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Here at Make The Change (MTC), we regularly take on interns so that we can learn from each other. In May, we had Jack from Tanglin Trust School (TTS) entrusted to us. Make The Change is happy to have Jack for his one-week internship. A ​Year 10​ student from TTS, Jack was chosen by his school to intern at Make The Change for his ​Work Experience week​. During his brief week with us, he set his mind on learning more about Social Enterprises and learn he did. He learned much about the elderly, the homes that care for them, as well as marginalized groups like the less fortunate, and other ways to help these groups. He is very determined to become a businessman in the future and enthusiastic about further contributing to the less fortunate. On top of all these, Jack also learned about the creative services, CSR engagement and community development that we do. Some examples of the community development that MTC engages in are Digital Arts For All (DAFA). DAFA teaches youths, as well as the elderly, about digital literacy through the fun activity of painting on iPads. All in all, Jack professed that he had had a fun and productive time with us. We are getting new student interns next from Raffles Girls School, next week! Check our blog in the coming weeks to hear their experience. Are you looking or internships or opportunities to learn about Social Entrepreneurship? Contact us! info@makethechange.sg

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Rachael is a shy yet bubbly individual with an ever learning mindset. She was given the opportunity to come to Singapore last year with a youth organisation and she decided to wrap up her journey in Singapore with an internship with Make The Change. Drawn to our company’s vision and mission, it prompted her to intern with us to learn more about our operations. During her 1-month internship in June, she was responsible for account management and business development, closely working with our digital marketing team. Under the guidance of her supervisor, she learnt how to prospect and generate leads, as well as assist in generating monthly social media reports for our clients. Rachael mentioned that she was able to acquire new knowledge in terms of SEO and client prospecting strategy, which were relatively new to her before she joined MTC. She was also able to pick up some tactics in effective leads prospecting and measurement in social impact through MTC’s daily team meeting and participating in online webinars, which have been on a rise due to the Covid-19 situation. 1 month has passed quickly and Rachael is now well on her way back to Hong Kong. We are grateful for her enthusiastic spirit and receptiveness to learning new things! We hope that this internship experience has positively impacted her future career choices and we wish her all the best for her endeavours. If you are looking to experience working in the social sector, we welcome you to join our team! Click here for more information about our internship opportunities.

We are launching an exciting new initiative that promises to shape the future of social innovation: Youth For Change! Powered by National Youth Council, and organised by Make The Change , this programme is designed to empower young minds and drive impactful change within our communities. What is Youth For Change? Youth For Change is a comprehensive programme tailored for youths aged 15 to 35. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to transform your innovative prototypes into fully-fledged projects. This is more than just a workshop; it's a launchpad for your ideas to take flight and make a real difference. Why Should You Join? Transform Your Ideas: Move beyond the conceptual stage and see your projects come to life with the support and guidance of seasoned professionals. Professional Engagement: Gain invaluable insights and advice from experts in various fields, ensuring your project is both impactful and sustainable. Networking Opportunities: Connect with like-minded individuals, build lasting relationships, and expand your professional network. Skill Enhancement: Develop crucial skills in project implementation, teamwork, and strategic thinking. How to Join Ready to be a part of this journey? Simply click here to find out more information! By joining us, you become part of a community dedicated to creating positive social change and shaping a better future for all. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to grow, learn, and make a significant impact. Follow us for updates and inspiration: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Be sure to check out NYC on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn! #nycsg #nyf

Welcome to another inspiring episode of Conversation of Change, the podcast that spotlights social entrepreneurs creating positively impactful work. Hosted by Nabilah from Make the Change, a social enterprise in Singapore, this episode features a special guest, Dave, the founder and CEO of The Colibrily Crew, a US-based ethical digital marketing agency. In this engaging discussion, Dave shares the journey of The Colibrily Crew, celebrating their 10-year milestone, and delves into the core values and challenges of building a purpose-driven business. Learn how his agency supports small to medium organizations aiming to make a social impact, and how his diverse, global team maintains a balanced lifestyle through innovative practices like mind-body benefits and continuous personal development plans. Dave also opens up about his personal career transition from corporate America to becoming a changemaker, the importance of mental health, and his philosophy of sustainable growth over rapid expansion. This episode is packed with valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs and anyone interested in making a meaningful difference through business. Join us on this journey of exploration and discovery, and be inspired by Dave's commitment to creating a better world. For more information on Make the Change, visit makethechange.sg. To learn more about The Colibrily Crew, check out colibrily.com. Listen to the full conversation here: Discover our podcast on your favourite audio apps now! 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/make-the-change-conversation-of-change-podcast/id1511455099 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FPfumkodY86gN9wUBUgYV?si=ff0560b50aff4c30

