This site was created on the 28th May 2007 after shifting it from the blog.

The intention of this site is to promote mental illness awareness and fight the mental illness stigma in Singapore. As such, most of the content on the site is of a Singapore context.

We intend to bring awareness through education. To bring abt change via acceptance and understanding on a societal level.

We aim to lessen the fear and prejudice, to lessen the stigma and create more understanding, acceptance and ultimately, give those who are already fighting such a tough mental battle an equal chance in life.

Why Gift of Listening? Why the name?

A year ago before this site was established, I embarked on a personal journey to learn more about listening, to learn what it means to be a better listener. And as the journey go, it became apparent how valuable a gift true genuine empathic listening is to others. It gives people an understanding where few if any has given them. How valuable a gift to be heard and understood by someone. It is a gift that is priceless.

And this gift is even more valuable to the mentally ill who are so often judged by others, and stigmatised by others in society.

It thus led me to promote better listening, and in itself, perhaps a better level of compassion and acceptance for our fellow human beings whom regardless of what they are going through, aren't all so different from each of us.

To quote Plato, "Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Let us listen more and judge less.

Credits

this site doesn't have a credits page yet so I have to list out all those who has assisted in the creation of this site here for the time being.

Contributions from the public

Faith for her artwork titled "Virtue"

Direct assistance with the setting up and layout of the site

Weihan (for assisting in the coding and technical aspects of the site)

Huiyee (for the images, banner and logo)

Jacqueline (for the help with the images editing of the site's layout and design)

Bingren (for the help in the image editing especially)

Sheldon (for the setting up of the domain name and host)

Last updated : 12th July 2007