Types: Impact Forums & Labs

18 Sep 2025, 11:00:00 - 12:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 2 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

In a time when trust in institutions is eroding, and decision-making is driven more by metrics than meaning, the call to restore values at the heart of organisations is not just ethical—it’s strategic. In this session, the speaker will present a bold and timely case: what if institutions were evaluated not only by their return on investment (ROI), but by their Return on Values (ROV)?

Drawing from practice within higher education, this session opens a wider conversation for business, philanthropy, and public institutions alike: how do we redesign organisational cultures, incentive structures, and performance indicators to be anchored in values such as integrity, equity, compassion, and stewardship?

The session will unpack how polycrisis can be transformed into poly-opportunities in a post-pandemic, polycrisis world, where values-aligned institutions are not only more trusted but also more adaptive, resilient, and future-fit.

18 Sep 2025, 09:00:00 - 11:00:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 2 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Universities are more than centres of learning—they can serve as epicentres for inclusive urban transformation. With their research expertise, intellectual capital, and convening power, universities are uniquely positioned to address entrenched social and environmental challenges. Sunway University’s Desa Mentari Community Development Programme illustrates this potential, revitalising a marginalised, high-density urban community through data-driven solutions, student involvement, and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

This workshop explores how universities can become anchor institutions for urban resilience, partnering with communities, local governments, and businesses to co-create solutions for urgent social issues such as poverty, housing insecurity, and systemic inequality. It showcases how academic research can influence policy, inspire innovation, and deliver practical support beyond campus walls. Participants will engage in hands-on work to design adaptable, community-focused frameworks for transformation, tailored to local needs. The session also highlights the importance of embedding real-world challenges into curricula, nurturing student leadership, and practising inclusive governance.

It poses a powerful question: What if a university’s legacy was not in rankings, but in the lives and neighbourhoods it transformed—through bold, collaborative Public–Private–People Partnerships that begin just beyond its gates?

16 Sep 2025, 13:30:00 - 15:00:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Helping Homeless Families Find HOPE through Project 4650 highlights a critical tension in today’s social support systems: how to provide safety and compassion without fostering dependency or disempowerment. Emerging from the urgent needs of families living in Interim Rental Housing (IRH) blocks in Singapore’s Siglap division, the initiative reveals the layered challenges of poverty, housing insecurity, and fragmented services that often trap families in prolonged instability.

More than a welfare scheme, Project 4650 is a model for collaborative governance. Spearheaded by then MP Dr Maliki Osman, the project brings together government agencies, businesses, and community groups to co-create an ecosystem of transitional, empowering, and dignity-based support. It asks vital questions: how can public assistance uplift without creating long-term dependency? How can communities show solidarity without letting compassion become entitlement?

This session explores the design and scaling of “transitional support” frameworks that integrate trust, accountability, and empowerment. It invites us to rethink social services—from static safety nets to dynamic springboards—and to cultivate a shared culture of contribution over consumption.

16 Sep 2025, 12:00:00 - 12:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Forum (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

What if the true shift in national development lies not in a new metric, but a new mindset? Can inner transformation drive systemic change?

As societies grapple with complex social, environmental, and economic challenges, there is growing interest in models that centre holistic well-being. This session presents a pioneering case study from the Well-being and EESG Alliance (WEGA), exploring how China and Singapore—two nations with distinct histories, cultures, and governance systems—are forging innovative pathways to align national development with both human and planetary flourishing.

Drawing from a three-year research collaboration between TPC (Tsao Pao Chee) and the National University of Singapore, the session offers a comparative perspective on how governance, policy, and societal values influence national well-being outcomes. It introduces a new framework that integrates EESG (Economics, Environmental, Social, and Governance) principles with inner development, positioning both as critical levers for reimagining progress.

At a time when the global community seeks alternatives to GDP as the dominant measure of success, this session provides grounded insights into how governments can design systems rooted in sustainability, dignity, and shared purpose.

18 Sep 2025, 11:00:00 - 12:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

In a world dominated by dashboards and compliance, impact measurement risks becoming a hollow exercise—focused on accountability rather than transformation. While environmental metrics have advanced, social and human indicators remain fragmented and disempowering, often serving funders more than communities. Measurement tends to overlook what truly drives change: relationships, trust, and collaborative systems.

