Suicide is a heavy topic for discussion. Yet, discussion around this topic is exactly what is needed to actually help prevent it.
That’s the belief of Samaritans of Singapore (SOS), a Singapore-based non-profit organisation dedicated to providing confidential emotional support to individuals facing a crisis, thinking about or affected by suicide. Their work focuses on crisis intervention and suicide prevention, and were the first to launch a 24-hour suicide prevention hotline in the city-state.
In conjunction with their 50th anniversary, SOS launched a two-day conference with the theme “Unifying Communities; Strengthening Hope”. Bringing together professionals from the social services sector and suicide prevention efforts in the region, the event aimed to connect and find ways that organisations and communities can come together to prevent suicide and help those affected by suicide.
Assoc Prof Mythily Subramaniam speaking on "Suicide Prevention: Community as a protective force" on stage at the Samaritans of Singapore conference.
The conference featured speakers from the Ministry of National Development, Institute of Mental Health, National University of Singapore, Facebook, and even the Singapore Police Force’s Psychological Services Division.
With a unique but important theme like suicide prevention, the conference team had to treat the conference content with care. At the same time, it was important for the conference to drive meaningful conversations around the topic. They decided to use Pigeonhole Live to make that happen.
“We had to ensure that the conference is unique and insightful,” said Ryan Tan, Assistant Manager, Communications and Fund Development at SOS. “Most importantly, the content of the conference must value-add to all delegates.”
“Driven by recognising conversations around suicide and its prevention is essential, and Pigeonhole Live was a great fit to what the organising committee envisioned every Q&A session at the conference to be - to drive meaningful conversations.”
SOS’s conference team used Pigeonhole Live to facilitate questions during all Q&A sessions for plenary and panel discussions. Delegates felt comfortable posting sensitive questions thanks to the anonymity function, while question filtering tool was used to keep questions in line with the topic at hand.
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Their favourite part of using Pigeonhole Live?
“We especially loved the function where we can contact the moderator on stage - typically as a reminder of the remaining time left for the Q&A session,” said Tan.
“Another function we enjoyed was how we can enable live voting of the questions - this helped facilitate questions that resonate with the delegates and helps steer the discussion to those that matters to most - especially when our delegates are professionals who may have come across people who expressed suicide ideation in their line of work.”
At the end of the day, the team says that they would “definitely” recommend Pigeonhole Live to other communities hoping to create social change.
“We strongly believe in the value of creating a safe space for open conversations. As Pigeonhole Live provides such a platform, it definitely will value-add to any event in gathering opinions and facilitating discussions.”All Image Credits: Samaritans of Singapore.
Featured Image: Dr Andy Ho, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University.
