Actually the number is 12.5 billion. But then we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Felix Finkbeiner was working on a school assignment about climate change when he was nine. His research led him to Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai and her campaign to plant 30 million trees in Africa. That inspired him to plant his own tree in his school in Bavaria.

It’s been five years since that first tree was planted, and now his campaign has gone global. Since then he has spoken in front of the United Nations (his biggest challenge so far according to him), and with his team has conducted 112 "academies" (workshops run by Plant-for-the-Planet) in 16 countries. The entrepreneurial youngster even has his own new retail product, Change Chocolate, coming up this year.

He does what he does because, in his own words – “the year 2100 is within his lifetime”. The future which is abstract to many adults will be a reality for his generation (and ours!). And it’ll be too late by the time he’s an adult.

At the moment, he already has twelve and a half thousand children with him. His goal for 2020 is for a million people worldwide planting trees with him, and to even create the world's first global political party. “When people work together, they have power – and enough to make our own revolution if necessary."

His dad, who was there with us, shared (rather candidly, and in good humour) that he doesn’t think that he’s all that special (his words!). He just reckons it’s in Felix’s personality to be speaking about these things. But as Felix mused, all this could not be possible without his family – his father to travel around with him, and even allowing the first employee of Plant-for-the-Planet (Felix’s organization) to use their house as an office.

Despite having the facts about climate change at the tips of his fingers, and (from what we understand) a fairly substantial young female fan base, Felix is humble. Upon being asked why he thinks adults make the bad decisions he’s fighting against, he just shrugs his shoulders and says frankly “I don’t know”. 

But don’t take him too lightly. Just a few days ago Felix gave a presentation to a business conference. Usually the applause and the standing ovations come at the end. This time it came in front, and not just any business conference – two thousand CEOs stood in applause as he walked into the room to give his speech.

During the evening, he also said that there are always people who don’t take you seriously. But then, there are always people who don’t take the issues seriously too. Neither should stop you from doing what you do.

So thank you, Felix (and dad), for an inspiring evening – a night with a fourteen year-old who has planted so many trees, and who we reckon will inspire many more over his lifetime.

School was always about Math, Science, and so on - and we always wondered, while watching kids scurrying around in the canteens during break, if any of these young minds ever wondered what goes on beyond their classroom, beyond their own little worlds.

That’s where you could do something.

Organised by Ashoka Changemakers, “Activating Empathy! Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters” is a global collaborative competition that aims to do just that, and it is now open for entries.      

The competition seeks the best ideas, programs, and learning models from around the world that equip students with the skill of empathy by: 

• Encouraging social and emotional development       
• Unlocking new ways of viewing problems, opening the door to a new world of potential solutions   
• Addressing bullying or aggression in ways that advance understanding of others' perspectives 
• Promoting community diversity and a respect for differences    
• Championing children as real-­‐world problem solvers rather than simply bystanders    

Not that this should matter, but there's 70K USD in prize money, and some mystery special prizes, so apply online to share your ideas, gather support for your project, or just to connect with others.

Final final registration closes on March 30, so look up the site to sign up or find out more.

DISCLOSURE: Syinc is an official Network Partner of Ashoka Changemakers. No, they did not pay us to share this. We just think you’d think it awesome anyways.

That’s right. WTO.

The World Toilet Organisation.

Jack told us about his childhood, about talking too much in class and getting caned on stage. He thanks his education experience for not making him too comfortable – having no other opportunity after leaving school, he went into business.

So, “good things come from bad things too”. He went on to start 16 companies over his adult life. One of them was the Restroom Association of Singapore and the WTO, organisations doing us all very very big and dirty services by campaigning for cleaner public toilets - and soon placed him on the international social entrepreneurship map.

By self-admission, he wants “everything” in life. In a poignant moment, he mused: there's no need to live life as a scoreboard (contrary to what our system teaches all good Singaporeans). He also saw no point in “buying chocolate coloured Louis Vuitton bags to one-up each other”? He’d rather do something that he likes with other … chocolate coloured stuff.

That white shirt he’s wearing in the photos? He bought it because it reminded him of toilet tiles.

Jack Sim "the shirt"

And why would he not? He shared a golden insight relevant to so many people in Corporate Singapore: why trade dollars for minutes – especially after you’re already satisfied. Why be a prostitute selling your body for money to your boss or company?

Jack talks about enjoying every moment in his life – including on the toilet. And whether his business, his wife (he thanks her for “forgiving him for what he is”, to his upcoming Toilet film and toilet museum under the WTO, he clearly likes what he is doing. And he advises us to do the same.

