Good morning, Minister,  
Distinguished Guests, and  
Fellow Co-operators.  

1. A warm welcome to Stewardship Day 2026. Thank you for being here with me on a Saturday morning at the Singapore Zoo.  

2. I have 2 main points to share:  

Firstly, what is Stewardship Day about?  

4. This year, the Singapore Co-operative Movement begins a new chapter. With our SCM 10-year Transformation Roadmap, we have set out a clear direction for where we want to go over the next ten years — how we grow, how we serve, and how we sustain ourselves.  

5. As we looked at that journey ahead, one question kept coming back to me: do our members actually know who they are? 

6. Many of us belong to a co-operative, but not all of us know it. And even those who do, they may not realise that they are part of something much larger than one organisation. A movement. One that has been shaping Singapore since 1925. 

7. Stewardship Day is our answer that question. Our intent is to gather fellow co-operators and their families, and friends together, to pause, to remember who we are and why we do what we do.  

Which brings me to the second thing I’d like to share: what the Singapore Co-operative Movement has built and what it stands for.  

9. Today's theme is “Delivering Value Through Values”. I want to sit with these two words for a moment: ‘Value’ and ‘Values’. 

10. First, Values. The global co-operative movement is built on six values:  

11. The Rochdale Pioneers came up with these values, and they are the reason we are different from other organisations.  

12. Let me highlight just one today: self-help. 

13. Self-help does not mean going it alone. It means people coming together, pooling what we have, and lifting one another. We have all seen it in action.  

14. Our credit co-operatives embody the value of self-help very well. Members save together to support one another, whether for education, for a home, or when life presses hard. It goes beyond transactions. I have known co-operative leaders who go the extra mile, speaking personally to members, even at their workplaces, to understand their difficulties and find a way forward together.  

15. That is co-operation in action. 

16. And from Values, flows Value.  

17. When we step back and look at what this movement has built together, we see impact in four areas: strengthening care and wellbeing; advancing equity and inclusion; driving sustainable businesses; and building partnerships for impact. 

18. These are the core tenets behind our Social Impact Snapshot, and they show how our collective efforts create ripples of change across communities and emerging needs.   

19. We see this at the Empowering Communities Fund Project Showcase by TCC Credit Co-operative, where the co-op signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the social enterprise Society for Wings, or WINGS, last month to co-create programmes and initiatives to uplift single women and mothers.  

20. We also see this with A Good Space, a co-operative for changemakers, which rallied members to champion inclusion and support migrant workers communities during the Covid-19 pandemic.  

21. These are just but two stories among many. Together, they form a movement we should all be proud of. 

22. So here is what I want to leave you with. You are not just members of a co-op. You are part of something bigger; something that began long before us, and must continue long after. A movement built not on profit, but on people.  

23. I urge you to own that co-operative identity. Share it with your family and friends. Because the strength about this movement is not any single co-operative — it is all of us, together. 

24. My name is Tng Ah Yiam, and I am proud to be a co-operator of 43 years. 

25. Thank you.