YOUNG PEOPLE WITH A MISSION

Rising to the challenge of implementing their innovative business proposals, 100 Singaporean student-led ventures have been specially selected to participate in this year’s Citibank-YMCA’s Youth for Causes Social Entrepreneurship Programme. Student teams vied for the award money to explore their initiatives towards bolstering support for charitable and social services, especially for the underprivileged, public health and interactive sports segments. Submissions this year came from 182 teams, cutting across all disciplines and schools nationwide.

Teams of students have already started organizing their ideas in the early quarter of this year after attending a Business Proposal Writing training session led by YMCA of Singapore. To Ms Anne Ng Soon Yi, she wasted no time in forming a team with three other classmates, all fresh graduates Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s media communications faculty, as they drafted their first storyboard-proposal. Capitalizing on her team’s creative flair for media productions, Anne’s team (KCAN) aims to produce a half-hour production to create greater educational awareness among youths on the issues of sex and its potential problems.

“My team strongly believes that more can be done to discourage Singaporean youths from engaging in unprotected sex.” Anne shared. “On a personal level, I’ve seen the suffering and trauma my friend underwent as she struggled to accept that her partner she had been dating for two years had passed STD to another girl. I believe that nobody should be emotionally punished for someone else’s mistake, and more can be done to bring this message clearly to Singaporean youths who tend to adopt extremely liberal views in their sexual lives. Through the platform of Citibank-Youth for Causes 2006 and working alongside City Harvest Community Services Association, we hope to be successful in educating and enriching young lives with the movie.”

The joint collaboration between Citigroup and YMCA, in its fourth year running, has been made possible through the Citigroup Foundation’s venture capital investment of up to $160,000 in seed funding. The disbursement event held on 20th May 2006 was graced by Mr Matthias Yao, Mayor of South East District, thus marking the official endorsement by both organizations to support young budding entrepreneurs bids to materialize their ventures. The project implementation period runs for a total of 16 weeks, from 22 May to 2 September 2006, where teams will work closely with the VWO of their choice.