LIFE is but a short dash,so Mr Lee Poh Wah iswasting no time makinghis as dashing as possi-ble. He tries new things,

forgives readily and has fun,thanks to how his life has in-formed his work.

It was at the age of 35 that theformer national dragon boaterwith washboard abs found out hehad Stage 3C colon cancer. Hehad just joined the Lien Founda-tion and was hoping for a babywith his wife of seven years.

Barely three years before that,his younger brother, aged 30, haddied of a sudden unexplainedcardiac arrest while watching TVat home.

His parents grieved anew astheir remaining child, Mr Lee, hadthree-quarters of his colon re-moved and went through sixmonths of chemotherapy.

But the episode had a happyending for Mr Lee. His intense,muscular brows furrow as he re-flects: “A plausible impendingdeath powerfully concentrates themind. I had a personal awakening.

“For me, cancer cured myblindness. It also enhanced my cre-ativity and empathy. You realisethat you don’t really have a lot tolose. You’re no longer shackled byfear, you trivialise the trivial, youdare to push the envelope.”

Now 42 and free from cancerfor the last seven years, the LienFoundation chief executive’s skir-mish with death has helped himconceive some 30 fresh initiativesto improve care for the dying.

His Life Before Death cam-paign – featuring unconventionalideas like a coffin design competi-tion, a “Last Outfit” photo projectto get people to think about goingin style and the making of “Emo-tional Wills” to close any unfin-ished matters – helped people toface their mortality. He also ag-gressively promoted palliativecare to help people die less painful-ly.

Mr Ng Kok Song, 64, outgoingchief investment officer of theGovernment of Singapore Invest-ment Corporation and formerchairman of the Lien Centre forPalliative Care, credits Mr Lee’s“positive impatience to changethe status quo” and his intelligentuse of research and the media toinfluence public policy.

In 2010, Mr Lee commissionedthe Economist Intelligence Unit toproduce a global Quality of DeathIndex, which ranked Singapore18th out of 40 countries surveyed,suggesting more ought to bedone. It led to the Governmenttasking the Lien Centre to developa coordinated national strategyfor palliative care, which was re-leased last year.

This year, Mr Lee will be help-ing to develop palliative care sys-tems in four other Asian coun-tries.

Much remains undone for theagnostic, who sees his lifetime’swork as “changing the culture andzeitgeist on death and dying” andmaking sure as many as possible“die with peace of body, peace ofmind, peace of spirit, with noth-ing much left unsaid or undone”.

“Society needs to enhance itsdeath knowledge. All of us need toimprove in thinking about and dis-cussing end-of-life issues in a cli-mate of honesty. Death stillcomes like a stranger. Many of usdon’t know how to respond orwhat to say in front of the termi-nally ill,” he intones urgently.

This year, he is trying to bringnew stakeholders, such as funeralhouses, insurance firms and de-signers to the “die-logue table” toimprove the final send-off. Forstarters, he’s looking into rede-signing hospices to make themmore hospitable for the terminallyill and their families.

Starting line

THREE years ago, after 15 years ofmarriage, he and his wife, whoworks as a director at a technolo-gy company, welcomed theirfirst-born. They named her Xelo-da after a cancer drug, “not somuch to remind her what her dadhas gone through, but my person-al belief that you can be small andtoxic but make sure you are po-tently useful to society”, he says.

Before she was born, pre-schools weighed heavily on his

mind. Since 2005, his first projectat Lien was to integrate pre-schoolers with mild learning diffi-culties into 11 YWCA pre-schools.

In 2009, he worked with KKWomen’s and Children’s Hospitaland the PAP Community Founda-tion (PCF) to pioneer a communi-ty-based early detection and inter-vention programme for pre-schoolers with mild developmen-tal needs in 25 PCF kindergartens.It brought specialist care – paedia-tricians, psychologists and thera-pists – out of hospitals and rightinto the pre-schools. This was sosuccessful it was recently scaledup nationally by the Governmentto the tune of $30 million.

He also brainstormed many ITprojects to scale up capacity inthe pre-school sector – which hedubs Cinderella for playing sec-ond fiddle to mainstream educa-tion and suffering from “under-in-vestment, neglect and incoherentpolicy” – such as introducingcloud computing, iPads and inter-active IT as part of teaching innon-profit pre-schools. But overthe past seven years, he noticedthe sector “regressing”.

To find out how Singaporestacked up against others, he com-missioned a study last year whichranked Singapore 29th out of 45countries in standards of earlychildhood education, highlightingaffordability and quality as weakareas. That eventually led to anew statutory board being set upto oversee pre-school education.

He sees his role as “openingthe gate and nudging people withthe authority and responsibility todrive through themselves”.

Since the Government has con-firmed it will come through, he’sembarking on Phase 2 this year –to help pioneer new models ofnon-profit pre-schools with bet-ter quality teachers in poor areas,where children need the mosthelp but often receive the least. Ateam of social workers and educa-tional therapists will rally aroundthese children, who are largelyfrom single-parent families orwho live in rental flats.

He is devising a campaign to el-evate the status of pre-schoolteachers, who have low pay andhigh turnover. He also wants toenhance parents’ literacy in earlychildhood development and therole they can play to complementtheir children’s learning experi-ence. “I think all parents start

with good intentions. But somepush their children into an aca-demic arms race that may inflicttoxic stress.”

His end goal, he says, is theday “when whether you’re a childof a toilet cleaner or tycoon, youhave access to the same high-qual-ity pre-school programme”.