By Sylvia, Jessie, Chang Hao, Natalie, Samiksha When we first came into the office, we had no idea about what a “social enterprise” is and what to expect at Make The Change. However, having spent the past one month interning here, it really changed our perception of how social businesses work and it was an eye-opening experience for all of us indeed. We managed to experience multiple “first times” through this programme, such as participating in product photoshoots and videography, learning how to draw and animate our own GIFs on Procreate as well as being part of the DAFA filming. For the product shoot, we went outside of the office to the Clarke Quay shophouses in week 2 to capture photos of the products. We were accompanied by our MTC mentor, Jade, and another MTC staff Amanda, who was part of the designing team and gave us tips about photography. She mentioned that we have to take photos in a way that is attractive to the eye in order to make the product stand out. She told us that lighting and colour matching is crucial when it comes to taking photos and that we also had to take note of the compositions of photos. For the product shots, we used cameras and our phones to capture pictures of the pouches with the colourful shophouses as the background, making the photos more vibrant and colourful which will be more appealing to people. Not only did we take the product shots using our phones and cameras, we also had the opportunity to model for the product shots. Ultimately, the product shoot was very successful as we were able to capture many aesthetically pleasing photos of the pouches that would definitely attract people’s attention easily. These photos would then be used for the posts that we will be working on for DFG’s Instagram page, brightening the previously dull feed as a result. As for what we learnt in terms of videography, there were mainly 2 instances in which we could have hands-on experience. In the first week, we had the opportunity to participate in and witness the behind the scenes of the DAFA filming, an ad for the school. It was intriguing seeing the huge camera equipment and how the camera crew worked, taking multiple takes to get the “perfect” shot. As interns, we had minor roles, being the students in the background in the re-enactment of the workshop lesson, while Jade taught snippets of the class on Media Literacy. We observed how proper lighting was a necessity for filming, and the way that there was artificial lighting and light tents set up around this professional set. Later on, we tried for ourselves, filming an advertisement using the iPads from MTC’s office. We considered camera angles and lighting, so we tried to find a spot with good natural lighting to film, and we took a top-view shot later which also panned to closeups of the products, with one of us kneeling on top of the table to get the shot. Making sure to avoid having distracting background items, we were able to make the products in the video more eye-catching. We incorporated clips of the products in use to better market the products as being useful and more attractive, and later on added captions of short catchphrases in text form on the videos as well as edited the clips to be more cohesive. Ultimately the process of filming products was indeed enlightening, allowing us new insights on product filming and marketing. Moving on to the marketing of the products (denim pouches), we wanted more people to know about Design for Good and we had to think of ways to make this happen. We decided that we wanted to spice up DFG’s Instagram feed with more vibrant colours as we found the current ones slightly plain and dull (mainly due to the posts having a white background). Thus, we made use of warmer tones (like reds, pinks and yellows) and re-designed all the posts using apps or websites. Since we also wanted our posts to be informative but digestible at the same time, we split the lengthy words into different posts so that readers could easily take in pieces of information without being overwhelmed by the long chunks of text. In order to boost engagement on DFG’s social media platforms, we had to use more hashtags and make sure our posts had more likes, comments, and shares. According to Instagram’s algorithm, the more likes, posts and hashtags a post has, the more people the post would reach. We made sure there were many likes by sharing the posts in our personal accounts. This successfully managed to increase the number of likes the posts had. Moreover, we also decided to make use of Instagram stories. We made a sustainability bingo template and a trivia quiz that our followers can participate in. By doing so, when users reshare the template, this could then reach a wider audience and more people would be able to find out about our account as well as the whole Jeans for Change movement. Ultimately our experience at Make The Change was very fulfilling, eye-opening and refreshing, especially under the guidance of Jade, who helped us along our internship journey with graciousness and kindness. We feel that this internship has well-trained us for future work experiences and we would like to thank MTC for giving us such great once-in-a-lifetime opportunities as interns, and teaching us about things we would not have the chance to experience in a school setting.

