ICCS Young Leaders’ Programme
While celebrating our individuality, can we still embrace diversity?
In the fireside talk we had with Madam President Halimah Yacob and Dr Maliki Osman this evening during the International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS) Young Leaders’ Programme, organised by MCCY, she shared many candid thoughts on cohesive societies. While being ranked the most diverse country, Singapore continues to strive for a better harmonious society, learning from other communities and countries how they have coped with conflicts. This humbles me knowing that while statically we are cohesive, we will not stop in learning and improving ourselves. As mentioned by Mdm President, diversity creates strength and creativity.
While we celebrate diversity, we are still one people, one humanity.
As a country that has one of the most religious diversity, it is important to have a greater understanding of other faiths. Thankful for the insightful dialogue where we learned how to seek common ground between faiths while respecting our differences as one Earth Community. - Zheng Feng
Day 2-
How we view our world comes from judgement derived from different perspectives
In the Day 2 conference, we discussed on faith and identity - factors that influence cohesion in societies. By building a safe, inclusive and respectful environment, we can achieve a diverse society with different identities and faiths living together in harmony.
To Singapore, our beloved country, we are grateful for #threethousandyears to all Singaporeans who contributed to this peaceful nation to live in.
Day 3 -
Will regligious literacy result in social cohesion or division?
We discussed on the topic of cohesion: factors and reasons that results in harmony and those that do not. One interesting point brought up is that religion should be a tool to bring people together and not to divide us. As the core values of all religion talks about compassion, love, respect and understanding. Religion should be to allow us to protect the value of humanity.
As we come to the end of the 3 day conference, we are happy that fruitful discussions was made with fellow attendees. There were also many takeaways by our youths. We hope we can better serve our community, country and world together!