Our Community

M1 is committed to making long-term contributions to the arts, sports and youth causes, and we continued to invest resources in support of these causes in 2013.

Our employees’ enthusiastic support for our adopted charities and participation in events, such as the inaugural M1 Corporate Challenge, has been invaluable. In addition, we raised a record amount for our adopted charities in our fund-raising drives in 2013.

Elevating the Arts

The arts is an area M1 has passionately supported since our inception in 1997. We aim to build a more vibrant, creative and enriching environment for the arts in Singapore. We believe that a thriving arts scene is key to enriching our quality of life, as well as strengthening social bonds and sense of community and nationhood in Singapore’s multi-racial society.

While M1 supports a variety of works, we appreciate the challenges faced by start-up arts groups, and we focus on helping groups in this development stage where our contribution can make a greater difference. In recognition of M1’s support for Singapore’s arts scene, we were honoured with our 13th consecutive Patron of the Arts Award in 2013.

In 2013, we continued our collaboration with The Necessary Stage to present the 9th annual edition of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, with the theme Art and Entertainment. Held in January, the 12-day event featured dance, music, visual arts and mixed media performances by local and international artistes. Show highlights included Tao Te by Hungarian choreographer Ferenc Fehér’s all-male dance cast, Hideaki Hamada’s Haru & Mina, a fascinating collection of photographs of two young children exploring the world, and the world premiere of Best Of, a monologue featuring award-winning actress Siti Khalijah Zainal. We also continued our support for two of Singapore’s leading contemporary dance schools, T.H.E Dance Company and Frontier Danceland, and are heartened that their talented dancers have continued to win accolades from critics and audiences with their passionate and graceful performances.

As a passionate champion of the arts, we were encouraged by the Cultural Matching Fund set up by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth in November 2013, to provide dollar-for-dollar matching grants for private cash donations to arts and heritage charities. We will look at how the Fund can further enhance our contributions to the arts in 2014 and beyond.

Driving the Sports Scene Forward

We appreciate the ability of sports to inspire and energise people, and this motivates our support for a variety of sports causes.

In 2013, we continued our support for Netball Singapore’s initiatives, such as the M1 Talent Identification Programme and the M1 Schools Challenge League. We further extended our support with the organisation of Singapore’s biggest corporate netball competition, the M1 Corporate Challenge. The one-day event in November 2013 saw the enthusiastic participation of 48 teams from companies including Barclays Bank, Deloitte & Touche LLP, HDB, Keppel Corporation and Nestle, at the Kallang Netball Centre. M1 fielded five teams, including a team comprising our senior management who played an exhibition friendly match against a sporting team of Members of Parliament including Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry Teo Ser Luck, Deputy Speaker of Parliament and MP for Marine Parade GRC Seah Kian Peng and MP of East Coast GRC and President of Netball Singapore Jessica Tan.

In addition to netball, M1 also sponsored the Li-Ning Singapore Open 2013 badminton championship.

Supporting our Youth

We are pleased to note that M1, with the generous support of our business partners and staff, successfully raised a record S$355,000 through our annual M1 Charity Golf and M1 Charity Carnival fund-raising events, for our five adopted charities - Beyond Social Services, Children-At-Risk-Empowerment Association, Children’s Cancer Foundation, Singapore Children’s Society and Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore.

The annual M1 Charity Golf tournament is one of our signature charity fund-raising events. Our 10th Charity Golf, held at the Sentosa Golf Club on August 2013, saw M1’s senior management tee off with our business partners for charity.

M1’s other main fund-raising activity is our annual M1 Charity Carnival. Named Mini-Cirque Pour La Charité in 2013, the carnival was held in November at M1’s corporate headquarters in conjunction with our annual “Bring Your Kids To Work” day, and our staff’s enthusiastic support and contributions for this event enabled us to further enrich the lives of the beneficiaries of our adopted charities.

Throughout the year, M1 employees also volunteered their time and effort to organise interesting and educational activities for the beneficiaries of our adopted charities, including excursions to the River Safari and the S.E.A. Aquarium Marine Life Park.

In October 2013, M1 opened Future Lab, a facility for application development and test-bedding, located at M1’s Regional Operating Centre in Aljunied. With this facility, we tied up with Ngee Ann Polytechnic to launch the school’s first app development competition, the M1 Future Lab School Challenge. Future Lab was also made available to the polytechnic’s Electronic & Computer Engineering students, to nurture their interest in creating mobile applications as part of their school curriculum, and enable them to develop skills and knowledge in this area.

Giving to our Nation

In maintaining our commitment to the nation, M1 is proud to be the principal partner sponsor of the National Day Parade (NDP) 2013. Held at The Float at Marina Bay against the striking cityscape, the 48th NDP featured “Many Stories… One Singapore” as its theme and showcased heart-warming performances and spectacular displays to unite all Singaporeans and celebrate what makes them Singapore.

During the year, we also worked with the Singapore Red Cross Society to organise two on-site blood donation drives at our Jurong office. A total of 132 people donated and 98 units of blood were collected for the blood bank, which in turn will benefit almost 300 patients.