History and Milestones
Since its inception, the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism has held true to its mission of enabling a steady pipeline of locally contextualised and age-appropriate resources and programmes to foster bilingualism in children. The focus has been on pre-schoolers, or even younger children because the foundation for learning both English and Mother Tongue Languages (MTLs) is best laid when children are young. Besides focusing on pre-schoolers, we have also broadened our focus to promote bilingualism as a lifelong endeavour.
We work closely with like-minded stakeholders and community partners, individuals and entities to support worthy initiatives and programmes in making MTL learning fun and relevant to everyday life. Some of our fund-supported programmes and events as well as its impact includes:
Junction Tree
“Junction Tree” is Singapore's first locally-produced, bilingual pre-school programme. It is available in English-Chinese, English-Malay and English-Tamil versions. “Junction Tree” won the "Best Preschool Programme" at the Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018. The programme can be viewed digital entertainment platform MeWatch.
New World. New Life
To commemorate the Singapore Bicentennial, Singapore Federation of Chinese Clans Associations (SFCCA) showcased the "New World. New Life" exhibition to pay tribute to our nation's forefathers. The bilingual (CL-EL) exhibition, which was supported by LKYFB, is the biggest and longest multi-sensory interactive exhibition ever held in 33 years of SFCCA's history.
Tamil Language Council and the Malay Language Council Singapore
Tamil Language Council and the Malay Language Council Singapore are the main organisers of the Tamil Language Festival (TLF) and Malay Language Month (Bulan Bahasa) respectively. TLF and Bulan Bahasa programmes are developed and presented by community partners.
Singapore Tamil Youth Conference
Singapore Tamil Youth Conference is a biennial event organised by tertiary students to discuss matters related to Tamil community and the teaching and learning of Tamil language.