Youth Action Challenge (YAC) Season 2 - The Journey
The Youth Action Challenge (YAC) is a key thrust of the SG Youth Action Plan (SG YAP), organised in partnership with Citi Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through their Youth Co:Lab initiative. It empowers youth to champion ground-up initiatives in partnership with the government, businesses, and community organisations, to achieve their vision for Singapore. The YAC provides an opportunity for youth to turn their ideas into reality through curated workshops and guidance from experienced industry professionals.
As a part of the Youth Action Challenge, the Youth Co:Lab brings knowledge and expertise on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country, as well as access to an extensive network of industry experts and social entrepreneurs across Asia Pacific.
A Recap on Youth Action Challenge Season 2
The Youth Action Challenge (YAC) Season 2 ran from October 2020 until January 2021. This season too, we heard the voices of youth and chose the four themes of Mental Well-being, Support for Vulnerable Communities, Jobs & Future of Work, and Environment & Sustainability.
193 youth across 50 teams went through a 4-month journey, where they got to work on their solutions through curated workshops and guidance from experienced industry professionals. Virtual Design thinking sessions, consult clinics, storytelling and pitching workshops, and access to maker spaces were all offered to the participants. The youth also had access to a host of online learning modules including, Strategy for Communications, Financial Literacy, Impact Management, and Access to Capital.
YAC season 2 participants included youth in Singapore aged 15 to 35 years old with a good mix of students and working professionals. The 56 projects were a mix of nascent new ideas, community initiatives, non-profit organisations set for less than 2 years as well as young social enterprises.
YAC Season 2 Springboard Programme
Context Settings, Masterclasses, and Workshops
3 & 10 October 2020: Our participants kicked off their journey in YAC season 2 with insightful virtual workshops conducted by experts that helped them deep-dive into the problems they were looking to solve. Our speakers came from all walks — Government, Academia, the Social Sector, and the Private Sector. 500 Startups were brought on board to anchor the sessions and lead the design thinking workshops.
17 October 2020: The teams took part in a Needs Analysis and Project Scoping workshop, which offered different useful tools and frameworks to help them ideate and evaluate potential ideas, including introducing the design thinking process. During the workshop, participants got to play an active role in exploratory discussions on the current landscape in Singapore and the policy context. They identified solutions to address the gaps in each of the respective themes.
Consult Clinics
Held virtually, the consult clinics gave the teams access to industry experts for 1 to 1 consultations. The experts drew on their vast experience, heard the teams, and shared relevant expertise to help the youth to bring their ideas to reality. The main areas discussed were Marketing, Business Development, Tech (e.g., app development/coding/AI), User Interface/User Experience, Community development, and Forging Partnerships and working with partners.
The Consult Clinics brought together 50+ experts from various ministries and industry experts from all kinds of backgrounds and areas of expertise, including Erik Liu, Digital Product Manager at Citi FinTech, Wonbae Lee, Principal at CVC Capital Partners, Dr. Atiff Gill, Principal at CVC Capital Partners, Ashish Rajpal, CEO and founder of XSEED Education, Christy Davis, Executive Director of SMU Lien Centre, and David Chua, CEO of the National Youth Council. Minister of State, Alvin Tan, also joined the event for a Fireside Chat with the youth and consultants.
Mid-Point Open Mic and Final Open Mic
On Dec 12th, 2020, the teams presented the progress of their ideas at the Midpoint Open Mic session, where they pitched their ideas in small groups, including observers who were mostly industry experts. The observers too participated actively by sharing their thoughts and key pieces of advice to improve the ideas and presentations. The teams also got to exchange feedback with their peers.
To close with a flourish, the Final Open Mic session happened offline on Jan 30th, 2021 taking place parallelly across four different venues. During the day all 50 teams pitched their incredible solutions to tackle some of the issues we are most concerned about in Singapore. The YAC season 2 was not a competition and all teams were awarded resources to continue their journey and build their idea. These resources included grants of up to $50,000, access to different networks, and extended 1-year support to take their ideas to reality.
The teams who have chosen to continue their journey as young social entrepreneurs will join the Social Enterprise (SE) track, coordinated by the Youth Co:Lab team. These teams would get access to the following (according to the maturity stage and needs of each team):
- Long-term support (up to 1 year) from Youth Co:Lab team to build and scale their business idea;
- Access and support to prototyping facilities to improve your MVP/Value proposition or product;
- Continued mentoring from experts/fellow founders to validate your solution, and;
- Opportunity to qualify to become a Youth Co:Lab (YCL) Champion.
The Youth Co:Lab Champions
Two of the SE track teams were selected as YCL Champions getting further opportunities, including access to additional funding ($20,000 USD) and 1-year mentorship support from CVC Capital Partners in Singapore. The senior leadership at CVC Capital Partners will advise the teams on how to grow, scale, and/or pivot their business. The YCL Champions will represent Singapore in the Regional Summit with hundreds of other young entrepreneurs from the APAC region.
Our outstanding teams selected as YCL Champions from YAC season 2 are:
Skilio
Team Skilio has developed a web application that empowers students to capture and track soft skills development through the various activities they participate in. Students self-assess and also seek feedback from others as they go through various activities (OCIP, school CCAs, etc.). Their reviews and feedback run through an artificial intelligence algorithm that detects soft skills competencies from qualitative texts. Every student gets a personalised soft skills to report showcasing their strengths and blind spots. The team envisions that by using their application, youth can better understand, develop and communicate their soft skills which are becoming increasingly necessary in the current and future workplace.
Calm Collective Asia
By creating a platform to host open and honest conversations, Calm Collective Asia aims to break the stigma around mental health to empower individuals to take care of their mental well-being and get the help they need before it’s too late. Having already organised 29 live virtual talks with a viewership of over 26,000 since May 2020, they joined the YAC Season 2 so they could scale and build their organisation further in Singapore, and eventually, across Asia. On the community front, the resources provided by YAC season 2 and CVC Capital Partners will help them to organize events, revamp their website to improve the community experience, and focus on corporate engagement as a source of financial sustainability in the long run.
Congratulations to all our participants, and thank you to all our partners who made this possible! We are looking forward to seeing the ideas of our youth build and grow.
About Youth:Co Lab
Co-created in 2017 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Citi Foundation, Youth Co:Lab aims to establish a common agenda for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to empower and invest in youth so that they can accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through leadership, social innovation and entrepreneurship. It has since been implemented in 25 countries and territories across Asia Pacific, catalysts and scaled over 600 youth-led start-ups, and has engaged more than 75,000 participants to promote young people’s agency in shaping tomorrow’s world and achieving the SDGs.
