The new pro-bono

Two lawyers, who are pres­i­dents of their char­i­ties, share how they man­age their time and keep their pas­sion for vol­un­teer­ing burning.

By SHARON CHEN

“Lawyers, they are the worst. Lawyers are not nice. They are obnox­ious, arro­gant. Don’t date a lawyer,” joked Nicholas Aw.

Lawyers may have a bad rep­u­ta­tion, but Aw, who spe­cialises in prop­erty law at Clif­ford Law, and Gre­gory Vijayen­dran (below, pic­tured with a ben­e­fi­ciary), a part­ner at Rajah and Tann, are no ordi­nary attor­neys. These legal eagles are also the pres­i­dents of the Dis­abled People’s Asso­ci­a­tion (DPA) and Club Rain­bow respectively.

They have dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions for choos­ing to take on such big com­mit­ments with these organ­i­sa­tions, but stressed that vol­un­teer­ing is a lifestyle and being busy is not going to hold them back from help­ing those in need. In fact, their legal train­ing has made them all the more equipped to lead their teams.

It is all about the beneficiaries

For Vijayen­dran, it’s the resilience of Club Rainbow’s ben­e­fi­cia­ries that keeps him moti­vated. Club Rain­bow helps chronically-​ill chil­dren and their fam­i­lies, by pro­vid­ing emo­tional, finan­cial and edu­ca­tional sup­port, among other services.

He recalled an event at the Sin­ga­pore Botanic Gar­dens when a mother came up to him teary-​eyed and thanked him “because when my daugh­ter gets a Club Rain­bow pro­gramme invite, she’s just so excited [because] she gets to go places. Her sib­lings didn’t want to be seen in pub­lic with her.”

He shared: “This sim­ple, safe haven that we’ve cre­ated allows them to feel loved and accepted for who they are. We can­not cocoon them, how­ever, there will be a jour­ney from the safe haven into soci­etal inte­gra­tion but for some [chronically-​ill chil­dren], they haven’t even had that sanc­tu­ary expe­ri­ence yet. They are walled in. It is that group that we con­tin­u­ally strive to reach out to so that they know they are not alone. So that they know they are loved, we accept them and they are still part of the Sin­ga­pore community.

“We aim to restore their dig­nity back and empower these fam­i­lies and these chil­dren so they move from a vic­tim mind­set to a vic­tor mentality.”

Wit­ness­ing that jour­ney of heal­ing over the year is his great­est reward.

One of Club Rainbow’s activ­i­ties dur­ing the year is a three-​day Camp which is filled with var­i­ous activ­i­ties for the ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Vijayen­dran said: “One of the great­est joys I have now is see­ing some of the older chil­dren who have out­grown [our] Camps [as] they are now more than 21 [years old] … come back as men­tors and encour­age the Camp atten­dees. We see every­thing come a full cir­cle … the sub­text of these youths and grow­ing adults involve­ment is that: “We’ve over­come, we’ve made it, we’ve found our feet and you can too.” And that mes­sage speaks vol­umes ­­– much louder than any­thing I can say.”

Legal

As pres­i­dent of Club Rainbow’s coun­cil, he heads monthly meet­ings where they pro­vide over­sight for the organ­i­sa­tion. This includes approv­ing plans for new ser­vices, review­ing past pro­grammes, analysing reports, man­ag­ing staff hires and mak­ing strate­gic deci­sions to improve out­reach. The coun­cil also par­tic­i­pates in major events like the Meet-​The-​Council ses­sions. Here, Vijayen­dran gives legal advice when needed, point­ing par­ents to the right places and giv­ing them a roadmap of options.

But, mostly he and his team focus on pol­icy, strate­gic plan­ning and over­sight. They think of ways to col­lab­o­rate with other char­i­ties (such as Children’s Can­cer Foun­da­tion and Mus­cu­lar Dys­tro­phy Asso­ci­a­tion of Sin­ga­pore), and roll out new ini­tia­tives such as respite care and par­ents’ sup­port group ini­tia­tives. They have started an intern­ship pro­gramme for youths and young adults this year to build the con­fi­dence of the older Rain­bow children.

His chal­lenges include increas­ing vol­un­teer engage­ment and bal­anc­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries’ expec­ta­tions against the kind of assis­tance Club Rain­bow can real­is­ti­cally pro­vide. “It’s really about inspir­ing and men­tor­ing, and encour­ag­ing … that really is more of my role now, [I am] def­i­nitely being more of an ambas­sador now,” he said.

“The chal­lenge is how do we ensure that the visions that are con­cep­tu­alised by the coun­cil at the strate­gic plan­ning ses­sions get imple­mented and exe­cuted? Is the same level of pas­sion being felt all across the organ­i­sa­tion? Vol­un­teers need to feel that this is where we are going; this is where this big ship is going. And we’re all on the same jour­ney as bumpy as this ride can be at times, even though we’re all play­ing dif­fer­ent roles.”

He’s learnt a lot in the 15 years he has been pres­i­dent. Most of all that some­times char­i­ties have to draw the painful line between what is needed and what it can provide.