Join us in this episode of Conversation of Change as we dive into the world of sustainable businesses, particularly focusing on B Corp Month. We had the honor to talk to Keith Tan from B Lab Singapore. Established in January 2022, B Lab Singapore is a not-for-profit organisation, dedicated to the vision of an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. In our conversation, we delve into the journey to becoming a certified B Corporation and the challenges that come with it. From navigating sustainability standards to fostering social and environmental impact, Keith provided invaluable insights for those embarking on their own journey towards meaningful change during B Corp Month and beyond. Listen to the full conversation here: Discover our podcast on your favourite audio apps now! 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/make-the-change-conversation-of-change-podcast/id1511455099 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FPfumkodY86gN9wUBUgYV?si=ff0560b50aff4c30

“Imagine every time you had a cup of coffee, someone has access to life saving water; or every time someone reads a book, a tree gets planted. This is the world of B1G1.” said Masami Sato, co-founder of B1G1, a social enterprise in Singapore and Non-Profit Organisation in the US which lets you embed ‘giving’ directly into your business activities. Her company, which is a global initiative, embodies what business philanthropy is all about. “Business giving or social responsibility is really about businesses trying to imagine what kind of good they can create by doing what they’re doing.” she said. “In this world today, the most important thing is that we realise we are in this together; and we are here in our own unique ways to collaborate with each other so we can create a really sustainable, fulfilling world together.” THE DRIVING FORCE The concept behind B1G1 stemmed from Masami’s experiences while backpacking overseas. She had seen a different picture. The “reality”, as she put it. She had a firsthand look at how children were suffering around the world and realised that there were “real children not being able to go to school because they’re working or begging on the street; or people with physical disabilities not having any help and sleeping on the street. In my own country, in my own neighbourhood, if kids are not even able to go to school, surely somebody will help.” “When I looked around in some of the countries I visited, these people didn’t have help. So, I thought, ‘Why?’” said Masami, thinking back on her journey. “But, at that time, I felt small. I didn’t have the answer.” The driving force that pushed Masami forward was her love for her daughter. “When I held my child for the first time, I experienced this most profound sense of love and connection. And I realised that I would do anything to protect my child and provide opportunities for her. “But then, at the time I started to see the faces of other children, the children I saw when I was travelling; and I thought, ‘Maybe I should do something.’ Even though I cannot help everybody, I cannot change the world, but there are a lot of kids who don’t have parents like me. Even if I could do just a little more than taking care of my own family, I would do something.” B1G1’S GROWING INFLUENCE Her compassion fuelled her to begin a food business because she believed that the power of food could bring people together; and her company flourished. However, 5 years in, Masami had a realisation. “Even though I worked so hard, I wasn’t achieving what I wanted to do, which was to feed and educate the street kids I saw … We were putting all our money back into the business to grow, but then I thought, if I continued that way in 10 or 20 years time, I would still be doing the same thing. “The idea of Buy1GIVE1 came to us, ‘What if, instead of trying to do something big in the future, we just gave one meal for every meal we sold?’ That’s what we did and that transformed everything.” She grew that thought, believing that any business could do the same. B1G1’s MOVEMENT Join more than 2500+ businesses around the world on a mission to create a world full of giving. It’s not just a membership; it’s your commitment to becoming a Business for Good — B1G1 Their call to action for companies to do good has had success in changing the minds of many. The point wasn’t to give the most but to work at an ‘accumulated impact of habitual giving’. Since they started in 2007, the collective impact created by B1G1’s business community has reached over 220 million giving impacts. For example, every time someone buys your product, you can choose to plant 5 trees to support reforestation in Borneo; or every time you send an email, you can give a day’s access to clean drinking water to families in Cambodia; or every time you meet a new client, you can provide 10 days access to e-learning education to children in India. Her platform allows organisations to search for and give to projects they care about. Each is broken down into quantifiable ‘micro-impacts’ so everyone can see how much difference they’ve made ‘from as little as 1 cent’. “For those of us who run social enterprises, we do not see the act of starting our venture as a great deal of courage. Instead, what we do see is the need to make a difference right now.” explained Masami. Listen to the Conversation of Change podcast

