How it started

I was officially introduced as the Centre Manager for Oogachaga during a volunteer appreciation dinner last night. As usual, I gave a impromptu speech which I should have prepared but did not. Throughout the whole week, I only have random thoughts going on in my mind.

Two things I mentioned in my speech - I am always proud of Oogachaga (OC) as a truly inclusive organisation where volunteers from all sexual orientations and background banded together to serve a common cause and that volunteers will remain as the backbone of the organisation. I am actually pleased with myself that I did not rattle non stop when I gave the unplanned speech. :)

My newly appointed position as the Centre Manager marks the next change in my career. Many of my friends and colleagues know that I have a very different career development. From a SAF regular to a graphic designer to a social welfare officer. I am going to be a manager of the only LGBTQ counseling centre in Singapore, possibly a dream job for many gay social workers or counsellors. One that officially marries my sexuality with my profession.

In all honesty, it is a really a privilege to be part of a group of very dedicated volunteers who spent lots of their evenings, weekends and Sundays, to reach out to people they want to connect with. Volunteerism, like I have said during my speech last night, can come in a form of direct work or indirect work. Direct work such as a hotline volunteer to a designer who has just redesigned our website. It is the spirit of humanity towards others which make volunteerism a beautiful thing.

Like in all voluntary organisations, people come and people go, depending on the priorities in their life stages. Among the pioneer batch, Clarence, Sham and LL, who is our first straight woman in the organisation are still around. DT and PK have moved on to something else. The second batch, YY, Net, ML, BM and myself are still very active but will soon move on to take different roles within OC. We are seeing the upcoming of the new batches of leaders, which is a very positive development.

I am particularly pleased whenever we interview a potential volunteer and I realised the person is a new face, even in the community itself. In the initial stage of OC, we saw only the familiar faces who are already active in the other organisations, came forward to help. Of course, it was not anything negative but I was worried that the ownership of making the positive changes within the communities are in the hands of few individuals, who will eventually suffer burnout. Quietly and gradually, new people surfaced and become active, bringing new energy and ideas to the organisation which at some points, became stagnant.

My own involvement with OC starts off probably in late 2004 when YF dropped me an email asking me something about having a GLBT support organisation in Singapore. Not long after, I found myself talking to DT and landed in a gay support group. That support group, was held in Clarence's living room. That's how I still introduce OC's origin these days - Someone's living room. Of course, people who are closer to me also knew that I exited that group rather eventfully. To cut the story short, I offered to leave the group because of a potential complication. DT decided to let the group vote on it and all it took was one vote to send me out. So in the long history of OC's 10 years, I was probably the only person who got voted out of its support group. :) But I returned in 2005 and started my role as a co-facilitator with Sham and the story continues.

From 1999 till now, OC has moved from a living room, to a small room in Katong, half a room in Emily Hill and here we are in a office space at Kitchener Road. A all-volunteer organisation to one with a team of three staff and a lot of volunteers, closed to a hundred accordingly to what YY told me. One where the volunteers forked out money from their own pockets to one with a stable income. And we are actually very public now. The day the OC name appears in IS Magazine, The Straits Times, The New Paper and SASW website, we literally shouted out to Singapore that we are here and we take pride in what we are doing.

We have come a long way, a very long journey but still far from what the Exco has envisioned it to be. The key challenge now will be, how to be ahead of the changes that the communities are experiencing and prepared ourselves to remain relevant when that big change happens. How to work well with the existing LGBT groups and the new ones mushrooming around us. And how to show embracing diversity is the only way to go.