Gotong Royong Award (2019) Winners

Since his appointment as the SIF Representative in Washington DC four years ago, Matthew Herrmann has actively represented the Foundation in its outreach activities both in the United States and Singapore. He played a key role in organising SIF Connects!, our annual get-together for engaging and reconnecting with Friends of Singapore in both Washington DC and Singapore. He also represented the SIF at the Young Southeast Asia Leadership Initiative, a programme to build the leadership capabilities of youth and to promote cross-border cooperation to solve regional and global challenges. In addition, he was a contributor to Singapore: Insights from the Inside, Vol. III, a publication by the SIF to bring fresh perspectives to Singapore from our friends across the globe.

Shawn Lourdusamy's association with the SIF first began in 2012 as a recipient of the Singapore Internationale, our grant for artists seeking to bridge cultural understanding between Singaporeans and world communities through their work. Since 2016, Shawn has been partnering the SIF through our Arts for Good initiatives aimed at creating positive change through arts and culture. In the last four years, he collaborated with the SIF on the Arts and Healing component of the annual CausewayEXchange, a programme he founded to foster greater collaboration among artists in Asia. He also played a key role in our Arts for Good Fellowship, and in the Arts and Disability International Conference 2018 co-organised by the SIF.

Siddharth Pisharody has been a strong supporter of the SIF’s Young Social Entrepreneurs (YSE) programme, which aims to equip budding changemakers with the knowledge and networks to start or scale up their social businesses. He has mentored SE participants since 2014, with two of the teams he mentored – Society Staples and HATCH – going on to become winners at the programme. Siddarth further served as a judge at the YSE Workshop in 2017. In his capacity as an Associate Director at Temasek International, he was instrumental in bringing about a formal partnership with the SIF. Through this collaboration, Siddarth became the lead mentor for the YSE programme in 2016, while also bringing onboard 64 other business professionals from Temasek International to coach and guide our young social entrepreneurs.