“There’s really only an upside.” Tom Greenwood expressed as he thought about his hopes for the future of digital sustainability. He’s the author of ‘Sustainable Web Design’ and co-founder of Wholegrain Digital, London’s original WordPress Agency which designs and develops Wordpress websites, and they’ve been a certified B-Corps since 2017. “One of the nice things about the B-Corps certification process is that it gives you structure and makes you really kind of think about things more seriously.” he said. “And although we’ve been trying to run our business in a sustainable way for many years before then, it helped us to get a bit more focused.” For the last 14 years, he and his wife, Vineeta, started their business with the aim of helping organisations that are trying to have a social or environmental mission through design and technology. At Wholegrain Digital, they definitely practice what they preach. They’ve adopted several green initiatives in their agency, and he notes that one of the interesting ones is how they incentivise their team to switch to renewable energy at home. “It’s not possible in every country, but in the UK we’re quite lucky that we have lots of different electricity providers. Some of them you can buy a renewable energy tariff, so basically we offer our team, we give you an extra day of holiday every year if you switch and it doesn’t cost anymore. They’re basically the same price in the UK, but not many people know that. “Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, it’s gonna cost me more, it’s gonna be a real hassle but actually it’s really easy to switch and doesn’t cost any more money. It was a slow start and took about 3 years, but now every single person on our team has renewable energy.” How they support their team members also includes a scheme called Climate Perks, which was started by a charity called ‘Possible’. They were one of the first to sign up and made a commitment that if someone takes a personal holiday without using an airplane, they get extra time off that covers the time that takes them to travel by a slower transport. “The idea is to encourage people to be mindful about their personal travelling.” MORE TO BE MINDFUL OF “I would always say that reducing emissions is what needs to happen, so always find ways to reduce emissions first. But we are in a world where we are all emitting emissions from all that we do, day to day, and while we’re doing that, we need to find ways of avoiding the damage done by that.” There are two types of offsets: one is to pay people not to pollute and the other is to actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For the first offset, Tom clarifies that “paying somebody not to pollute would be like, I pay you to put some solar panels on your roof and then your energy will be cleaner in the future, and that’s a good thing. Those projects are very often worth supporting but they don’t undo what you did, they don’t really remove your emissions from the outside. What they do is that they help decarbonise our energy supplies.” The second method is the more common nature-based projects, such as tree planting. “There’s no right answer here. Carbon offsetting is inherently imperfect. I would think about how you’d want to support people to reduce their emissions; or try to take responsibility and suck your own emissions back out of the atmosphere.” OUR DIGITAL CARBON FOOTPRINT We know the main causes of climate change, but the lesser known truth is that our internet usage contributes to it more than we think. When we are faced with devastating facts, like learning that the internet uses more electricity than France or the UK, it makes sense to be inspired to draw attention to this extreme situation. “The first thing is just be aware of the fact that the internet does consume a huge amount of electricity in places we don’t necessarily see.” explained Tom. “Ask the web hosting company whether they have a commitment to using green energy in their data centres and if they don’t, then see if you can move to somebody who does. That’s not too difficult to do. “The other thing is to be really conscious of the size of the files you’re putting on there. So if you’re a web developer you can get really geeky about this and really into the detail, but if you’re just a content creator and you don’t want to get into the code, you can still think, ‘How big are these images am I putting up on my website and can I make them smaller and maybe make it in a more compressed format before I put them up?’” He goes on to say that even adding videos to your website uses huge amounts of data and is also quite processing intensive. When someone enters a page and the video starts playing, it’s already bad for the environment. “Just be mindful of that and definitely the one no-no