#ifiwereminister

The Project

#ifiweremnister started as a personal social media project created during the campaigning period of the Singapore General Elections 2015.

It all started, with me having a lot of suggestions on ways i believe could be helpful for the ruling party to take note on and fight for. As the government do not really provide a platform of conversation or suggestions from the everyday people, I got a scheduled time with the minister of parliament of my town for a dialogue session. The said minister unfortunately did not show up (twice), citing hectic schedules.

I was about to go online and be another "keyboard warrior" when I realise, there are a lot of other Singaporeans like me who have valid suggestions and points to share with our ministers. So I decided to invite people with valid opinions to share what they would change or edit about Singapore if they were ministers by developing and creating www.ifiwereminister.com.

#ifiwereminister invites Singaporean to submit their name and suggestions on the site, in which their suggestions (moderated) would be shared on the site and social media channels that had all the relevant elections hashtags. Suggesters were encouraged to share their suggestions online too.

The Results

Spending just $3.99 on a domain name, I manage to get the local press' attention and thousands of submissions of like minded and passionate Singaporeans. My campaign was mentioned in Election Rallies by the opposing party about the changing mindsets of the once afraid citizen of Singapore.

I had 5 million impressions in 3 weeks, created a data from all the suggestions and shared it with the government.

The minister that turn down my meeting initially, have been in touch and have now commission me on a social project for the town i live in.

I have also created a group with like minded Singaporeans in which we are currently pairing up with a social democracy app in Germany to create a tool that we can build for Singaporeans as ongoing process.