Volunteers Needed to Collect Stories from Singapore's Early Citizens for Founders' Memorial

Stories gathered under senior engagement programme will be used for a digital display

- Ng Keng Gene

The Founders' Memorial, which is under development and slated to open in 2028, is seeking volunteers to gather stories from Singapore's earliest citizens for a permanent display it will host.

It is looking for at least 160 volunteers for an initiative called Project Citizens - The First Million, which will coincide with Singapore's 60th year of independence in 2025.

The volunteers will speak to and engage seniors under this new programme, which will run from April 2025 to March 2026.

Project Citizens will tell the stories of those who registered as Singapore citizens from May 1966, when the National Registration Act of the newly independent Singapore came into force.

Mr Wai Chung Tai, senior assistant director of partnerships and engagement for the memorial, said 2025 - or SG60, the 60th anniversary of Singapore's independence - is a good opportunity to acknowledge this founding generation of Singaporeans, who made pivotal and important contributions.

Speaking to The Straits Times on Dec 23, Mr Wai said the memorial will look for these citizens to "understand what were some of the thought processes, some of the choices that they had to make, (and) what were some of the considerations they had in mind when registering to be Singaporean".

Parliamentary and newspaper reports from December 1965, when the National Registration Bill was being debated, characterised the 1966 registration project as a "re-registration exercise".