Thanks to many of you, Autism Resource Centre Singapore / Pathlight School had a successful celebration! 3,000 came.

Here’s an extract of my speech sharing the challenges and blessings over the past 20 years and priorities in the coming years….“Thank you DPM Gan Kim Yong for being a steadfast supporter of the special needs cause for decades.

I remember I first met him when he was a new Member of Parliament wanting to learn about supporting preschoolers on the autism spectrum in his volunteering days. Later when I entered politics, and advocated for universal insurance coverage for persons with disabilities, it was under then Health Minister Gan’s time that this was finally implemented.

Our belief and mantra in ARC remain intact. My teammates and I believe that everyone, regardless of abilities and support needs, is worthy and is deserving of equal access to important essentials like education, healthcare, work, social participation, mobility and the like.

ARC exists to maximise the potential of the autism community.

Thank you for joining us in ARC’s Annual Fundraiser, A Very Special Walk (AVSW). This year is special because ARC’s biggest initiative, Pathlight School, is 20 years old.

In 2005, we were raising funds for Pathlight School. Only 41 students were willing to be enrolled to Pathlight because of the stigma of being a special school student.

The school was losing money. But we never gave up. Our staff rose to the occasion and ensured that the quality of education that was delivered was what they themselves would expect for their own children.

The turning point came when we delivered results, both in mainstream academics and life skills. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Today Pathlight is the largest special school in Singapore with more than 2,000 students, and parents, students and staff are proud to be associated with the School. We thank all of you for Pathlight.

Singapore has made great progress in raising awareness and supporting the autism community.

The needs, however, are immense. There are still significant gaps, especially in the provisions for adults on the spectrum.

Autism is lifelong. Many of the children we served are now in adulthood and many more are growing up. We need to expand the range of services and support across the lifespan to empower adults on the autism spectrum to lead quality and meaningful lives in the community.

Why do we continue to raise funds? Most of our services for adults are operating at losses – job services, social enterprise, training and residential living.

About 95% of our reserves are either ring-fenced for our respective funded programmes or have to be put aside for our future school campuses. 3 campuses – upcoming in Tampines, an extension in AMK and one in Punggol.

Three priority areas ARC will focus on in the coming years:

• Living: We piloted a residential programme since 2022. 5 adults are living in the community with regular support from our coaches. Plans are underway to scale this service model to support more individuals in community living. We have also put together a playbook to support planning for “Life After Death” of caregivers. We are in the midst of preparing it for publication and plan to launch it next year.

• Lifelong Learning: ARC Learning Academy provides continuing education and training for professionals and families in the autism community. About 3,000 training seats are taken up each year. We have started to directly train adult learners on the autism spectrum in areas such as digital literacy, social communication skills, and money management. And we will continue to roll out more courses and extend more training seats to them.

• Employment: Our Employability and Employment Centre (E2C), the first autism-focused supported employment programme, has placed more than 500 jobs since it started in 2012. Many of them are still in active employment. Some of these partners include UOB, one of our longest and largest employers with 30 individuals to-date, Ensign InfoSecurity, IHH Healthcare, Pearls’ Hill and Renci nursing homes. And many other wonderful employer partners who have provided so many jobs and included our special ones in their communities.

We will continue to work with more employer partners in these sectors to match, train and support adults on the autism spectrum based on their strengths and interests.

Our work has proven that with the right support, individuals on the spectrum can thrive in living, learning and working. The best way to predict the future is to help create it…..Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart 💜