Rahimah
Rashith | Yahoo!
Newsroom – Thu, May 16, 2013
“People need to feel compassion,” says former president of
Singapore, SR Nathan.
“Problems will always be there. You can always throw money but that
will not be the solution," he said as he urged more Singaporeans to
give of their time and effort as volunteers to help those in
need.
Speaking at a dialogue for the National Council of Social
Service on Thursday at Biopolis, the 89-year-old former
head-of-state said those involved in social services --
professionals and volunteers alike-- need to be involved for the
right reasons.
“We are not in this business to get to be known, whether people
know us or people do not know us, our mission is to save lives,”
said the former president who's had a lifelong passion for social
welfare.
Volunteers should not be driven by recognition but instead have the
genuine willingness to help, he
explained.
“Faith in what we do is very important. Sometimes you feel
hopeless, you feel no hope at all,” he says. “In the things that we
do, we carry our problems home, we don’t finish it at 5 o
clock.”
Nathan knows all too well about hardship
despair.
As a child, he had run away from home, slept hungry on the streets,
faced the tragic death of his father and been kicked out of school
twice.
His turning point came during World War II when he picked up an
English-Japanese dictionary and became a translator and
interpreter, eventually working for the top official in the
Japanese civilian police.
“For the first time, I was told by somebody that I had a good head,
and that encouraged me to learn Japanese.”
The resilient man was eventually able to turn his life around from
depths of human despair to eventually to become President of
Singapore, taking over former president Ong Teng Cheong on 1
September 1999.
As the longest serving president in Singapore, he stayed in the job
for eight years until last September, when he stepped down to be
replaced by Tony Tan.
Having gotten out of a bleak past, Nathan hopes more people
participate in social services to help others see a brighter day as
well.
That is the very reason why he inaugurated the annual President’s
Challenge.
“One of the reasons I started the president’s challenge is not for
the money but for the participation," he said. “I want to get
people conscious about other people’s problems.”
