SSR Seminar Series: Photovoice to Discover Community Assets in a Mature Neighbourhood in Singapore
Video Recording
- Registration slots are limited and will be assigned on a first come, first served basis.
- Successful registrants will be informed by 7 July 2023 via email.
- Unsuccessful sign-ups will be redirected to attend online (refer below for online event details).
- Registrants will receive the Zoom link via email after registration.
Seminar Details
This is an interactive seminar where participants will experience the photovoice methodology based on photos they can take in their neighbourhoods. The photovoice approach emphasises participation and takes on an approach where participants direct the research question through the photos they share, while concurrently getting responses from others participating in the photovoice. The photovoice approach was used as a participatory project based on the narratives of 31 residents from the Teck Ghee neighbourhood. The project sought to understand valued spaces and connections from the community’s perspectives and identify the place-based assets within the community. From the project findings, the community workers at AMKFSC linked community members to these place-based assets, and promoted mutual aid and collaboration among residents. This Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach emphasises community members’ personal agency and promotes capacity and relationship building — rather than relying on external resources and professional services. This is important in increasing social capital within the neighbourhood.
Let’s start exploring our own neighbourhoods! We would like to invite each of you to:
- Take a short walk in the neighbourhood that you live in
- Take photo(s) of one asset (any place, thing, people etc.) that you feel contributes to the well-being of the community
- Upload your photo(s) to https://tinyurl.com/photovoiceassets (Please be mindful to get consent if the photo shows a person clearly.)
Divisional Director
Strategy & Transformation
AMKFSC Community Services Ltd.
Ms Ng Bee Leng is a social worker by training and is currently the Divisional Director of Strategy & Transformation Division at AMKFSC Community Services. She is passionate about working alongside low-income communities to catalyse asset-based community-driven initiatives to advocate for equitable social conditions that enable people out of poverty. She believes in asset-based community development (ABCD) that focuses on a community’s strengths rather than its deficits. She is an official ABCD Guide, accredited by Nurture Development and ABCD Institute in Europe.
Bee Leng hopes to see Singapore as a society where communities are like homes, where helping a neighbour or stranger is as natural as helping a family member—a home where ground-up solutions are co-created WITH and BY, rather than FOR, the community, and a home where we live out our pledge of justice and equality.
Senior Assistant Director
Community Development Strategy
AMKFSC Community Services Ltd.
Ms Woo Peiyi is a social worker, lecturer and researcher drawn deeply to the principles and values of community development work. She is a person with immense curiosity, loves asking questions and building on meaningful conversations. Making sense of discoveries are important to Peiyi and she takes immense joy in documenting and coding her findings with the hope to contribute to learning - a core value that has led her onto the path of teaching and practice research. Peiyi strongly believes that research must benefit practice, and practice can in turn guide research. She does these through a variety of methods such as reflective practice, field notes, design thinking and photovoice approaches.
Peiyi’s international experience in nonprofit spaces in the United States, Nepal, China and Singapore have provided her with opportunities to iterate and deepen insights in her practice. Case studies and stories that she shares have become an integral feature in her experiential learning classes and workshops. In 2022, Peiyi was awarded the Good Design Research Grant from DesignSingapore Council. The opportunity has helped her discover ways to contribute to the community development field in Singapore and she hopes that the project will support grounds up thriving community building in Singapore. Peiyi holds a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University in the City of New York.
Senior Research Fellow,
Head, Policy Lab,
Institute of Policy Studies,
National University of Singapore
Dr Justin Lee is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Policy Lab at the Institute of Policy Studies. He is interested in implementing and testing participatory budgeting, citizen’s assemblies, interest-free loans to the poor, and worker-owned cooperatives. He has created a wiki platform that allows citizen mapping of social needs (socialcollab.sg) and will soon test whether a roving community innovation lab can catalyse local initiatives in different neighbourhoods. He is Chairperson of ArtsWok Collaborative and serves on the board of Trampolene and the research committees of Singapore Children’s Society and SINDA.