks was set up to bring together people from business, academia, government, NGOs, and members of the community to connect and talk about green issues, collaborate on solutions, and share knowledge with one another. We started off as a small networking event but it has
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evolved into large informal gatherings which take the form of talks, panel discussions, movie screenings and networking sessions. On various occasions, we partnered government agencies to organise dialogues for a two-way engagement process.
What kept us going ?
O: When Wilson left in the first year due to work commitments, I stayed on to manage the events with the help of friends. I was keen to communicate various green issues as honestly as possible in a relaxed setting and offer different perspectives at a time where environment-related events were rare. Some of the more popular topics include green jobs, food security, flooding, National Climate Change Strategy and the Cross Island Line, and would draw close to 100 participants each time. On occasion, members of the media would show up and write about our events.
As the community grew, more businesses and government agencies took interest in our activities and I
received positive feedback that people had found employment or made meaningful connections through the events. One of my speakers also shared with me that the event gave him a platform to submit recommendations to the Land Transport Authority on soil investigation works for the Cross Island Line, all of which were implemented. This encouragement informed me that I was on the right track.
After ve years, the team expanded and we o cially registered the organisation as a non-pro t society. This new team dynamic resulted in renewed passion to create greater impact. For 11 years, our events were mainly a monthly affair but with the emergence of more environmental NGOs and interest groups, there are now many green events. We decided that if we were going to hold any event, we would make it count.
These days, we mostly put together events on local, pertinent issues, or private events which require speaker or guest curation. Our most recent event was a closed-door two-way dialogue between
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