• Opening Speech by Mr Eugene Heng

Mr Eugene Heng, CEO and Founder of Waterways Watch Society, welcomed and thanked all members who attended this year’s virtual AGM via ZOOM. Covid-19 in early 2020 was unexpected and a wake-up call to the world on the need to manage and tackle the challenges of keeping a sustainable and liveable environment for everyone. Waterways Watch Society has adjusted to this new norm and while the organisation hopes to get back to a more normal lifestyle, there will be permanent changes in the behaviour and running of the educational and awareness programmes. The Admin Team is helping to progress slowly but surely in this direction. The financial year in review showed an outstanding increase in the activities. Even with the last quarter of the organisation’s financial year showing almost zero programmes, the team managed to deliver a total of 120 programmes with schools and 238 with corporates. This is an overall increase of 14％ year on year. Even members duty hours showed an increase of 1.8% for the first three quarters. Eugene congratulated all members involved in this.

Eugene shared that Punggol had a good year with weekday patrols and weekend patrols at least once a week under the guidance of Mr Low Joo Kek and Mr Lawrence Yeo. For Jurong-Lakeside branch, which was launched in August 2019, it has since grown with residents around there signing up to join the team. As of March 2019, there were a total of 96 members at Punggol and 40 at Lakeside. Eugene welcomed all our new members and thanked our present members for a job well done!

The team continued to enhance the outreach programmes; going into virtual presentation due to Covid-19. Waterways Watch Society continues to attract more pre-schoolers, schools and corporates and this is very encouraging as more people take an interest in the value of our organisation’s work. Today, Waterways Watch Society is planning for an increase of activities once Singapore goes into the next phase. Safety boat is also an essential part of the organisation’s services and has a very positive impact on the organisation’s financials. Eugene thanked our dedicated group of boat drivers in supporting this service in all our site locations.

With regards to staffing, Eugene highlighted that we have our fair share of changes and thanked Joseph for being the main coordinator for our safety boat these past years and Lijean for helping the organisation in Admin. Both are still members but have moved on towards a change in career and unfortunately will have lesser time for Waterways Watch Society. At the same time, he welcomed Denise Tan (full-time) and Kian Seng (part-time) into the admin team as of July 2020.

Eugene thanked our regular part-timers helping us in all our Land and Water activities including our facilities operations this past year and he is looking forward seeing them more often as the organisation progresses back to some normality.

Eugene also highlighted that in the years 2019 and 2020, Waterways Watch Society is qualified to participate in the dollar for dollar matching grant under the Bicentennial Community Fund (BCF). He shared that in 2019; Waterways Watch Society has past the S$100,000 fundraising mark. The present donor list has been very encouraging – the names will be published in the Annual Report. Sponsors and donors remain an integral part of our financial support and the organisation continues to receive individual support through our Giving.Sg portal and PayNow. On behalf of his very supportive Committee, Eugene thanked all our supporters and wished everyone to stay safe and stay well.

• Passing of AGM 2019 Minutes by Mr Low Joo Kek

Mr Kheh Kim Cheong (member) proposed and Mr Kelvin Sim (member) seconded the passing of minutes. All present were unanimous in favour of approving the minutes.

• Review of performance from April 2019 to March 2020 by Mr Low Joo Kek

Mr Low Joo Kek remarked the year having gone by to be a fruitful one for Waterways Watch Society. The organisation had a great first 9 months of programmes in this financial year (April – December 2019) but saw a drastic fall in the last 3 months (January – March 2020) due to Covid-19. Fortunately, even with the drop in the number of programmes conducted, Waterways Watch Society still managed to obtain increased revenue in this financial year. If not for Covid-19 outbreak, there would be a record-breaking high on activities and revenue achieved.

Joo Kek highlighted that there will be an expectation of fall and cancellations of programmes to be continued for some time before getting back to pre-Covid normality again. To meet these challenges into 2020, the team has introduced more virtual programmes and continued to improve existing ones during the circuit breaker period. The organisation also continued to receive supports from some of our key partners which are important to the organisation’s work during the pandemic.

The BCF programme has been extended till December 2020 because of Covid-19. With the expected shortfall of revenue from our activities, the team started to campaign aggressively on donation drives. He shared that the organisation had reached out to more corporates and individuals for donations and sponsorships.