It is more than a rosy ideal toMr Lee, who is convinced a goodpre-school programme is themost “cost-effective tool” availa-ble to a state. He cites studies thatshow about 50 per cent of US pris-on inmates have some form oflearning difficulty. In Britain andSweden, the figure is about 30 percent. “It shows that everythingcan be traced back to pre-schooldays. Some of those who can’tkeep up with the system will go tothe dark side. There’s a cost to so-ciety if you don’t intervene earlyenough,” he warns.

Walking the talk

RECENTLY, work and life con-verged for him again when his76-year-old father, a retired tyresalesman, had a near-fatal infec-tion of the aorta from a stent im-planted years earlier.

Drawing lessons from the dy-ing well campaigns he had staged,he made sure his interactions withhis typically Chinese, “emotional-ly uncommunicative” family were“honest and intimate”. He madesure his dad and housewife mumknew the full diagnosis and risks.He did not dodge difficult conver-sations. He took the opportunityto ask about his dad’s life in de-tail, thanked him and reaffirmedhim as a father.

“What I learnt from this epi-sode itself was that the end of lifephase is charged with potentialfor growth. It should be a sharedsocial experience to be supportedas a final passage,” he reflects.

In the end, his father survivedthe various operations. But ithelped them close the wound ofhis brother’s sudden death, whichhad left a “protracted complicat-ed grief” in 2002.

That incident brought about aU-turn in the life of the alumnusof PCF, the now defunct-JervoisEast Primary, Gan Eng SengSecondary, National JuniorCollege and National Universityof Singapore, where he studiedmechanical engineering on agovernment-linked company

scholarship.Upon graduation, he worked

two “unexciting” years in proper-ty investment, then won the Raf-fles Scholarship to ManchesterUniversity to do his Master ofBusiness Administration from1997 to 1999, returning to found afailed technology start-up duringthe dot.com boom. His brother’sdeath jolted him into asking if hewas “climbing the right mountainand doing work that fed my pas-sion”.

At that time, the then Ministryof Community Development,Youth and Sports was looking tostart a social enterprise fund. De-spite being a “non-profit virgin”who had done “zero volunteerwork”, he was hired as businessdevelopment manager. It was “awonderful primer to the non-prof-it sector” for three years, till theLien Foundation, the firstgrant-giving organisation to pro-fessionalise here, hired him as sen-ior programme manager.

His brief in 2005 was to look atthe foundation’s core interests ineducation, elder care, environ-ment and families at risk. But heavoiding giving out giant chequesand putting name labels on edific-es, and sharpened its focus to ad-vocacy work on pre-school educa-tion, palliative care and water andsanitation issues – “large intracta-ble issues shunned by others”where he felt he could make asmall difference.

He refused to be seen as a“walking ATM” to the social sec-tor but as the foundation manwho brought with him – beyondmoney – fresh ideas to “kick ass”and challenge norms.

Mr Laurence Lien, 42, chair-man of the Lien Foundation, hailsMr Lee’s “entrepreneurial, boldand trailblazing” spirit for helpingto “transform the foundationfrom a passive grantmaker to onethat is strategic and making an im-pact”.

Ask Mr Lee what his own life-time wish is and it is far moremodest. It is, simply, to outlivehis parents, he confides. “I don’twant them to go through losinganother son. Because of my condi-tion, there’s always this Sword ofDamocles hanging over me,” hesays. Pausing, he then quotes hishero, martial artist Bruce Lee:“But the key to immortality is tolive a life worth remembering.”

suelong@sph.com.sg

Mr Lee on...

What he worries about most for Singapore

Inter-generational immobility andtransmission of poverty. Look at our Ginicoefficient. I don’t think you can put thegenie back into the bottle – 400,000people on Workfare is an alarming figure.There is something sinister happening ifyou look through the pre-school lens; it’sbecoming very obvious that family incomeis a strong predictor of academicachievement, which is a strong predictorof adult earning abilities in the future.These two trends conspire to create amore economically polarised society.Income inequality has led to inequality ofopportunity.

Philanthropy and charity

I look upon philanthropy as problemsolving rather than just playing SantaClaus. To me, there’s a distinctionbetween charity and philanthropy. Charityis about pure and simple giving. It’s foodfor the human soul. Philanthropy, if doneright, reduces the need for charity. We allneed to apply ourselves to giveimaginatively, constructively andsystematically to solve problems, not justsimply assuage symptoms.

Successfully pushing for pre-school sector change

Sometimes the best way to gain leverageis to influence the Government to focusfunding on a cause or to change itspriority. That’s why we embarked on ouradvocacy efforts, research and surveys.We pointed the direction to observe, theanalysts provided the telescope, the mediaprovided the sustained spotlight and thepolitical leaders responded decisively.

Mr Lee’s skirmish with cancer and death was an awakening – it made him look at ways in which he could improve care for the dying. He is seen here at the Mount Vernon Sanctuary. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM

Lien Foundation CEO Lee Poh Wah wants all Singaporeans tostart life with a quality pre-school education, no matter whattheir means, and to enjoy a good death with nothing leftunsaid. He tells Susan Long how staring death in the facechanged him and got him to change the deal for others.

‘Starting and ending well’

THE LONG INTERVIEW | CHANGE-MAKERS

F R I D A Y , J A N U A R Y 1 1 , 2 0 1 3 OOPPIINNIIOONN A35

Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reproduced with permission.