HL: Rickshaws For Water
SF: Six men. Two Rickshaws. One Goal.
By @Sumana_Raja and @allanjits


In January of 2009, we took part in the Rickshaw Rally India. It is a cool charity “race.” Basically, participants race about 3000km in an auto-rickshaw. The 2009 race started in Pondicherry and ended in Shillong. However, there are no prizes for finishing first, just the satisfaction of raising money for charity. We have to admit, at the first instance, it was a decision based on frivolity. We just wanted to go out there and have some fun travelling around India in a manner that we would never usually do. Being member of the Jaded Travellers Collective, we don’t even like the path less trodden, we like to tread new paths.

But then, raising money for charity started to consume us. We chose to donate to the charity Frank Water, and decided on raising a sum of $50,000, enough to build three water plants in India. We came up with a marketing strategy for big corporate sponsors – basically a business plan which included revenue generation channels for several big companies. This sort of marketing plan usually costs about $100,000. We generated a lot of interest in the early part of 2008 and secured some donations. However, by the time August 2009 rolled around, no corporate company was thinking of anything charitable that hadn’t been tried and tested. With talk of sub-prime loans changing to talk of a global financial crisis, all our corporate sponsors withdrew their offers.

Undeterred, we went guerrilla style. Using a social media platform, we started engaging friends first and then moved beyond to a larger network. We did some silly challenges to spur interest – for example one of us bet our FaceBook group (which had about 600 people) that I could drink a bottle of fish sauce. We filmed the event, people placed bets – which would all go to charity. The person lost, and got sick, but we managed to raise $50 for charity. Another one of us ate a tub of mayonnaise for charity. The videos helped to engage our FaceBook group, and no doubt helped to spread the message about what we were doing. None of the donations came directly to us. Instead, we used the web site justgiving.com, to keep our effort completely guerrilla, viral and online.

We even took a leaf out of the Girl Guides Cookie scheme and started baking lemon and blueberry tarts for charity. We delivered the tarts, and left the onus of donating money to the person – all we did was handout a name card that listed our micro-site on justgiving.com. In the end, we raised more than $50,000 (of which almost 90% was donated online), and the press value that we generated amounted to more than $250,000, which would have been a handsome return if any of the companies took our marketing plan.

Now we are taking it a step further. We are bringing the race to Southeast Asia, and producing a “socially-conscious” version of the Amazing Race. Instead of doing physical challenges as a race, teams will have to do something social, depending on the route we choose and the local NGO contacts we have. They will have to plant trees or help build a well, for example. We are close to securing funding from Singapore, and are working with The Adventurists, who are the organizers. We want to develop this concept of “travel philanthropy.”

Check out our FaceBook page: Search for Rickshaws4water
Go to http://www.justgiving.com/rickshaws4waterg
Go to http://www.theadventurists.com/

Our PM has seized on this economic crisis to once again impress on us why the only way forward is with a one-party state.

"We cannot sail through this storm on autopilot. The government has to lead, watch the changing environment, implement the policies which are needed, mobilise Singaporeans and mount a national response to get us through," Mr Lee added.

He added that the two-party political model cannot work in Singapore.

"Change must take place, not between parties but with the PAP changing itself to stay in step with the times and ahead of events.
As long as the PAP provides clean and good government, and the lives of Singaproeans improve, the country is much better off with one dominant party," Mr Lee said.

- BT, Nov 17 '08

The great leader might well be right. The thing is, since we've never had a two-party state, how can we compare?

Update:
We're impressed that Straits Times published a well-written rebuttal to the PM in its Forum page. Worth a read.

Singapore: Materially rich, spiritually poor

Good commentary by Catherine Lim, one of Singapore's most famous authors.

Do read it.

"Are we achieving all this material prosperity at the cost of something? Soul, spirit, heart, senses, whatever you want to call it?"

No political drama, but no money politics either

Watching the high drama unfolding in the US presidential elections, we sometimes lament the lack of such action in Singapore.

