That’s Berry Good — How Singaporean Youths Can Redesign Lives (Part 2)

“The strawberry plant is a perennial. This means if you plant one now, it will come back next year and the following and the year after that. It may not bear fruit immediately, but once it does, it will remain productive for about five years.”

There’s much more to a strawberry.

Don’t let our easily-bruised exterior fool you, we pack a punch as a strawberry army. Around a quarter of the Singaporean population are strawberries. If you get the chance to plant one of us in your garden, you can witness a harvest year after year, after year. Five years is an honest benchmark because the frequency of job switching heightened- it will be dishonest to promise anything longer.

No shame in that as well.

Again, it is not because strawberries can’t take pressures. Rather than that, it is more about how an average strawberry has 200 seeds.

Every seed out of that 200 is, botanically, its own separate fruit. 200 seeds of ideas, interests, passions and values move us when we should. 200 of them move us to redesign lives when and where gaps are.

You will not get immediate results, of course. We need some time to warm up and pick up the right ropes. Perhaps you can think of when you first started out; I am sure you did not begin as a perfect, flawless success.

Plenty of strawberry-planting has been done, for the life-long harvest of social good year after year, after year.

Schools like universities and polytechnics hold their own classes, majors, student groups, competitions and even incubators to incite interest and gather like-minded strawberries to collaborate. Inspiring guest speakers have been regularly invited to share and sow seeds. It is an eco-system like never before, and we are already seeing the first-fruits of this labour. Technology fertilises an idea to grow, while the network incubates it overtime.

Social businesses and the concept of social entrepreneurship has been gaining more traction, as strawberries look for meaning in their careers. The paycheck is no longer the sole determinant.

This is where the idea of doing business with a heart becomes more attractive. This is where we design for good. It is now much easier to share an idea and move because of an idea.

It is only a matter of time before we start to witness our perennial trait on a scale like never before.