We held the last of the 2024 Sustainability Event Series at Chamber member PALO IT yesterday afternoon. All these events are exclusively sponsored by the Chamber’s Principal Strategic Partner the Singapore American School.

The main speaker was Ms. Lisa Ferraton, General Manager, Swedish Chamber of Commerce Singapore (SwedCham) who is one of the most positively impactful chamber leaders anywhere. Lisa shared the story of SwedCham’s latest collaborative sustainability initiative via its Green Innovation Centre. This is a very successful collaboration between the local community, businesses and the public sector all brought together by SwedCham to evolve the already beautiful Bukit Batok Cosy Garden. The goals were for SwedCham members, working with local SMEs, the local community and the authorities to provide the garden with a sustainable power supply (solar) and a sustainable closed loop water supply (rain water) as well as a comfortable, covered seating area. 50 partners achieved this with the outcomes aligned with the SG Green Plan 2030 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Lisa shared the story of how she built the coalition of the willing involving SwedCham’s members, local SMEs, the local community and the authorities to achieve the project goals. It is another truly inspirational and praiseworthy SwedCham initiative which has caught the attention of our government and challenged us and other chambers to help with phase 2 of the project to benefit more communities and businesses across Singapore. Look out for news about this and get involved!

Following Lisa’s presentation a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Andrew Chew, Chief Commercial Officer, James Cook University in Singapore, Chairman, James Cook Institute and Chair, SICC Social Sustainability Interest Group featured Ms. Jeanette Juay, Chief Purpose Officer, Deloitte Southeast Asia, Ms. Jessica Dourcy, Head of HR, Palo IT and Lisa.

Here are some key takeaways:

🫶 Chambers are good platforms to leverage to bring different companies and stakeholders together to create scalable, impactful and useful initiatives.
🫶 There should be no competition in community giving. It is not about logos. Everyone should work together so collective efforts can be leveraged to help people and create a multiplier effect.
🫶 It is important to identify and engage with all relevant stakeholders with humility and a listening ear to create long lasting community programmes.
🫶 Strategy meets performance!—ensure purposeful, measurable impact for both the community and business. Don’t give up easily when things seem hard to achieve.
🫶 Communication is key and the senior teams in organizations must help reinforce key messages by demonstrating leadership and participating themselves to encourage greater participation from their colleagues.

A big thank you to each panellist for their insights, to Singapore American School for its generous support, to PALO IT for kindly providing its event space and to our audience for an engaging discussion. Stay tuned for the 2025 Sustainability Event Series – we’ll be launching it soon!

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