for me is auto-play.” Though it seems restrictive, Tom emphasises that it doesn’t have to be. It’s all about the choices we make. And one way to really know how we’re fairing is testing the digital carbon footprint of our websites. Wholegrain Digital is the creator of websitecarbon.com, which is a carbon calculator that tests websites for their sustainability. “It did start off as a passion project, and it came about before we were certified as a B-Corps,” he said. “We thought, this is really, really important: the fact that there’s nobody doing this, nobody is quantifying an impact of their digital projects and we really should be. Because even if it’s insignificant, we should know that it’s insignificant, we shouldn’t be making that assumption. “So it was a passion project that we spent a huge amount of time digging through data and how we can translate it to a tool that we can use on an individual website or an individual webpage.” According to them, the average web page tested produced 1.76g of CO2 per page view. So imagine if a site gets 10, 000 monthly page views? That’s 211kg of CO2 per year. HIS HOPES But Tom remains optimistic for the future of digital sustainability. It’s a slow start but data centres are moving in the direction of renewable energy. He’s hopeful that “people - the digital industry as a whole - will realise that actually making things energy efficient is a win-win for everybody; it’s not like an extra kind of hassle or extra work that you have to do just for the environment. “If you do, it’s gonna improve your user experience, accessibility, conversion rates, search engine optimisation.” And his final is for society as a whole, that we “will gradually become more mindful of our use of digital technology. I mean, I think the harsh reality is that as much as digital technology has brought huge benefits to society and will continue to do so, it’s also brought many problems alongside it. We’ve become addicted to it, which is not good for our mental health either.” It’s the same for social media. “They feel good in the moment and are designed to give us that dopamine hit. It’s like a drug, you feel good immediately when you get that hit but actually like any drug it’s not really good for us in the long term; so there’s obviously the environmental impact, we’re just using the services so much. Also I think socially I don’t think it’s good for us as humans. “One of these dangers of technology is that they’re so addictive that even when we can go outside to talk to humans we become kind of stuck inside this world and looking at our phones when our friend is sitting right next to us.” he expressed. “These services gave us a way of feeling a sort of connection but actually when we had the opportunity to go and interact with real humans we should always opt for that.” Tom emphasises that the internet is “a really powerful tool where it adds value but then take a step back from it when we don't need it, and we go outside and listen to the birds, smell the roses.” Listen to the Conversation of Change podcast

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.” This Native American proverb underlines the philosophy at the very core of Earth Company’s existence. — EarthCompany In 2014, Tomo and Aska Hamakawa, who founded the social enterprise, were honoured with the “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This award selects 50 individuals from around the world every four years to recognise their tireless, compassionate efforts to make this world a better place. “We don’t see them or hear about them in the daily news, but they exemplify a humanism and heroism to which we must each aspire.” said Dick Grace, founder of Grace Family Vineyards and board chair of Wisdom in Action, the organisation that hosted the celebration. EarthCompany is based in both Japan and Indonesia. Their mission to realise social change is defined by three pillars. They want to support social entrepreneurs, who are known as ‘Impact Heroes’, shaping the future of developing countries; nurture the next generation of change makers; and strengthen the social purpose of organisations through professional services. IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABLE EDUCATION One of their long-running programs, Diversity Voyage, is a great example of their sustainable education work. Led by Earth Company's partner organization, GIFT, the program offers experiential learning and cross-cultural experiences for students at Toyo University in Japan and university students and youth in Indonesia, Malaysia and lots more, with over 1,500 participants to date. Earth Company and GIFT recently delivered the 7th batch of the Bali program for 35 university students in Indonesia and Japan. This time participants focused on the themes of sustainable tourism and circular economy by using Mana Earthly Paradise as a case study. “So we felt like these programmes had value and wanted to be consistent in practicing what we preach, and so we wanted to start our own hotel to really embody the values and vision that we believe in.” Their