PM Lee Hsien Loong at Youth Celebrate!

Good evening everybody! Welcome to our National Stadium!

50 years ago when we became independent, we did not have a Sports Hub. But today for our Golden Jubilee, we have this new Sports Hub opening today. We celebrate! It will be here for many years to come, host many major events and be a place where we will cheer one another on and win many victories for Singapore. Year by year, we will have special memories here – created, remembered and stored away. For all of you, young people especially, you will grow to love it over the next 50 years.

So tonight, we are celebrating our youth, our young people. If you feel young, give a roar! You are Singapore’s future and hearing you, feeling you, I know this is a future that is bright and a future that is full of hope. Go for it!

When we became independent, we were not so upbeat. We were setting out, we knew it was difficult, the challenges looked formidable. But our Pioneers believed that Singapore had a future. They worked hard, they brought us here and so today, we can celebrate SG50. We celebrate Youth Day for all of you.

So let us thank all those who came before us, the generations who built Singapore – our grandparents and parents who brought us up, our teachers who taught us so much. What will the next 50 years be like? I say, it depends on you. Go for it!

Whatever we can do to prepare you, we have done – stable society, homes for everybody, good schools everywhere, jobs for your parents and opportunities ahead. Now make the most of what you have. Stretch your limits; help one another; work with your fellow citizens as one Singapore team. Show the world what Singapore can be.

SG50 is this year. SG100 may seem a long way to come. But in 50 years’ time, many of you will still be alive, will still be active and will still be working. I hope in 50 years’ time we will have another celebration like this, in the Sports Hub, and many of you will be here again.

Make the most of the next 50 years – the next 50 years which will be the best years of your life. Get a good education in school, pursue ambitious and successful careers, bring up happy families of your own and make Singapore a shining red dot in the world. Chase that rainbow!

Today, just by coincidence, after the rain cleared this evening there was a beautiful rainbow above the Sports Hub. It was a rainbow for all of us. Go for it! Then we will have many reasons to celebrate SG100. Then we can come back to this stadium and say, we have lived our lives well. And you can tell your children or grandchildren by then – 50 years ago, I was there and I pledged to do my best for myself and for Singapore, and I did. So happy youth day!

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