In May 2003, 80 people turned up at the inaugural facilitators’ forum in Singapore, in response to our invitation to assess if there is sufficient interest for us to form a Singapore Facilitators Network.
In 2004, at the request of the Malaysian network and with some seed money from them, as well as assistance from many others (too many for us to name!), we organised a fairly successful first International Association of Facilitators (IAF) Asia Facilitators Conference in Singapore at the Singapore Downtown East resort, with 250 attendees from 20 countries!
It was also the first time the IAF Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) certification was held outside of the USA! At the event, Prabu and Janice were amongst the first few IAF certified professional facilitators in Singapore.
With the surplus generated from the inaugural facilitators conference and the seed money returned to the Malaysian network, the Facilitators Network Singapore (FNS) was formally registered as a partnership in 2004 and was later converted to a ‘private limited company’ in 2006, to limit the liabilities of its non-remunerated founders, Prabu and Janice.
In 2004, FNS became affiliated with the IAF till 2013. Since 2011, FNS has been affiliated with the International Institute for Facilitation (INIFAC).
Since its formation, FNS has always been managed as a social enterprise which combines the agility of a private enterprise, with the social motive to up-scale the competencies of facilitators in Singapore and the region.
Over the years, the network has been supported by a few paid part-time administrators and managed by volunteers. The initial core team of volunteers included Ng Choon Seng, Jimmy Chew and Lim Hong Li. Other volunteers who have contributed their time and energy in the past included Lee Seng Teck, Lim Hock Ming, Noel Tan, G. Jivarani, Simone Vaz and Parul Mehta.