The S Rajaratnam Endowment (SRE) – ASEAN Community Forum series aimed to discuss ways to make the ASEAN Community Blueprints 2025 more relevant and responsive to improve lives of ASEAN citizens. The civil society organisations (CSOs) got acquainted with ASEAN processes and mechanisms to understand how they can better engage with ASEAN, and how the work of ASEAN can benefit the communities they work for. Representatives from the ASEAN Secretariat attending the forums also spoke on the elements of the ASEAN blueprints relevant to each forum’s topic.

The outcomes of the forum were encouraging – participants learned a lot about the ASEAN blueprints, and expressed hopes that they could integrate their activity into the existing ASEAN framework in some way, and yet remain faithful to their respective causes. Many participants felt that the forum was a great platform to network and meet like-minded and passionate peers. They also gave feedback to the ASEAN Secretariat on how they could work more closely together with ASEAN. In its 2-year implementation, the SRE - ASEAN Community Forum managed to engage 132 participants from 122 CSOs across 10 ASEAN Member States to implement work plans on a broad range of development issues. The forum series have also succeeded in promoting regional friendship and collaboration among CSOs and assisted in narrowing the gaps between ASEAN’s institutional identity and ASEAN’s communal identity.