Yale-NUS student Tavis Tan’s essay selected for this year’s St. Gallen Symposium

Recently, Yale-NUS student Tan Rui Min Tavis Hartanto (Class of 2022)’s essay was selected as one of the top 100 contributions for the St. Gallen Symposium Global Essay Competition, which enabled him to attend this year’s St. Gallen Symposium. Tavis is a Global Affairs major at Yale-NUS and also a student of the Yale-NUS Concurrent Degree Programme with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

The St. Gallen Symposium takes place annually in May at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and is a global gathering of leaders of today and tomorrow from business, politics, science and civil society. It seeks to bring parties together in dialogue on topics of management, politics and civil society in order to encourage collaborative action on our most pressing challenges today.

The 51st St. Gallen Symposium this year took on the theme of “Collaborative Advantage”, to discuss how we can find effective mechanisms of collaboration between stakeholders and generations. In a time where this might be more difficult than ever––with war and conflict, climate change, and global economic shocks shaking the world––discussions of collaboration are most pertinent and urgent.

With this in mind, Tavis wrote his essay titled “The Role of Social and Community Organisations in Sustaining Charitable Behaviour”. His essay focused on the concept of charitable behaviour, suggesting that Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) in Singapore play a key role in empowering youths to stand up for what they feel passionate about, while encouraging them to support vulnerable seniors. At the same time, Tavis illustrated how seniors also play pivotal roles in society. With a wealth of knowledge and a wide network, he argued that they too are well-positioned to support youths.  He proposed a model that “forms mini-ecosystems in our society” where stakeholders such as NPOs, youths, and seniors “continually give and take in a way that is sustainable and strengthens our social fabric”.

Tavis drew inspiration from Minouche Shafik’s book, “Towards a New Social Contract”, where he proposed that we begin to rewrite our social contracts and re-think resource allocation based on what we owe each other. In addition, Tavis tapped on the experiences and opinions of his peers, and sought their feedback on his ideas for the essay.

A photo of one of the dialogues at the 51st St. Gallen Symposium, held in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Image provided by Tavis.

Tavis was also able to expand his insights and worldview during the Symposium itself, where he got the opportunity to interact with statesmen and stateswomen and met many like-minded, driven, and passionate individuals from all corners of the world. Participants heard from Switzerland’s President Ignazio Cassis, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Singapore’s Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden, and former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz, amongst many others. With fellow essay winners, he discussed ideas relating to green finance, restructuring and reimagining pension funds, creating new models for democratic participation across generations, and creating alternative forms of energy for the aviation industry.

Describing the experience as “absolutely amazing”, Tavis was glad to be able to make “some of the best friendships in the shortest time”. As a student of public policy and future civil servant, he shared, “The insights gained, and network created from the Symposium will be instrumental to both my personal and professional growth and development. It has changed my approach to complex wicked problems and sparked new ideas for collaboration within and across my communities, and I will bring these insights and perspectives to the work that I do in the future!”