educational programmes were what inspired Tomo and Aska to build Mana Earthly Paradise, an eco-resort which was founded to be the example that best showed sustainable tourism. UNIQUE MOTIVATION Mana is the response to the negative side effects on the environment that the tourism trade has contributed to. “This hotel is trying to be as conscious and sustainable as possible in every way. At Mana, we’re harvesting rainwater and filtering that water, so that our water self-sufficiency is as high as possible and not contributing to the issues of water shortage in Bali.” Mana’s guest accommodation villas are made from earthbag walls and bamboo roofing, with electricity provided by solar energy. They also have a ‘farm to table’ concept in their restaurant, using vegetables grown in the eco hotel’s permaculture garden. Tomo continued on by saying how they were pushing the students to “think about new ideas, new possibilities within their own projects, within their own research.” “By providing a lot of ideas on how a property or business can be circular or sustainable we were encouraging students to continue up with their own.” he explained. “So we’ve been running this Impact Bali programmes for the last few years, some of them have been online especially in the last few months. And to date, we’ve run 45 programmes to which over 650 people have participated and they represent over 23 countries. And we certainly hope to increase those figures in the coming years.” IMPORTANCE OF HUMILITY “Bali is known as a resort destination, people want to come for vacation but there’s actually a hidden side to all this.” Tomo said. “It’s sort of becoming a hub of social innovation and so we wanted students and young professionals to see that side of Bali and to be inspired by what they can do.” That being said, Tomo believes that one of the most important concepts in sustainability or environmental education is humility. “At the end of the day, we as a species as a society can only survive and thrive when there is a natural environment that supports us. “Much of education for the last several decades has been about, ‘How can we, through technological innovation, control or manage our natural resources?’ and I think we’re at a turning point. “We really need to be more humble and modest about our reliance and dependence on this; and in order to live that, we need to change our attitude and our mindsets.” Listen to the Conversation of Change podcast

“We say that you must smell poverty before you know what it is.” said Melvyn Mak, Chairman at TBN Asia (Transformational Business Network Asia Ltd) and Co-Founder of Actxplorer. “This whole issue of fighting poverty is so big and then with COVID, it actually pushed it back 20 to 30 years, especially in Southeast Asia. This ecosystem comes in to build the community because we all need support.” TBN Asia’s vision is to fight poverty through enterprise. They have four pillars in their ecosystem, which include their Mentors & Advisors Network, Investors Network, Conferences and Forums, and Social Enterprise Training Hub (SETH). “SETH is much more than a training project - it is a heart project that allows us to come alongside the social entrepreneur to make him or her succeed in their pursuit for social impact changes.” he remarked. They have an action-oriented curriculum. Who wouldn’t like to know every cohort is curated according to the industry interest of participating investors? Their programme is structured so it’s 25% theory but 75% application! There’s also early involvement with prospective investors. So far, TBN Asia has supported 23 social enterprises and raised $30K in sponsorships. “We want to build more than just a business school.” He emphasised that their differentiators include their strong mentoring and coaching programme, and peer support in terms of relationship managers. “As a banker last time, a relationship manager means if you are a valued client, there will be someone coming in to tell you what can be given to you, what the banks have in terms of resources and so on. Similarly, we need someone to help this social enterprise navigate through. “It’s the whole gamut of TBN.” Their Expertise Network works as a support community for social enterprises. It’s made up of industry mentors, specialist advisors and coaches. Experience entrepreneurs become business mentors and play a role in building and advising other social enterprises on their business model and strategy. People can choose to be coaches too, where they can help social entrepreneurs with their personal development and vision planning. “Many social enterprises are stuck. Investors are not that interested in them because maybe the business model is not up to speed, so that needs to be trained. We bring along the expertise.” he said. “And then we develop an Investors Network because, at the end of the day, it must be the investors who say, ‘okay, I’m going to put in some money.’” They work tirelessly at building their community development pillar, which now has a new name ‘Outreach and Partnerships’. He describes that