Dr Yap Meen Sheng, SUSS Assistant Provost
Dr David Fogarty, CEO and Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact Network Singapore
Mentors and participants,
Ladies and gentlemen
1. Good morning, and a warm welcome to all of you.
2. A special shoutout to 34 student leaders who have travelled here from Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, China and the United States. Welcome!
3. I am happy to join you today at the third edition of the Social Sustainability Leadership Forum. I would like to commend SUSS for bringing together young leaders, educators, industry partners and changemakers around a cause that really matters.
Context
4. When we speak about sustainability, many think about the environment - climate change, energy, waste. These are important issues. But I would like to direct your attention to social sustainability, which is talked about a lot less but is just as, if not more, important.
5. So what is social sustainability?
6. Social sustainability is about the kind of society that we want to build – one where people can participate, contribute and belong. And one where our communities are strong and cohesive, not just for today, but for many generations to come.
7. This year's Forum focuses on "Ensuring Quality Education to Empower Inclusive and Sustainable Learning."
8. Quality education, at its best, is not just about what is taught in the classroom, or how well students perform in exams. It is about helping people to discover their strengths, build confidence and develop character to contribute to something that is much larger than themselves.
9. It empowers learners with the skills, the values and the judgement to shape their own futures. It is inclusive, so that learners are not held back by their background, abilities or their life stage. And it needs to be sustainable, so that learning continues beyond school, across life, and across communities.
10. This week, you will be working across three education-related tracks:
- Building Skills for the Future;
- AI-Driven Learning Systems; and
- Inclusive and Accessible Learning.
11. These are three deeply interconnected themes, and the common thread across all three, is that quality education must widen access, must build agency, and it must strengthen adaptability.
Access
12. Let me start with access. Access is more than just opening the classroom door. It is about whether learners can truly benefit from the opportunities that are laid out before them.
13. A programme may be free, but if a learner has caregiving responsibilities after school, he or she may not be able to attend it. A digital platform may be very well-designed, but if a learner has no quiet space, no stable connection, or no guidance at home about how to access the digital platform, he or she once again may not benefit from it.
14. And here is why inclusive education must first begin by understanding people's lived realities – what are their family circumstances, what are their home environments, what are their language needs, and what are their confidence levels.
15. It means that a lot of what you do is more about listening than prescribing, and oftentimes you have to work across cultures and languages. Only then can we design the kind of support that will reach the people that we are meant to serve.
16. In the age of AI, access also means ensuring that technology narrows gaps, and not widen them. AI and data can help us identify learning needs and personalise support. But no matter what you hear about AI, it does not have the human judgement to decide, or the human gumption to take action. We need people – people like all of you – who can ask the right questions, with the right heart, and the right spirit, and to exercise sound judgement to make a difference.
17. So as you work on your problem statements this week, I encourage you to ask and to picture this: Who is this person that I am trying to reach? Who might be left out? And what barriers must be removed for learning to be truly inclusive?
Agency
18. The second is about agency. Quality education should empower learners with the confidence, the skills and judgement to shape their own futures.
19. Many of the challenges before us, whether social inequality, climate change, or tech disruptions – these are all questions that have no simple answers.
20. Our learners need more than just knowledge. They need the humility to learn from others. They need the curiosity to ask better questions. And they need the resilience to keep going when the first solution does not work.
21. But this is what platforms like SSLF can help to build. Over the next few days, you will work with people from different countries, different backgrounds and different disciplines. You will dialogue with one another, you will test your assumptions, and you will make sense of problems from diverse perspectives.
22. I hope you will use this opportunity to practise the deeper habits of leadership — listening well and being willing to redefine your own ideas in a way that enables everybody to take it forward purposefully together.
23. This is also how we should think about AI in education. The question is not whether AI will shape education. It already is shaping education. What is more important is how we help learners use AI thoughtfully and responsibly.
24. That is why the Ministry of Education has organised AI-enabled learning around four "Learns" – learn about AI, learn to use AI, learn with AI, and most importantly to learn beyond AI.
25. To learn beyond AI is to develop the distinctly human qualities that matter even more in an AI-enabled world – qualities like critical thinking, creativity, ethical judgement, empathy, collaboration and purpose.
26. If we treat AI simply as a shortcut, we risk weakening the very habits that education is meant to build. But if we use AI well, it can help sharpen our learning, support educators, and give learners the confidence to participate and to contribute.
Adaptability
27. The third is about adaptability. For learning to be sustainable, learners and education systems must both be able to evolve as needs, technologies and our societies change.
28. For learners, adaptability means continuing to learn through life. It means being able to pick up new skills, to make sense of new situations, and to respond with confidence as the world around us keeps changing.
29. For education systems, adaptability means not standing still but continually testing, learning and adjusting.
30. This is especially important for inclusion. If we are not careful, innovations that are meant to improve education may end up only benefiting those who are better resourced, and leaving others further behind.
31. So when we design learning systems, we should ask: Are there learners who may be excluded because of the way the system is designed? Do they have access to the devices, the connectivity, the language support and the guidance that they need? How might AI outputs be shaped by the assumptions that are built into existing AI models?
32. Designing for inclusion from the start often produces better solutions for everyone. It also helps systems remain responsive as our needs change over time.
33. As you develop your ideas this week, challenge yourselves to come up with solutions that widen access, build agency and strengthen adaptability, especially for those who are hardest to reach.
Conclusion
34. Let me close by sharing a story from one of our student leaders here. Kaung Hset Hsint is a psychology student at SUSS. He first joined the SSLF as a participant in 2024, returned as Head of Facilitation in 2025, and this year, he is stepping up as Chairperson.
35. His journey is a good reminder that social sustainability is not built in a single event, in a single project, or in a single week. It is built when people care enough to return to the work, learn from experience, and keep improving what they have started.
36. I hope that your journey with social sustainability will continue beyond this Forum. Because the right answers and right solutions are not going to come at the first try.
37. We are not likely to find the perfect solution by the end of the week. Because the issues are complex, and require our continued efforts, iteration and persistence to move the needle.
38. And the best takeaway you can have may not be a winning pitch, but leaving with a clearer question than the one you arrived with, a deeper understanding of the learners you hope to serve, and a commitment to keep working on the issue when you return to your communities.
39. To all mentors, educators and partners in the room, thank you for committing your time and your energy to guide and to empower our young leaders.
40. I wish all of you a very meaningful and fruitful eight days ahead. It is a time to meet people, to listen to diverse perspectives, and to strengthen your commitment to make a lasting impact and a lasting change for your community and your country.
41. Thank you.