“It’s a matur­ing process even for me. When you’re youth­ful and you’re opti­mistic about every­thing … you think you can be all things to every­body. But you are lim­ited by resources; you’re lim­ited by whether every­one who is work­ing with you (vol­un­teers and staff) will sign on and are equally pas­sion­ate about the pri­or­i­ties. I think the great­est learn­ing curve to realise is that you can’t solve all the prob­lems and issues that the Rain­bow chil­dren and fam­i­lies have. You can only hope to touch their world with com­pas­sion and heal­ing, one touch at a time, to make a dif­fer­ence,” said Vijayendran.

This is where being a lawyer has given him invalu­able insight. “You can arguably be a lot more objec­tive [with legal train­ing],” he said. Prac­ti­cal mea­sures for con­flict man­age­ment, and his expe­ri­ence with employ­ment law have helped him to work out tricky sit­u­a­tions and ensure that hir­ing goes smoothly. 

“I think it is a plus to be able to bring in your skill sets into the social ser­vice area although I’m tech­ni­cally not the “lawyer” in this set­ting but the leader. But you know you can’t ignore that cor­pus of knowl­edge you have or the abil­ity to see a legal issue.”

And, there’s a need for more lawyers to step up to the plate. He’s noticed that lawyers tend to shy away from legal work when it comes to vol­un­teer­ing because they don’t want “more of the same”. But, he sug­gested, it should be about what non-​profit organ­i­sa­tions need, not what vol­un­teers feel most com­fort­able doing.

“Increas­ingly now with an envi­ron­ment that is more heav­ily reg­u­lated, strongly empha­sis­ing char­i­ties’ gov­er­nance … lawyers are invalu­able and I hope they would step for­ward … throw your hat into the ring. You will find an extra­or­di­nary sense of mean­ing and pur­pose,” he encouraged.

A dif­fer­ent kind of mouthpiece

For Aw, help­ing per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties is a mat­ter close to his heart. He suf­fers from Tourette’s Syn­drome, and under­stands the dif­fi­cul­ties of being dif­fer­ent. “I’m spend­ing more time help­ing the peo­ple who need help and hav­ing a con­di­tion myself, I can try and empathise what they may go through. I do not wish for the peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties (PWDs) to be ostracised or treated dif­fer­ently,” he explained. The DPA’s mis­sion is to be the voice of PWDs, help­ing them achieve full par­tic­i­pa­tion and equal sta­tus in the soci­ety through inde­pen­dent living.

He quoted a pas­sage from the book “To Kill a Mock­ing­bird”: “You never really under­stand a per­son until you con­sider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

A big chal­lenge he faces is get­ting those who are abled to under­stand that “until they are able to appre­ci­ate, [to] totally under­stand how and what it is like to be dis­abled, I do not think they are in the posi­tion to make deci­sions for PWDs. I try and tell the author­i­ties, we can be your voice, we can talk to our mem­bers and let you know what their needs are.”

As pres­i­dent of the DPA, he acts as spokesper­son and advo­cate for the organ­i­sa­tion and its ben­e­fi­cia­ries. His goals are many but they include edu­cat­ing the pub­lic on the mis­con­cep­tion that PWDs are to be pitied or less for­tu­nate, pub­lic aware­ness, and to get the Gov­ern­ment to rat­ify the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties in whole.

“I think that edu­cat­ing the pub­lic is going to be very dif­fi­cult because peo­ple are very set in their ways … [They think that the] dis­abled need help, they are less for­tu­nate, they are very poor thing,” he shared.

Being a lawyer, “you’re just a mouth­piece for oth­ers … as a lawyer, talk is cheap,” he quipped. But it is this very skill that “helps me be more vocal and more assertive,” he admitted.

It’s a lifestyle

But, both Vijayen­dran and Aw agree on one thing: Vol­un­teer­ing is a lifestyle, not an extracurricular.

“I think you can’t really count the time. It’s 24÷7… If you’re going to do this kind of work, you can’t say you got no time. We all have time,” said Aw. “Char­ity work is all part and par­cel of life. Time man­age­ment is a very often-​used word but it’s also about pri­ori­tis­ing. You won’t know when you’re needed.”

Said Vijayen­dran: “This whole work-​life bal­ance is really crit­i­cal and we are con­stantly try­ing to find solu­tions. All of us are try­ing to strike the right bal­ance and make sure we don’t neglect impor­tant peo­ple, impor­tant things in our lives.

“To me, the whole idea of bal­ance is not so much a sta­tic con­cept but a dynamic bal­ance. It’s not that one for­mula that you can apply right through every sin­gle day, 24 hours [a day], 365 days a year. When the char­ity has a major project and I’m involved … I pour myself into it, but when work has a demand­ing trial or a major case or some­thing else that requires a lot of focus then I give myself to that.”

Work and fam­ily are impor­tant, Aw sur­mised, but it’s about fig­ur­ing out what should take pri­or­ity at each time. “It’s about decid­ing what is impor­tant and what you want to do with your lives.”