My third meeting was with Ms. June Chua, who founded and runs The T-Project, which is a welfare shelter and social service provider for the homeless transgender community.

Surprisingly, the conversation that I had with Ms. Chua made me realise that the government’s attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community is present. She told me about the many ways in which the government has supported the opening of her facilities, and how institutions such as IMH have been referring clients to her shelter since 2016. It shows that the government has proactively provided support through regular visits to her shelter; it was hard to get her company registered, but the Minister for Law, Minister K Shanmugam, visited her shelter and helped her get the company officially registered. Additionally, during the COVID pandemic, she has been able to receive funding grants from the government.

Her main aim is to build bridges between the transgender community, the Singaporean community, and the government; she considers herself to be very pragmatic in the sense that she realises policy change will take too long and is much too confrontational for the kind of work that she wants to be doing which is simply providing a safe space and welfare for the homeless transgender community here in Singapore.

I think the biggest take away from this conversation was that Ms. Chua, like the other organisation representatives I have talked to, hopes and believes that the change will come from the younger generations. She hopes that education and representation will be some of the changes that come with this younger representation in government.