Panelists for Hands Up!

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We are excited to announce the panelists for Hands UP! Read more about them below.

Otto Fong

Otto Fong stayed closeted as a teacher for 7 years before he finally came out publicly on a blog in 2007. Though he was allowed to continue teaching, he decided to leave subsequently to pursue a career in self-publishing.  Otto has since given many interviews as a gay person, including the New Paper, Straits Times and Zao Bao and was the keynote speaker in the 2011 Pink Dot. He has also spoken at Google and the Interbank LGBT group, and was also featured in Fridae’s Safer Sex video campaign this year.

Otto will share about his experience both as a closeted and out gay teacher and his perspectives as a teacher on the experiences of LGBTQ students while he was a teacher. Read his coming out blog post here: http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2007/09/toc-exclusive-otto-fongs-open-letter/


Sing Rue

Sing Rue is a 20 year old queer woman who published an open letter earlier this year on her experiences at Dunman High Secondary in response to the HPB FAQ controversy. She was forced out of the closet in school when the school administration found out about her first relationship when she was 14 and intervened in a very public manner. She spent the next four years trying to go back into the closet. 
Apart from her experiences as a queer student, Sing Rue will share about other forms of homophobic discrimination she experienced and how they affected her, as well as the response from friends, teachers and students to her open letter. You can read her open letter here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/10152301539864026/
A/P Khoo Hoon Eng

A/P Khoo is a faculty member at a local university and is also a proud mother of two gay sons. She co-founded SAFE Singapore, a support group for family and friends of LGBTQ indvidiuals. She was previously a board member of AWARE and volunteered at Action for AIDS.

A/P Khoo published a letter co-signed by 86 faculty members and students of NUS and Yale-NUS to the Straits Times on the disparaging comments of an NUS Malay Studies Professor towards LGBTQ people and drafted a letter of concern to the NUS Provost and the Straits Times. You can read the forum letter here: http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-letters/story/sending-wrong-signal-tolerance-20140306

Jack Ho
Jack is currently a volunteer with the National LGBT Census and has volunteered with Pink Dot from 2009 to 2013. He has also been in the higher education sector for 5 years, and is presently working in a local university. He is also involved with the newly established office for diversity and inclusion in the school. 

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