they bring in the whole spectrum of the ecosystem, which includes banks, impact funds, philanthropies, social enterprises as well as individuals. Their vast network is constantly expanding; and being able to find the right experts means they have to be involved in running conferences and regular events. They partner with organisations and individuals to share ideas, practices and highlight their work in fighting poverty, all to create a greater impact ecosystem. One of their upcoming events is ELC 2021, which is a biennial thought leadership experience in Asia. From September 6 to 11, there will be 120 speakers, 24 masterclasses, 6 roundtable sessions, 30 learning journeys, 100 coaches and over 60 mobile courses. On September 7, TBN Asia will be hosting the Social Impact track at the 10th edition of ELC. It’s a chance to meet changemakers and founders in the social impact scene as well as 80 social enterprise exhibitors! He explained that one of their sessions is called the Impact Café. Conference attendees can “can share and everybody can listen to it. Then for those listening to the 80 social enterprises might think, ‘wow, maybe I’d like to be involved with that’. That’s the whole idea.” ‘Leaders are a special breed who rise to the occasion to thrive in the between. It is the spaces in “between” where we learn to reframe, recover and reinvent to thrive in this life that we live.’ — ELC 2021 Listen to the Conversation of Change podcast

PODCAST SUMMARY A small but mighty team of six, Solve n+1 was started three years ago by Kenneth Heng, and believes in serving the vulnerable, whether abroad or locally. While Solve n+1 first started out by serving overseas in Southeast and Central Asia, Covid-19 travel restrictions have spurred the startup to shift their focus to vulnerable communities here in Singapore. OPEN HOME NETWORK One of the projects of Solve n+1 is the Open Home Network. The project was started during last year’s Circuit Breaker in response to the increasing number of individuals who were displaced from their homes. Partners of this project include Homeless Hearts of Singapore, and the Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (PEERS) Network by the Ministry of Social and Family Development. This project aims to create a network of host families and befrienders to provide safe spaces and temporary refuge for their beneficiaries. Solve n+1 created an onboarding toolkit as a system to ensure host families were well-equipped to support these beneficiaries, which also allowed those involved to get to know each other before committing to hosting. Over a hundred families signed up, and thus far there have been six successful matches. Many have also come on board as befrienders. Meanwhile, Open Home Network 2.0 explores the possibility of working with families in one to two-room flats, as the team of Solve n+1 noticed that these families tend to be more familiar with what the beneficiaries might experience, and are more willing to open up their homes. “Just offering yourself to be available doesn’t take much, but you can, and when people come on board to form the network of care I think it really helps,” said Lewin. ALLIANCE FOR ACTION PROJECT FOR LOWER-WAGE WORKERS This is another project by Solve n+1. “What it does is to bring together individuals from both the private, public and people sector to address a couple of focus areas.” Lewin explained. The focus area that Lewin was involved in was that of rest areas, as lower-wage workers may not have designated spaces to rest during their breaks. A report by LabourBeat in 2019 found that many of these workers tend to take their breaks in makeshift areas. The project focused on three things: First, they sought to learn and understand best practices with regard to existing areas for lower-wage workers, and come to an understanding of what constitutes a good rest area. “Microwaves. We tend to take microwaves as a given but for lower-wage workers, this is so, so essential.” Lewin said as he gave an example of what the team learnt. As the team spoke to the lower-wage workers, they realised that some workers worked in places such as malls or in the Central Business District area, where the food may be less affordable. Many workers pack food from home in order to save money, however, without a microwave, they end up eating their food cold. Next, the team worked with mall developers and owners to implement improvements. “It was very fulfilling just to see how the lessons that we had learnt were translated to work on the ground, and to see it being used by the lower-wage workers.” Solve n+1 made the effort to engage the lower-wage workers and listen to their opinions, and later translated these to more suggestions for the developer. Finally, the team then went on to develop a guidebook for anybody interested to provide rest areas for their workers, detailing the processes that need to be undertaken, as well as the stakeholders and equipment to be considered. This guidebook enables more people to come on board and make rest areas accessible for lower-wage workers. SOLVE