The excitement and fulfillment of 'the democratic process'--having candidates with opposing viewpoints fervently debating issues that affect our everyday lives; being able to speak your own mind; being able to read competing newspapers with different takes; and, perhaps most importantly, of actually having a choice--is missing in Singapore. We do not enjoy such things.

However, there is one thing about American politics that we don't like: the whole campaign financing model, and how rich lobbies and corporations and individuals can have undue influence due to their deep pockets. In short, money politics. Many countries are bedevilled by this. Thankfully, as far as we know, Singapore is not.

Our dear prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, articulated this briliantly in a recent interview :
(the whole interview is worth reading)

"Political advertisements cost a lot of money, including production, buying airtime on TV or print advertisements.

Singapore politics will turn bad if political campaigning costs a lot of money.

From a narrow perspective, if political parties have to produce advertisements, the PAP will have an edge because we have the resources to do so.

However, from a broader, national perspective, it is not a good thing. This is because many people will be willing to donate money to parties that need money, but political donations are never unconditional.

You win the election and after you come into power, the donors will politely 'seek payment for debts'. What do you do for such debts of gratitude?

In developing countries, this often turns into a problem of corruption. In the United States, it is not called money politics, but campaign financing.

(John) McCain has adopted a clear stand on reforms on this problem, but he still has to campaign. He has no choice as the system is such that he has to raise funds for political advertisements.

I do not hope for Singapore to go this way."

Straits Times should do better

Here are two articles that appeared on the same day, on the same topic, one in the Financial Times, and one in The Straits Times. Judge for yourself.

FT: Temasek adds to Merrill stake

ST: Temasek bought additional $819m Merrill shares in Feb

National complacency?

At the end of last week, Singapore's minister mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, disagreed that the Singapore government should be blamed for the Mas Selamat Kastari debacle.
("Guards were negligent, says MM", ST, April 5 2008)

Instead, he framed the issue in terms of national complacency: after years of safety and stability, national complacency has set it. We all believe that nothing can go wrong, and so when something does, we're shocked by it. The security officers were complacent, all Singaporeans were complacent.

On the whole, we agree with this complacency thing. We know some Singaporeans who leave their gates open and cars unlocked, believing nothing bad will ever befall them. Years of comfort have indeed bred complacency.

"He [MM Lee] said Singaporeans are being complacent when they believe that the government will take care of all security measures."

But curiously, the article did not suggest that the government itself had been complacent.

So, in effect, following the escape of a potentially dangerous would-be terrorist from a Singapore prison, it sounds as though the government has absolved itself of blame--aside from Mas' security guard--and is instead recasting the entire issue in terms of the complacency of ordinary Singaporeans.

Not many are impressed. The most volatile--and clearly irrational--response we received is from a taxi driver, who said, "Who cares if Mas Selamat has escaped? Good for him! If I see him on the street, you know what I will do? I will offer him help. I will take him where he wants to go. After all, he has never been charged with anything!!! He is not guilty of anything!!! Good for him for escaping from the government"

(Mas Selamat was being held under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without charge. He has never been charged with any crime.)

Of course, even if true, the government can't possibly say that it was complacent--the strength and stability of Singapore's one-party rule is based on continued deliverance of peace and prosperity.

Government rules with an iron-fist. In exchange, it delivers safety and money. This is the manna we have all been brought up on. To think there might be more to life is, quite frankly, a shock to our system.




Aside:
Are we doing too much?
Having visited Malaysia last week, and experienced the elaborate security measures on the way out of Singapore, we wonder: Are we doing too much? Are we trying a little too hard to prove to the world that we are doing something?

Why does every person leaving Singapore have to be fingerprinted? Even our waif-like, long-haired, Chinese female friend? There is no way she could be Mas Selamat in disguise...or is there?

A couple of articles we published on the Malaysian elections:

The audacity of a vote, Today newspaper, March 15-16

An election in Malaysia, Economist.com, March 6