Coordinating Diversity: The CEP Secretariat's Role

Summary

Q: The CEP would appear to be a part of Singapore's wider efforts to consolidate, deepen and widen social resilience. how do you define social resilience? does the CEP further it?

A: Resilience typically refers to the ability to bounce back from what, in psychological terms, is called a stressor. Resilience therefore may be defined as recovery from shocks, threats. Individual resilience is not irrelevant to societal resilience, but we hope to be able to make something of the latter where the sum is greater than its parts. Hence the mantra has been about building networks of trust, whether through Emergency Preparedness exercises and planning or other activities which help to bond people. The challenges for the CEP lies in the fact that it is more bottom-up than are other programmes. It is top-down in conception but bottom-up in terms of actual interpretation on the ground. In the CEP Secretariat, for instance, we centrally produce training material but customize them in actual delivery with stakeholders for their special needs. The Secretariat's job is to manage and coordinate diversity of domains without displacing their sense of ownership.

Q: Who are the main shareholders of the CEP?

A: Measures to enhance Singapore's resilience have been undertaken traditionally as part of Total Defence by the Ministry of Defence and as part of the constituency emergency preparedness programme driven by the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and People's Association. The IRCCs were set up after 9/11. So the main map for engagement has been focused on the community and ethnic groups. Then London 7/7 took place in 2005. The CEP was created and it allowed us to take in groups that were not part of the original mapping, for example, labour, schools and in MICA's domain, the media, academics and opinion-makers. The new additions have enriched the scope of engagement.