The official launch of Grander Together took place on 29 November 2025 at Bidadari Community Club. Mrs Alison Lim (chairperson of the Grander Together Task Force) delivered the opening address. Here is the transcript of her speech.

A very good afternoon to Mr Ishak Ismail, chairman of Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) Families for Life (FFL) Council, supporters and partners of Grander Together, and all of you here.

You chose to be here today to celebrate with us.

I’m Alison Lim, the Chairperson of Grander Together, and I’m honoured by your presence as we officially launch this movement.

Before I share more, let me first ask all of you this question: When I mention the year 2020, what comes to your mind?

COVID! That’s right!

A lot of you will begin to think about this pandemic and memories of many challenging moments and the time that we were stuck at home.

However, for me, it was one of my best years of life.

Why? Because two days before the circuit breaker – the lockdown – I was socially promoted to be a “Glam-ma”. My granddaughter Leah was born that year.

Now, despite all the anxiety and confusion, we could still joke that Singapore went into confinement with my daughter.

And this is a picture of what grandchildren do. They often bring so much joy and laughter to us when life gets tough.

So, when I have a hard day, working, facilitating workshops and I need to be energised, I go look for my granddaughters. And suddenly, I become so energised again.

Since then, my life was never the same and my joy is now more than tripled because I have now three grandchildren.

Yeah, they are the ones here. So they are bigger. I know, the photo is bigger than the photo of my children. You know who’s more important now in my life, right?

But I’m indeed very grateful to my daughter and son-in-law who believe in large families.

Even as grandparenting is amazingly fulfilling, it comes with moments when we are stretched.

We must be open. I’m speaking to the grandparents here. We must be willing to learn, and we must also put aside many practices which we think we are expert in. This is hard work and also humbling work.

Sometimes, this is quite unavoidable.

Sometimes, it hurts when we navigate differences between us and our adult children and the widening generation gap.

In Grander Together, we seek to make this grandparenting journey smoother for everyone. We desire to see families strengthened through the support of grandparents. We seek to cultivate stronger intergenerational families.

So, to achieve our vision and mission, there are three things we hope to do:

First, promote the benefits of grandparenting. These benefits are immeasurable and at all fronts. Beside parents getting the critical help that they need from grandparents, there’s incredibly positive impact on grandparents and grandchildren, when your grandparents are caregivers.

My friends commented that whenever I talk about my grandchildren, my eyes light up.

And I know I’m not alone.

Grandparents here, do you agree with me?

I see a show of hands. Yeah, definitely.

They can’t stop talking about their grandchildren. And don’t get them into showing you the photos and the videos. They expect you to see every photo and every video of their grandchildren, and you have to act like you’re very interested.

Now, in a survey done by Cultivate SG, we learned that most Singaporeans agree that most grandparents bring important contributions to caregiving. What a relief!

So, we have an important role to play.

The second thing that we do to achieve our vision and mission is we strengthen intergenerational bonds. So, as I talk about the benefits of grandparenting, we can only achieve them when we have positive relationships among the different generations.

And here I have to confess, even though my daughter is very active in this space, both of us have a lot of difficult conversations trying to iron out one of the key things: Boundaries.

We just had one yesterday. “Mum, stop bringing so many toys to my house!”

And I have to think in my heart, “The toys are not for you. They are for my grandchildren!”

And then she said, “But it adds to the clutter in my house.”

“Okay. Okay. Noted.”

So these are some of the difficult conversations that we had. And, you know, I have to learn to communicate better with her so that my help is helpful. But through this conversation, I think our bonds have become closer and become better.

And I want to tell you it doesn’t stop today. It is an ongoing journey. But through this, I’m getting to know my daughter better and know her needs.

Sometimes it’s a struggle to be a competent mother. And so I need to realise that I need to give her space to also grow as a mother.

The third thing that we do is transmit enduring values.

How do we do this?

We do this through activities.

But why do we do this?

Because with strong relationships, grandparents play a key role in transmitting enduring values to the younger generations.

In Grander Together, we organise webinars with to equip grandparents in their caregiving role, help them manage challenging family issues and strengthen intergenerational bonds.

Over 300 people – mainly grandparents – have benefited from the seven webinars which we have organised. And one of the speakers is here. Go find out from him if you want free legal advice.

So these webinars focus on things that about new stuff grandparents need to be updated on:

We need to learn how to support grandchildren in their studies

We also need to learn how much screen time is helpful or not helpful for our grandchildren. And we need to also learn that you know a headphone is not the best caregiving tool. So we need to be more active even in caregiving.

Now even in our webinars, we touch on very sensitive topics like how to support families through divorce, and how to prevent child abuse.

Besides these webinars, we also provide resources like useful articles and podcasts on grandparenting.

So, look up our Facebook, to see our partnerships with other key organisations like Focus on the Family, and Families for Life.

We have put down some of these very rich materials from them that will help you in your grandparenting role. So, make sure you sign up and join us, ‘like’ our Facebook.

In the pipeline, we have also got very exciting signature workshops that we are organising for the grandparents here and the grandchildren so that you can enjoy your roles better.

How many of you read books to your grandchildren? Can I see a show of hands?

Oh, great!

How many of you tell stories to your grandchildren?

Yeah! And you want to do it better, right?

So now we have three signature workshops coming up: Grand storytelling, Grand story reading and even learn how to play with the ukulele with your grandchildren.

So, come and join us for all these workshops, so that your role as a grandparent can be even more fun.

Now in transmitting enduring values, we have been celebrating our different Singaporean festivities. Chinese New Year, we are there; Hari Raya, we are there; Deepavali, we are there.

Because we believe that these gatherings help us appreciate the important values embedded in each celebration.

So grandparents here today, I’d like to encourage you to join us, come together to grow together in our role in being not just grandparents, but being “Grand” grandparents.

Be part of the community to support each other as we support the younger generations. Come and join us. We are indeed Grander Together. Thank you.