This session challenges the idea that more data equals more progress. Instead, it calls for a shift from activity tracking to agency-enabling, from siloed compliance to technology-powered, systemic learning and capital alignment. Drawing from grassroots innovations, financial rethinking, and digital intelligence, the session reimagines measurement as a living tool—not to control change, but to unlock it.

Participants will explore where current metrics may be muting their mission, and how rethinking what and how we measure can center equity, enable partnerships, and fuel systems change. Through provocations, case studies, and a hands-on Breakout Lab, this 90-minute session invites changemakers to reclaim measurement as a catalyst for meaningful, systemic transformation.

17 Sep 2025, 14:30:00 - 17:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

In a world facing deepening social, ecological, and economic disruption, transformation is no longer a choice—it is a necessity. Yet while impact capital continues to grow, the kind of capital needed to drive systems-level change remains scarce. Too often, brilliant ideas fail to scale because the infrastructure that enables lasting collaboration and integration—the “connective tissue” of change—is underfunded and overlooked.

This session, co-hosted with Catalyst Now and anchored by the 99 for Humanity initiative, explores how we can reimagine capital as a force for coherence rather than fragmentation. It invites participants to consider how funding can move beyond isolated innovation to support systems integrators, enable cross-sector ecosystem building, and embed shared value frameworks rooted in community wisdom, aligned policy, and long-term trust.

Through storytelling, immersive dialogue, and bold future-framing, the session offers a chance to experience what it means to fund the deeper infrastructure of transformation—where impact is not only sparked, but sustained, scaled, and stewarded over time.

17 Sep 2025, 09:00:00 - 11:00:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Cities are not just where crises converge—they are where solutions must be born. Are we bold enough to redesign urban systems for the well-being of both people and planet?

Cities stand on the frontline of our era’s most urgent challenges—from escalating climate shocks to deepening health inequities and social fragmentation. Yet cities are also uniquely positioned to lead transformation. This panel hosted by Resilient Cities Network (R-Cities) explores how urban resilience is being redefined across Asia-Pacific.

Anchored in the Penang Resilience Strategy, a city-wide roadmap that integrates infrastructure, policy, and community voice, the session reveals how urban resilience can be both systemic and human-centered. Case studies such as Resilience for Communities (R4C) in Melaka and the OASIS Schoolyards initiative in Quezon City and Semarang illustrate how cross-sector collaboration—rooted in the 4Ps model of Public, Private, Philanthropic Partnerships—can activate city-wide change while keeping people at the heart of every intervention.

17 Sep 2025, 16:30:00 - 17:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 3 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

This interactive session blends hands-on science communication with a high-energy, youth-led panel to explore how storytelling, digital media, and intergenerational dialogue can turn scientific knowledge into collective climate action.

Participants will dive into the power of science communication — learning how to make biodiversity personal and visible, to reframe overlooked urban nature, and activating citizen science to transform passive observation into public stewardship. It will also spotlight youth climate aspirations and how younger generations are reshaping the way we communicate, collaborate, and care for the planet. By building bridges between generations and disciplines, this session aims to spark a shared culture of environmental responsibility — one story, one voice, one action at a time.

17 Sep 2025, 14:30:00 - 15:45:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 3 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

In a world on fire, your story matters—what will you risk, what will you heal, what will you stand for?

Beyond the data and the frameworks, the most powerful driver of change is human courage. This closing session lifts up real stories of people and organisations who turned conviction into action—shaping a regenerative future one bold experiment at a time. As we listen, reflect, and share our own aspirations, we invite each other to go beyond incremental steps and become agents of transformative change—rooted in the shared story of our Earth.

17 Sep 2025, 13:30:00 - 14:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 3 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

If our technology is smarter than our hearts, it will never serve the Earth—can we design tools that honour the intelligence of nature itself?

Once seen as a driver of environmental harm, climate tech is now racing to redeem itself. This session brings together climate investors backing innovations from carbon removal to regenerative agtech to explore a powerful question: How can we design and harness technologies that work with nature, rather than override it?

With a focus on ecological impact, panelists will share bold ideas, ethical guardrails, and the shifts needed to ensure that technology amplifies nature’s intelligence, not replace it. Because in nature, nothing goes to waste. Can we say the same of what we fund?