Eighteen (18) Years of Voice: From a Dream to an Institution
By Serena Sasingian, TVI Co-Founder
Serena Sasingian addressing young people at Divine Word University, Wewak Campus during the late Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare's fourthmemorial ceremony.
On Thursday, 17 July 2025, The Voice Inc. (TVI) turned 18. As a co-founder of TVI, I am deeply inspired by where the organisation is now. Perhaps this realization is even more profound because I turn 40 in a few weeks' time, along with the other co-founders of TVI, who are all at the peak of their careers and with families of their own. Forty, like eighteen, marks a threshold moment in one’s life and in a nation, a moment of generational shift and personal transformation.
These two milestones have caused me to pause and reflect on what time, vision, and perseverance can create. It’s hard to believe that something we dreamt up in our university dorm rooms in 2007 has grown into a fully-fledged organisation that has touched the lives of youth in every province of this country.
When we first envisioned The Voice as a student movement it was not about building an organisation, we saw it as answering a call. At the time, Papua New Guinea was wrestling with the realities of a young democracy. There were few spaces for youth to speak, to question and to dream of a different future. The very laws and institutions enshrined in our Constitution, designed to safeguard our people, often failed to deliver what it was set up to do. We wanted to change that as we believed then, as we do now, that young people are not merely the leaders of tomorrow but leaders in shaping the future today.
Against this back drop we launched “The Voice- University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG)”. I remember the launch day vividly, we were in our third year of Law School and had decorated the Main Lecture Theatre at UPNG, uncertain if anyone would come. Ironically it was 17 July, the same day Digicel PNG launched its phone company, breaking BeMobile’s monopoly and making it affordable for everyone to own a phone and connect through their ‘voice’ network. To say there was a buzz on campus was an understatement. To our delight, the room was packed that night in honour of our keynote speaker, the then Governor General, Sir Paulias Matane. Among the speakers was the Acting Dean of the Law School, Mr Sam Kaipu, who issued a challenge: "I hope The Voice doesn’t become a meteorite, bursting from the sky and landing without an impact.”
For 18 years, we have strived to answer that challenge. We knew that for The Voice to reach its full potential we needed to incorporate the organisation and build strong systems of governance and develop a vision that spoke to our people. In 2010 The Voice PNG became incorporated as The Voice Inc., appointed a Board of Directors, launched its strategy and the rest they say is history.
TVI now stands strong under the leadership of two formidable women; Maliwai Sasingian, my older sister and Executive Director for the last eight years, and Dame Meg Taylor, our Board Chair, former Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General and senior stateswoman. Both women are highly qualified in their own right, with international experience, and represent two different generations, one born after independence and one pre-independence. Under their leadership and that of the Board and Management, TVI has entered an exciting new era offering programs I could have only dreamed of.
When I first worked at TVI, we offered the DREAM and our Leadership Development Program at three Universities. Eighteen years on TVI now has partnerships in all state-run universities, offers scholarships to university students, grants to changemakers in communities and hosts a digital learning platform with over 5,000 active users. Since 2022, they also work with Harvard University’s Building State Capability Program to support leaders in workplaces and communities, who are working on solving some of our most complex and difficult public policy problems. As I observe from the outside, I see an organisation that has not just survived its founders at the University of PNG but grown stronger in their absence. That, to me, is the real test of an institution’s success.
Yet, 18 years later, whilst I am proud of TVI, I must acknowledge that our nation is not where we hoped it would be. I believe this is partly because, at the time of independence, the dreams and inspirations our forefathers wrote into our National Constitution failed to truly take root in the generation born prior to independence.
Over the decades, corruption and weak service delivery have failed to deliver on this promise of statehood. The PNG Constitutional Planning Committee warned us in 1974 that our future would depend not only on systems of government but on the quality of leadership. It urged us to place the public interest before personal advantage. That wisdom remains as urgent today as it was then.
Throughout my career I have travelled to all but one province in PNG and from conversations with ordinary men and women I hear a cry for new leadership in this country. Leaders who carry the public good in their hearts. I believe that in 2007, with The Voice Inc, we began sowing the seeds of this type of leadership in my generation. TVI’s vision was rooted in the National Goals and Directive Principles and inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah in Chapter 61: “They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour.” Our vision was both prophetic and purposeful. The oak tree, known for its endurance and deep roots, became a symbol of what we hoped to build: an institution that would weather storms and grow tall enough to shelter others.
Today, those seeds have become an ecosystem much like an interwoven garden of leaders, ideas, and movements. Our goal was never to grow a single tree, but to cultivate the soil for many to grow. This is garden leadership, nurturing the ground for new institutions to emerge, rooted in new dreams, adapted to new seasons, yet connected to a timeless vision, “To see generations of young people driven by purpose and confident in the value of their contribution to their communities, nation and the world.”
I have long said the personal is political, who we are shapes what we build. Our institutions and society at large are a reflection of us and our own value systems, Our beliefs, our wounds, our hopes and longings are not separate from the institutions we lead; they are embedded within them. When I look back on the founding of The Voice Inc., I see not just a program or projects funded by donors, I see a generation’s yearning to belong, to be heard and to contribute meaningfully. I see my own story stitched into its evolution and growth. The programs that we designed all began in the deeply personal soil of experience. From the DREAM to Nation builder to the Clean Generation we learnt that to lead with authenticity is to accept that transformation does not begin outside of us, it begins within us. That is the quiet revolution. That is how the personal becomes a force for political change.
As I turn 40, I stand not as a starry-eyed dreamer, but as a woman at the threshold of a new season. I have known the beauty of deep love and companionship, and the hollow ache of heartbreak and loss. I have carried life in my womb and held death in my arms. I have known the highs of a thriving career and the lows of professional challenges that tested my courage and integrity. Through it all, I’ve learned that surviving the different seasons of life requires adaptability and the willingness to bend with changing times rather than resist circumstances beyond our control. I believe flexibility, humility, and resilience are the most vital tools in one’s leadership toolkit as we navigate uncharted terrain both personally and within our ever-shifting political landscape.
As I draw my reflection to a close I again echo the words of our founders in the CPC report who said:
”The process of colonisation has been like a huge tidal wave... It leaves much dirt and some useful soil, as it subsides. The time of independence is our time of freedom and liberation. We must rebuild our society, not on the scattered good soil the tidal wave of colonisation has deposited, but on the solid foundation of our ancestral land."
The Voice Inc is 18, legally an adult (so to speak) but in movement terms it is just entering its prime. It carries the wisdom of its youth, the strength of its network, and the vision to keep going. As the words above remind us it is important to take the seeds of opportunity that we have each been given and plant them in the life giving soil of the new decade ahead. We do not start from a barren land, but a beautiful life giving garden of purpose and possibility.
We are the garden, we are the womb, we are the new nation.
God bless PNG.