After all, in his words, “if you can't shit, life has no meaning.”

... of our users, that is.

We continued on our journey to find ways to improve the quality of life of migrant workers in Singapore. A quick recap from previous episodes: we did interviews. And created a "User Journey Map".

How we did it: Extracting insights from the interviews. Putting both observations and the insights into a chart that visually shows the user's experience chronologically (and then refining it some more). 

This served as a great foundation of inspiration (the first, and often the most important, phase of design thinking), and preps us for the next stage - ideation. Typically in conventional innovation, this is the point where you do brainstorming/solutioning (if not much earlier). But, we figured - why design for them, when you can design with them? 

And that’s how we ended up sitting in front of our whiteboard with a group of Foreign Domestic Workers, employers of FDWs, people familiar with the Ministry of Manpower and some more people from HOME (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics). All armed with yellow, orange, blue and pink post-its of course. And a carpet. We love the carpet.

As you can see below, we ended up with … something that looks like the upcoming MRT Downtown Line.

What was amazingly useful about it: enabling us to identify points of tension from various perspectives to create opportunity areas for further exploration. 

What were some (other) things we learnt? 

The process of design thinking is meant to be iterative, not linear. Through our conversation, we found certain knowledge gaps and interesting areas of exploration not identified during our interviews, and we never hesitated to pause the ideation session and turn it into an insight-gathering one. 

Facilitation is useful, but good facilitation is invaluable. We didn't just listen to what people said, but also what they didn't say, and what their body language showed. This got us asking relevant questions to gain even deeper insights to certain points of tension. 

Also, designing with our users doesn't mean they know what design thinking is about. But users don't have to be design thinkers - the steps of DT are intuitive enough to understand without the jargon. Instead, we focused on using good facilitation (which reinforces the above point) to bring the process through with clear communication and action. 

More to come. Watch this space.

Previous post here. 

drawing inputs from our different stakeholder perspectives

constructing our user journey map - collaboratively. 

voila.

PS. Our next Think&Drink features none other than Singapore's Toilet Man, Jack Sim! 

Davide Bonomi showing us a picture from the Shawshank Redemption

Syinc held our last think&drink for 2011 at The Pigeonhole - and it was a night of some introspection and lots of conversation.  

We opened with Davide Bonomi from Dufresne Research sharing his experiences organising the EV Li-ion Battery Forum and the Energy Storage Forum. Davide talked about the need for greater collaboration to spur innovation - hence, Dufresne specialises in creating networks and stimulating co-creation through their events. What was particularly interesting? Well, Dufresne's events are often highly technical - with each event having a certain niche that attracts select users. By doing this, Davide is able to move the industry discussion deeper on those specific niche areas. And did you know that Andy Dufresne from the Shawshank Redemption was the source of Davide’s inspiration for this company? Because of his fierce optimism in the bleakest of moments, because of his moral fibre, and of course, his eventual triumph. Perhaps a spirit that will resonate with many, many change makers.

Then, we tried something new to think&drink. We had 2 special guests make pitches on projects they were working on.

(This is an idea we're testing out: that people not only want to see those who've done impressive stuff, but also get a whiff of stuff that's still brewing and in the works.)  

Vincent Perrier-Trudov 

First off, we had Vincent Perrier-Trudov from Citizens for Social Business and he shared with us that social businesses are sustainable businesses dedicated to tackling poverty or an alleviation of an issue related to poverty. Vincent's goal is to promote the concept of a social business worldwide. And it seems the triple bottom line is fast becoming the new black and if you aren't on that train... well, it's never too late. Check them out if you want to learn more!

Right after that, we had Tan Hang Chong, an active environmentalist in Singapore, come up to spread the message regarding a petition for Bukit Brown to be conserved. He gave an impassioned speech about the history behind the site and preserving the local flora and fauna - even throwing out the wild idea for it to be sited as a tourist attraction. We're curious to find out what happens with the petition! 

And in typical think&drink style, lots of conversation continued after. And hey, don't fret if you missed this one; stay tuned in the new year coz we have lots lined up! Till then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

6 Dec 2011

On the consulting front, we're currently working on a project for migrant workers in Singapore. Our client is a nonprofit that works to advance the welfare of migrant workers here. Our challenge: to uncover a business opportunity for a product (or service) that improves the quality of life for migrant workers.

We haven't synthesised everything yet, as it's still early in the project, but here's a fun snippet we captured: creating the user journey map. Really good for putting us in the shoes of our user/beneficiary.

(you'll have to forgive the bad handwriting - too much technology, we don't write-write enough!)

We know this is a brief one - we'll be sharing more shortly!

