Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam,
Chairman of Temasek Trust, Mr S Dhanabalan, and fellow Trustees,
Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen:

Do you like this place?

Welcome to Temasek Shophouse. We are very happy to be able to get you all here for the opening of this community space in such a historic building.

Dating back to 1928, this building has been conserved for its rich and diverse architectural style.

We were very happy to secure the lease for it from the Singapore Land Authority. We saw an opportunity to create a new community hub and home for our own philanthropic family.

Preserving the heritage was critical, so the renovation was done carefully, to ensure we got it right.

I hope the community will see us as good stewards of Singapore’s heritage, and that they will join us here to bring community impact to a new level.

In 2003, under my predecessor, Mr Dhanabalan, Temasek made a commitment to share part of the returns we make above our risk-adjusted cost of capital with the community.

We gift endowments based on the twin pillars of sustainability and good governance.

Subsequently, we set up the Temasek Trust. This separates the financial management of the endowments from the delivery of programmes, undertaken by the Temasek Foundation, Stewardship Asia Centre, and their partners in the community.

We have almost 20 endowments now. All of them focus on strengthening our resilience at home; fostering goodwill in the region; and advancing science and nature globally.

Our endowments enable programmes, which the Temasek Foundation or Stewardship Asia Centre delivers, so that individuals, families and communities can achieve sustainable progress in their lives.

The Temasek Foundation has supported projects focussing on care for those in need in our community; for education and culture; emergency response and disaster relief; international relations; sustainability and cutting edge scientific research, among others.

I am incredibly proud of the work done by the teams at Stewardship Asia Centre and the Temasek Foundation.

Ladies and Gentlemen…
You will have heard me emphasise Temasek’s commitment to do well, do right and do good.

Our goal is to shape a better and more sustainable tomorrow, for this and future generations.

We do this in a number of ways, but key to it is the partnerships we form with other like-minded groups. So apart from do well, do right, do good, we also do together!

While this building will be shared with the community, it will serve as the new home for the existing Temasek Trust, Temasek Foundation and Stewardship Asia Centre.

It will also be home to the new ABC World Asia Fund, which will be actively supported in its goals of investing for impact and returns by Temasek Trust.

Ladies and Gentlemen…
You have heard me highlight the importance of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – or SDGs.

Much of the work that will go on in this wonderful building will revolve around the part we can all play in delivering those SDGs – or as we call them, an ABC World of Active Economies, a Beautiful Society and Clean Earth.

This work is critical to Temasek’s DNA, as I hope it would be for all companies.

After all, for businesses to succeed and thrive, the communities in which they exist must, themselves, be thriving.

Our philanthropic partners are critical to ensuring the work we do, via the investments we make, will have an impact for today’s generation in our communities and in our region.

I am very happy to introduce you to the Temasek Shophouse.

Temasek welcomes you to this social impact hub, right here in downtown Orchard Road. Please join us as we begin this new chapter in our philanthropic journey.

Thank you for joining us, and I look forward to spending the evening ahead with you.