Joo kek further shared that, to make donation much easier for individuals, the organisation has introduced PayNow for individuals to easily donate directly to WWS. Waterways Watch Society would also like to extend our appreciation to our early bird donors and partners, Astra Zaneta, BHP, Sygenta Asia, Taylor and Frances, and Zendesk in the coming financial year, as well as the numerous of individuals who continue to support our cause.

Joo Kek also highlighted that, during this period of COVID-19 situation, WWS has deployed various COVID-19 safety measures in our premises. The safety management measures protocol includes limiting programme participants’ movement to certain part of our premises. The organisation also scaled down the participant and member patrol sizes to meet the official social distancing requirement. He further explained that, participants are only allowed to enter by the front gate and the refilling of water bottles (if needed) will be done by Waterways Watch Society’s facilitators. Covid-19 advisory notices and SafeEntry QR codes are also displayed clearly in check-in points around the premises, with the implementation of the Covid-19 health declaration form.

In addition, Waterways Watch Society staff is split into two operation teams, and are required to sign in and out with at least two times of temperature-taking exercises every day. Also, various thermometers around the premises are made available for easy contactless temperature taking.

Joo Kek strongly encouraged our members to continue staying vigilant and abide by the safety distancing regulations whenever members come to help run programmes or regular patrols. As an appointed SMO (Safety Management Office) by Waterways Watch Society, Joo Kek will be conducting periodic safety audits and ensure all members, staff and participants to adhere to the strict safety process and protocol. He will need everyone’s co-operation to follow the process and procedure, in case if there is an outbreak case in the facilities, the organisation will able to carry out the contract tracing procedure and kick start the continuous business plan.

During the circuit breaker and phase 1 period, Joo Kek reported that the organisation’s membership continued to see a significant increase with encouraging numbers and the momentum appears to be consistent even during this pandemic. Due to this overwhelming increase of membership, the organisation is clearing the orientation backlog especially on the boat orientation. He also shared that there will be temporary suspension of all normal member boat patrol to accommodate for the new members orientation.

Joo Kek summarised that, this year, Waterways Watch Society is glad to have successfully launched our new branch office at Lakeside Jurong and operation started in August 2019.  He will leave to the leader from WWS Jurong-Lakeside Garden branch, Mr Louis Kong, to share more details in the latter part of the AGM.

• Review and Passing of Accounts from April 2019 to March 2020 by Ms Ng Shiang Nee

Ms Ng Shiang Nee, Assistant Treasurer of Waterways Watch Society shared the overall performance of the society for the financial year April 2019 to March 2020.

It was a strong financial year despite many programme cancellations in February and March 2020 due to Covid-19. Donations have doubled because of the BCF. However, for the upcoming financial year April 2020 to March 2021, it will be unlikely for service fees to be even half of what was received in the reporting financial year if the current situation does not improve. Nonetheless, sponsorship and donations, especially support from the BCF, can help the Society cushion the impact. Shiang Nee estimates that these philanthropic contributions and our net profit asset position should see the organisation through a year.

Ms Kam Wai Kuen (member) proposed and Mr Tay Kheng Tong (member) seconded the passing of the Financial Accounts. All present were unanimous in favour of approving the Financial Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2020.

• Punggol Office Updates by Mr Low Joo Kek

Mr Joo Kek shared that the Punggol Office has been established for 6 years, there are weekdays and weekends patrols. He thanked the team, especially Mr Lawrence for coordinating the weekdays’ patrols. There is an increase of frequency in our outreach boat patrols; from a once a month to right now, on a weekly basis. Right now, the Punggol office has 2 patrol boats, 15 bicycles, 2 double kayaks as well as 4 single kayaks. The branch also has a new container office since May 2018.

As of 31 March 2020, there were 96 volunteers registered in our Punggol Office. Joo Kek remarked that most of these volunteers joined the organisation through word of mouth from their friends and family members as well as the posters were placed outside the container office. He expressed thanks and hope more volunteers can join the team.

Next, he shared that there were four main outreach programmes conducted. The programmes are: LAH LAH@Lorong Halus, PLAY@Punggol, Coney Island trail, and Coney Island Beach Clean-Up. For LAH LAH@ Lorong Halus, we outreached to 353 participants, PLAY@Punggol to 70 participants, Coney Island Trail to 128 participants and Coney Island Beach Clean-Up to 229 participants. He also pointed out that staff from the government sectors organised by MND also joined the team to know more about the groundwork as well as how a local, non-profit organisation operates.

