Visit to SIan Chay by Officials of the Minister of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY)
Visit to SIan Chay by Officials of the Minister of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY)
On 18 April 2018, Mr Kenneth Lai, Senior Deputy Director of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and Assistant Director Ms Goh CHing Hsia visited Sian Chay, to understand more about its operation and philosophy, and to explore opportunities of collaboration.
Chairman of Sian Chay Dr Toh Soon Huat, BBM, PAPV, personally welcomed them and passionately shared with the two distinguished guests about Sian Chay’s charitable devotion of providing free medical services to the disadvantaged regardless of race, religion and nationality, every day without fail for over a century.
Sian Chay constantly remembers the original intent of its inception, which is to relieve the suffering of the people, and bring about healthy & peaceful lives for the masses. Helping one individual is equivalent to helping the entire family because when any family member falls sick, the whole family’s livelihood and its members’ state of mind are affected. The mission of Sian Chay is precisely to help patients move away from suffering and attain happiness, create healthy & happy families as well as a harmonious society.
Chairman Dr Toh went on to explain that, other than providing medical consultation & dispensing medications, a more important mission of Sian Chay is to actively influence people’s hearts & souls, encourage charitable acts, and through concrete actions, promote racial harmony, bring greater benefits to mankind, and help create a gracious and wonderful society. If a person is suffering from ailments, it is useless to say just nice words to console him. Instead, if someone could help to relieve his suffering, then he will certainly feel indebted, show this person great love and respect, and listen well to his benefactor. Therefore what Sian Chay does is to take practical actions to relieve people’s suffering, and then make use of the medical platform to sow the seeds of doing good.
Sian Chay currently has many Malay and Indian patients who visit its clinics regularly, and they are full of praise for Sian Chay’s services. If one can make use of such high-quality TCM medical treatment rooted in Chinese culture to attract members of the Malay and Indian communities to visit the clinics, to relieve their pains & worries, while utilizing this channel to promote inter-racial understanding and spread the message of racial harmony。Such is the guiding principle of Sian Chay’s charitable work – to shape practical reality with concrete actions。
Chairman Dr Toh Soon Huat further explained Sian Chay’s five core values of : Forgiveness, Universal Love, Compassion, Gratutide and Blessing, and also the concepts of : “Family prospers within the Nation, Harmonious Family brings abundant Success”, “When Good resides within the Nation, & Kindness prevails among People, the Society will prosper”. Sian Chay uses its clinics as the base, and while relieving pains & saving lives, it utilizing this platform to promote all the above concepts and maxims. Also, in order to concertize the precept of “Giving back to the Society what one takes from it”, Sian Chay regularly makes use of all opportunities, to actively participate in community activities, so as to spread messages related to doing good, hoping to influence more people to understand Sian Chay, and join forces to create a harmonious society and bring further blessings and welfare to the people in Singapore.
Quoting the example of organizing a large-scale Mother’s Day event in 2017, Chairman Dr Toh illustrated how Sian Chay wanted to celebrate the greatness of motherly love, and promote filial piety, respect, and the act of “giving back” within the society. On that day, more than 2,000 volunteers presented around 21,700 carnations to the public at about 100 locations across the island, to pay tribute to mothers, would-be mothers & women in general. The activity also established a Guinness World Record as well as a Singapore Record. In the evening, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who was the guest of honour of the event, posted on face book to thank Sian Chay for organizing the event, and Ang Mo Kio GRC and Seng Kang CCC for supporting the event.
Mr Kenneth Lai, Senior Deputy Director of MCCY agreed with Chairman Mr Toh’s view that influencing people’s mindset is the most effective way to change behavior, that is to say: “emphasizing on Heart-ware” and taking practical actions are of utmost importance. It is also precisely MCCY’s constant policy to advocate using concrete actions towards promoting community cohesion and racial harmony.
Chairman Dr Toh concluded that charities need to advance with the new era, and to transform ourselves and generate new ideas & concepts, so as to continue leading the trend. This is exactly what Sian Chay is trying to do : using the ideal platform of TCM services, to promote the concept of saving lives, relieving suffering, while enhancing racial harmony, so as to create a wonderful society. He hopes that through Sian Chay’s efforts, these concepts could be permeated into the daily behavior of all its patients. Chairman Dr Toh sincerely hopes to collaborate with the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth to work towards creating a harmonious society in which all ethnic groups could communicate with their heart and live together in true integration.