Presidents’ Forum October 2019
SCWO held its bi-annual Presidents’ Forum on 19th October 2019, attended by more than 40 member organisations. The Forum started with a Welcome Address from SCWO’s President, Dr June Goh. She highlighted some of the SCWO’s exciting programmes and developments in 2019 – this included the Seeds of Change fund that supports women’s organisations to pilot or scale up women’s development programmes, the SCWO Insights Series which brings together women leaders and organisations from different sectors for meaningful dialogue on women’s issues, and the Tea time Chats supported by MSF’s Office of Women’s Development, and hosted by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the MSF, Associate Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, where member organisations are invited to come together to share their work and discuss possible collaborations.
Two new member organisations were also welcomed to the SCWO family – Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) and Lean in Singapore.
In today’s fast changing landscape, many organisations struggle to stay relevant and this is evident in the common challenge of membership recruitment. In order to address this, we decided to focus on branding and marketing on an organisational level at this Presidents’ Forum.
We invited two speakers to share their experiences with us. Ms Aparna Dubey, Brand Director and Commercial Leader of Procter & Gamble talked about the fundamentals of marketing and business. She focused on the challenges and barriers faced by non-profit organisations and shared a simple framework on how organisations can focus their marketing efforts. Ms Carrie Tan, Executive Director of Daughters of Tomorrow, touched on the experiences of Daughter of Tomorrow – especially how they adapted to the changes in society and tapped on the opportunities available in the community to increase their awareness and reach through re-branding.
It was an insightful session, and Members showed keen interest in this topic and enthusiastically engaged in the discussion, sharing their challenges faced in marketing with a limited budget.
