A Caring Corporate Citizen
SingTel believes in playing an active role in supporting the community and social development of Singapore. Each year, SingTel and its staff contribute significantly to charities and community projects to help bring about a better quality of life to the less privileged in the community and enrich the lives of Singaporeans through support in local arts, education and sports.

The SingTel Touching Lives Fund

In Singapore, the SingTel Touching Lives Fund is the company's annual corporate philanthropy programme to raise funds for different charities that run programmes for children and young people with disabilities or who are in difficult family circumstances.  Since its launch in 2002, the SingTel Touching Lives Fund has raised a total of S$12.7 million. 

In 2007, the SingTel Touching Lives Fund raised S$2.4 million with the generous support and contribution from its business partners, employees and members of the public.  The amount raised will go towards the work of the same five children's charities as previous year: Association for Persons with Special Needs - Tanglin School, Autism Resource Centre - WeCan, Fei Yue Community Services - eGen, Singapore Children's Society - Tinkle Friend and Students Care Service.

The funds raised will touch the lives of about 30,000 children and youths between the ages of 2 and 25, with programmes such as training and special education for the intellectually challenged, school social work and counseling for youth from families facing problems or those with learning difficulties and counseling services through the telephone and Internet.

SingTel's efforts to help the less privileged children were recognised at the annual Community Chest Awards Presentation 2007.  The President of Singapore, Mr S R Nathan presented SingTel with the Corporate Platinum Award, the Five-year Outstanding Special Events Award and the Special Events Platinum Award.

The Singapore Children's Society also recognised SingTel's contribution with a Gold Award which supported the Society's Tinkle Friend, a helpline for primary school children.

What we are SHAREing
SingTel and its staff contributed more than S$190,000 through the SHARE (Social Help & Assistance Raised by Employees) programme for the less privileged in 2005/2006. For that, SingTel received the Distinguished Bronze SHARE Award.

SingTel has been a Corporate SHARE company since 1992.  It matches its employees' contributions to SHARE dollar-for-dollar.


Annual donation to NCSS increased by 25%
Since 1991, SingTel has been giving an annual donation to the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) to meet the telecommunications needs of its charities. This grant has been well utilised in such areas like helplines and counselling sessions. With increasing need for such services, SingTel has increased its contribution by 25 per cent to S$200,000 from 2001.

Sponsorship of Community and National Projects
SingTel is the Telecom Service Provider for National Day Parade 2007.   SingTel sponsored the fixed-line and mobile services, point-to-point hotlines, digital leased lines and ADSL broadband for the smooth and efficient running of the Parade, as well as other functions such as public helplines and security surveillance. It also sponsored the provision of services and support for the e-balloting ticket distribution system, which was introduced in 2003. SingTel provided the 1900 Telepoll system to accept applications from fixed-line telephones, the balloting system for the distribution of tickets and other services to facilitate the notification of successful ticket applications. 

SingTel sponsored the Telepoll set-up and admin charges for the President's Star Charity Show 2007 which raised funds for charities selected by the President of Singapore.

SingTel Supports Sailing
SingTel plays an active role in promoting sports. For 10 consecutive years, it has been sponsoring the SingTel Optimist Open Championships to promote sailing among local youths. The championship is one of eight ranking races for the Optimist fleet in Singapore.  The ranking system is used to benchmark and track young sailors' progress and performance.  It gives Singapore young sailors an avenue to improve their skills and to gain competition experience. A total of 178 young Optimist sailors took part in the 10th SingTel Optimist Open Championships 2007 which was held in February at the Changi Sailing Club.

Community Efforts in Australia
In Australia, Optus is also committed to giving back to the community that supports it.  Since 1999, it has raised over A$3 million for Kids Help Line, Australia’s only free, confidential and anonymous national counselling service for young people. The funds have helped the service to offer telephone, e-mail and real-time online counselling to over 500,000 contacts.

Optus also raised A$80,000 and A$52,000 for the Starlight Children’s Foundation and The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) respectively.  Starlight raises funds to help brighten the lives of seriously ill children and their families while the JDRF is dedicated to funding the best Australian research into a cure for diabetes and its complications.

Reflecting the diverse interests of its customers and the community at large, Optus is involved in a number of sports partnerships.  They include the Optus Team Tennis Australia which provides support from the grass roots level with the Optus Achievers programme, through to support of the elite Optus Australian Davis Cup Team.  Optus also supports three Australian Rules football teams (Carlton, West Coast Eagles and the Sydney Swans), the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation, and former Olympian, runner Melinda Gainsford-Taylor.

In the area of arts and entertainment, Optus supports The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, The Canberra Theatre Centre, The Australian Business Arts Foundation and Company B Belvoir.  In 2003, in an innovative partnership with The Bell Shakespeare Company, Optus became their youth and education partner.