• Lakeside-Jurong Office Updates by Mr Kong Kwek Fon (Louis)

Mr Louis Kong showed the members the location and the process of building our Lakeside-Jurong office, as well as how the office looks like in both day and night time. The Lakeside-Jurong office was officially opened on 18 August 2019 with a bicycle, boat and foot patrol. He thanked volunteers who had given their time to maintain and clean up the office premise and patrol boats since the Covid-19 pandemic started. Currently, the Lakeside-Jurong office has 2 patrol boats, 1 catamaran, 15 foldable bicycles, 3 single kayaks and 10 double kayaks.

Louis shared that on 18 January 2020, NParks conducted a talk and guided trail with Waterways Watch Society volunteers from the 3 offices: Kallang, Punggol and Lakeside-Jurong. In summary,  from 18 August 2019 to 31 March 2020, there were 45 bicycle patrols, 8 boat patrols and 2 kayak patrols conducted by the team at Jurong-Lakeside office. In addition, the team conducted 1 Corporate Social Responsibility programme with 40 staff from Building and Construction Authority (BCA).

As of 31 March 2020, there were 33 volunteers registered in the Lakeside-Jurong Office. Louis shared that there will be plans for regular kayak patrols when the Covid-19 situation improves and announcements will be made to the volunteers once finalised.

• Introduction of Admin Team and Future Plans by Mr Eugene Heng

• Introduction of Admin Team

Eugene introduced the team: Ms Diane Neo, Mr Kok Waitong, Ms Peh Shue Ting, Ms Denise Tan, Ms Alyssa Lee, Ms Yvonne Tan, Ms Li Anqi, Ms Goh Chia Chia as well as an intern from Republic Polytechnic, Ms Jolisa Lim. He also welcomed Mr Ding Kian Seng as a part-time staff and highlighted the importance of the maintenance team, Uncle Joe, Mr Alvin Tay, Mr Edwin See and Mr Shawn Tan, for maintaining the facilities and assets to ensure the smooth operations of the outreach programmes and patrols.

• Future Plans
• More digital programmes; outdoor outreach programmes with a difference.

Due to Covid-19, there is a need to change the way outreach programmes are conducted, thus, it is important for the admin team to sharpen and retrain their digital literacy skills.  Recently, the team conducted an up-cycling programme with schools using online platforms and it was a fruitful and interesting experience for both the team and the participants. Eugene also shared that there will be an upcoming virtual learning trail covering various reservoirs with a school happening on 21 September 2020.

• Plans for 2020 to 2021

Eugene shared that the organisation is hoping that the 2 biggest partners – Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) and Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) will resume their partnerships with WWS soon, once the Covid-19 situation improves. He explained that as the programmes are usually kayak and camp activities, he strongly encouraged volunteers who are interested in facilitating or assisting to register their interest with the Admin Team, especially if they are able to commit on Wednesdays or Saturdays. 

• Replace WWS Boat WWS #2

The organisation is looking for potential donor to sponsor us in replacing WWS Boat #2 as it is the oldest and most utilised patrol boat.

• Pedal Boat – Outreach floating Boat in the middle of Marina Reservoir on weekends

Eugene shared that he is proposing to the relevant authorities to utilise our pedal boats to be a floating boat to encourage water users such as dragon boaters and kayakers to pick up litter in the Marina Reservoir in exchange for a drink with our volunteers on our pedal boat. This will instil a sense of responsibility and encourage water users in keeping the Marina Reservoir clean while they enjoy their water activities.

• New Standard of Procedures (SOP) for our programmes – Safe distancing and Sanitisation

Eugene encouraged and reminded our volunteers to practice safe social distancing while doing weekend patrols. He shared that sanitisation is done before and after patrols in our premises.

• Closing by Mr Low Joo Kek

Joo Kek thanked the following volunteers and staff for their help during the circuit breaker and Phase 1 period:

1. WWS staff who helped to setup and implement the Safety Management Measure process and protocol. Without them, we would be unable to get our process and protocol approved by the agencies prior to implementation.
2. Team leaders and facilitators who joined us in the discussions, provided feedback and helped to formulate the Safety Management Measure.
3. Staff and volunteers who helped to check and maintain all our facilities and boats.
4. Volunteers who carried out the trial runs of our Safety Management Measure procedures.

Lastly, Joo Kek thanked the members for their consistent support and hoped members can see one another soon in person at next year’s AGM. He then declared the closure of the virtual AGM 2020.