Foreign Correspondents Association (FCA) Singapore

The Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore is one of the oldest and largest foreign journalist organisations in Asia. The group was founded in April 1956 as the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southeast Asia. Among its early members were famous Observer correspondent Dennis Bloodworth and Wee Kim Wee, the one-time UPI bureau chief, and later President of Singapore. In the early days, the organisation met often in the now-vanished Cockpit Hotel. The name of the organisation was later changed to the Foreign Correspondents Association (Singapore) after objections from other foreign correspondent clubs in the region about the previous name. The FCA also played a role in regional history: It was at a lunch in 1961 that then-Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman first mooted the idea of a "union" of Malaya, Singapore and the North Borneo dependencies. Among other famous speakers to address the FCA: Kofi Annan, Chris Patten, Martin Lee of Hong Kong, 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner President Jose Ramos Horta of Timor Leste, Datuk Anwar Ibrahim, MM Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and most recently Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak. Now, the FCA seeks to be the voice of a new generation of journalists and members who are deeply interested in Singapore and the world around them. To that end, the FCA offers informative and thought-provoking programs. We also try to have some fun. We're committed to serving traditional media and are also reaching out to 21st century forms of news dissemination.