Themes: Human Construct

18 Sep 2025, 08:45:00 - 10:00:00 (GTM+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

At the Himalayan foothills, Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) is a Special Administrative Region and living experiment in redesigning the human construct—an urban platform where well-being, values, and human connection drive regeneration, resilience, and flourishing over extraction. As a trusted gateway for global partnerships and investment, GMC aligns investor confidence with Bhutan’s values-led model while enabling green industries, mindful tourism, finance, health, education, and technology.

Grounded in a new model for life—inner cultivation expressed as outward impact, it advances a philosophy where philanthropy, love, and sustainability are one. Using the OCTAVE concept as a reference lens—human-scale “code” informing city-scale choices—GMC elevates ecological stewardship and cultural integrity alongside modern economic drivers.

This session is the grounding: to turn vision into reality through co-creation among governments, philanthropies, investors, business, and communities to build a city where people and nature thrive. Through dialogue with visionary leaders, the session will highlight GMC’s global relevance—inviting governments, philanthropies, investors, private sector partners, and communities to co-create the future of cities.

16 Sep 2025, 16:00:00 - 17:30:00 (GTM+8:00)
Impact Forum (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Global Citizen believes the success of young people is the success of everyone. But classrooms cannot deliver if students are hungry, offline, or unwell. Ending extreme poverty means removing barriers to learning such as nutrition, healthcare, connectivity, reliable energy, safety, and equitable opportunity. Education is not a line item; it is a growth strategy that builds skills, jobs, and resilient communities.

This plenary also confronts the systems that shape progress. Multilateral frameworks, governance structures, and financial models are not permanent; they are choices. Reform is needed, from the very top to the grassroots, to sustain progress on education and development.

Curated by Global Citizen, the session will showcase the organisation’s unique advocacy model, demonstrating how citizen action can drive systemic reform, and how quality education delivers only when connected to healthcare, energy, and equity and how reimagining governance and finance can expand opportunity, supercharge development, and build a future that works for all.

The program blends keynotes, discussions, and performances with practical solutions and a public call to take action, so every young person has the chance not just to learn, but to lead.

17 Sep 2025, 13:00:00 - 14:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 2 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

As the boundaries between philanthropic intent and institutional strategy blur, family capital is increasingly stepping into roles once held by large foundations and multilateral agencies. More than just financial contributors, family offices bring long-term vision, intergenerational values, and the agility to take risks that institutional players often avoid. This session will explore how family capital can match, complement, and even redefine the role of institutional capital in advancing catalytic philanthropy.

Featuring insights from pioneering foundations, family offices, and institutional investors, including a keynote contribution, the discussion will highlight models where family capital has driven systemic transformation—from education to climate resilience and social equity. It will examine how family offices can evolve beyond funders to become field builders, mobilising blended finance, co-creating with communities, and influencing policy change.

17 Sep 2025, 11:00:00 - 12:15:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

The most transformative sustainable finance models are emerging from Public-Private-Philanthropy-Partnerships (4Ps) that align around shared impact for a well-being economy. Corporate philanthropy plays a pivotal role in this ecosystem, bridging commercial interests with catalytic impact through strategic co-investment alongside public and philanthropic partners.

Beyond traditional CSR, corporate philanthropy has evolved to be a catalytic force—using grant capital to de-risk commercial investments while leveraging broader corporate assets. This session will explore how corporates can serve as both catalytic funders and strategic partners, collaborating with different stakeholders to fund innovation, crowd in private investment, accelerate sustainable transitions, and generate long-term value.

Models will be highlighted that integrate philanthropy with corporate strategy within 4Ps frameworks to drive scalable impact. AVPN will also introduce ASPIRE (Asia Partnership for Investment in Resilient Economies), a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at unlocking scalable, people-centred finance for climate action and the SDGs in Asia.

17 Sep 2025, 12:15:00 - 13:00:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Disclosure frameworks like TNFD and TCFD promise transparency, but data alone does not heal ecosystems. This session challenges leaders to move beyond compliance: how can disclosures become living commitments to planetary regeneration? We will explore how to integrate human values, community voices, and holistic metrics into climate and nature-related disclosures— transforming data from a box-ticking exercise to a foundation for action and trust. If disclosures are just data without soul, they become our new blindfold—can we turn them instead into maps for regeneration?

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.

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, 11:30:00 - 12:30:00 (GMT+8:00)
Impact Forum (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

If social innovation depends on extraction to survive, is it really innovation? What if every solution seeded dignity and scaled itself?

As investment paradigms shift to serve a well-being economy, so too must our vision of social innovation. No longer can social initiatives be confined to short-term impact or charitable models. To truly transform systems, social innovations must evolve into self-sustaining, regenerative enterprises—capable of scaling impact without perpetual subsidies.

This plenary reimagines social innovation as a bold design strategy for the future economy. We will showcase a series of powerful case studies to unpack the substance of that success. What are the principles, practices, and pathways that can be adapted and scaled elsewhere? Through catalytic insights and grounded conversation, we’ll explore what it takes for social solutions to become investable, adaptable, and rooted in the logic of long-term value creation. We’ll also examine how integrated capital stacks—from grant capital to impact-first equity—can support models that generate both income and impact, and how social entrepreneurs can design for durability, dignity, and depth.