N+1’S SERVICES Solve n+1 is a Community-based Management Consultancy. They not only help companies strategise, but also go on the ground to run pilots to come up with a proof of concept and scale it up afterwards. Organisations can come to them with any problems, and they co-create solutions before implementing them together. COLLABORATION WITH INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANISATIONS Individuals interested in starting a project can come to solve n+1, who will help to scope its parameters. It can be especially daunting for individuals who are embarking on a project, and that is where Solve n+1 comes in to provide a bouncing board, a safe space to bounce off ideas in order to better the initiative. Essentially, Solve N+1 strives to provide individuals with a safe space to innovate in a low-risk environment. Solve n+1 also specialises in ideation and conducting pilot-runs of projects with non-profits. Lewin shared about Feed 52, a project that they embarked on with a non-profit organisation. Feed 52 is a project that aims to promote social integration through tech-assisted skills acquisition for people with autism. The project equips people with autism with the ability to cook food using a thermomix. They were equipped with the skills to make food such as ice-cream, mushroom soup and even beehoon. The feedback received from this pilot was overwhelming! The participants were more engaged in lessons and job coaches could also sense a difference in the mood of the class. Feed 52 is currently in the next phase of piloting. Lastly, Solve n+1 works closely with businesses that want to improve their CSR strategy. Solve n+1 worked with Vigil Technologies, a fin-tech startup specialising in machine learning for quantitative models for key financial markets. Solve N+1 worked with them to understand their business model and supported them by structuring their services and processes. Solve N+1 also consulted to design their business development strategy. Solve n+1 offers a suite of services to different groups of people. Drop Solve n+1 an email or contact them through their website to engage them! BENEATH THE RUG While talking about the background of Beneath The Rug, Lewin noted that those in the social impact sector were very involved, while those who are not have no clue about it. The care sector is also unfortunately overburdened, which results in burnout within it. “Imagine 15,000 (social service practitioners) supporting a population of about 4 million residents. It’s a small number that supports a huge and big population,” said Lewin. Beneath The Rug was started to get more people on board to support the community. Lewin also mentioned how as a social worker or social service practitioner, it is hard to share about the work that they do beyond our work setting due to strict confidentiality rules. This creates a lack of information, which results in another issue: Not enough being said and heard about the social impact sector. Lewin was completely unsure how Beneath The Rug would have taken shape. “Instead of telling our interviewees what to write about, we gave them free rein. We said ‘Tell us what you feel the public ought to and should know.’” “So long as you are willing to provide a platform to help and listen, you can do it and it doesn't in a sense, take “professional certification. There is a space for people without domain expertise, just to listen, which is important.” So why should you get a copy of this book? According to Lewin, it is a book that provides us with different perspectives of people in the social impact sector. “What it aims to do is for us to start conversation. We may not necessarily agree with all that’s said and all that’s expressed, but it’s okay. It’s a safe space for us to learn about what they go through, but it’s also a safe space for us to then check on our friends in the sector because this would broaden our perspectives.” In his conclusion, Lewin hoped that reading these stories will inspire more people to join the sector and become changemakers in the communities. He also wishes that Beneath The Rug will spark more meaningful volunteerism, and encourage more corporates to rethink and reimagine what corporate social responsibility looks like. “More so, we hope that Beneath The Rug will inspire and birth more social enterprises to emerge, and through that, help to support our community in Singapore.” FINAL WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT Lewin believes that we all have to do it together – societal issues cannot be solved on our own. Rather, it takes a whole-of-society approach where everyone plays to their own strengths. By tapping on each other’s areas of expertise, we would be able to create and amplify change. Whether you are a company, non-profit, or individual who believes in making change, do email hello@solvenplus.one to see how you can partner with Solve n+1 to do good, better. Listen to episode here:

In this episode, we talk to Paulo Cruz Filho, the founder of We Flow. Listen and be inspired on how companies can create impact.