PS. did you know the next think&drink is happening this Wed? ;)

The simple act of doing, learning, and baking learnings into a new product/service works wonders. Especially when you keep doing it, and people keep thinking it's getting better!

That's why we ran yet another DT 101 session last Friday, and it was for SMU's Lien Centre for Social Innovation as part of their Social Conversations series. It was our second collaboration with LCSI (the first was as part of something called iLeap, details here).

Things were a little different to most of our workshops: not only was this the largest group we facilitated (45!), but the majority of our audience were senior non-profit folks – who we assumed prefer comprehensively detailed theory presentations, be mildly cynical of an "innovation method", and distrust trainers who look young enough to be their kids. Boy did we bust that assumption!

The workshop turned out to be extremely interactive and "experiential"; people seemed to like that we kept "lecturing" to a minimum. But we knew that senior executives wouldn't be satisfied without at least some theory, so whilst we kept them pretty busy with talking and prototyping, we added a bunch of slides during our debrief. We felt that theory sinks in better (and deeper) if participants have the emotional experience of having gone through the exercise. 

In principle, that was right.

Reflecting: How might we improve?

• We forgot to account for the awkwardness of presenting slides to people who had just huddled around a table for debrief – most of whom were still standing!  (Read: Being more directive as to little moments in between, and during, segments so they can focus fully on the experience itself.)

• Rather than just uploading DT theory/process to participants, we're gonna work harder to tease it out of the participants through their own insights and observations. (Read: Show, not tell.) (And yes, we're gonna have to beef our facilitation skills big-time - an exciting challenge.

Enough talk. Pictures!

Nothing quite personifies "show, don't tell" like role-playing does

We did encourage participants to be visual in sharing their ideas ;)

In the thick of it: Sasa Vucinic, founder of MDLF and TED speaker, who came along

Prototype galoreShow & Tell: Usha Menon of Management Centre Asia (or =mc Asia) showing how her prototype works

(full set on FB here)

THE STATS: 40 young social entrepreneurs. 13 speakers+panelists. 8 workshop segments. 1 speed-dating lunch.

40 young aspiring social entrepreneurs came for our full-day workshop held at the Lexmark Headquarters @ Novena Square. On the menu: Root Cause Analysis, Strategy Planning, Business Model design, and other tools for business fundamentals. But all tools and no stories is boring-as, so we threw in not one, but two panels featuring awesome folks like Meng Weng Wong (serial entrepreneur, angel investor and breakout star of the day), Rob Kraybill from Impact Investment Exchange Asia, and other great peeps. The panels: "What makes a great entrepreneur?"; and "Moolah: Where can I get it?". 

Check out some snaps below, courtesy of none other than Meng Wong (also a guerilla photographer) unless otherwise stated. Also, more pics on our Facebook page (go like us!). 

Panelists Zhixun from SPRING (wearing striped tie) and Anna from MCYS

Allan Lim of Alpha Biofuels shares his insights on being a SEpreneur. He will wear any teeshirts you give him, so FREE MARKETING. Also a RYSEC 2011 mentor (and wears a few other hats too ;o)Robert Kraybill, MD of IIX and RYSEC 2011 mentor. So that means if you apply to RYSEC, you'll be connected to awesome mentors like him.Behind the scenes: The team hard at work making RYSEC 2011 awesome. (left-to-right Zelig Lee, Haresh Tilani, and Francis Chua of Lexmark)

AFTER SUNDOWN: think&drink5

After lots of brainstorming (and brainstuffing) over the day, it was time to let our hair down. We headed down to Group Therapy coffee @ Duxton Road for think&drink5 which we aptly themed around SE as well - Social Entrepreneurship: Realities of transitioning from theory to practice.

Our eclectic panel: Tong Yee (School of Thought), Olivia Choong (Green Drinks Singapore), Meng Wong (silicon valley rockstar + awesome person). 

"It's good to share with your peers your ideas prior to setting up your enterprise. Competing ideas is good.." (RYSEC + think&drink5 panelist Meng Wong). Photo by Shaun KohLEFT: "Entrepreneurship in Singapore is still very top-down. The bottom-up mechanisms need more work here." (think&drink5 panelist Tong Yee, Co-Founder of School of Thought) RIGHT: "I founded Green Drinks because I felt very strongly for the environment," (think&drink5 panelist Olivia Choong, Founder of Green Drinks Singapore)Spirited conversation: This is what Think & Drink is all about.And these great conversations and ideas don't stop here. If you missed the workshop, and Think & Drink (we forgive you), you can still get in on the action: 

Registration for RYSEC 2011 is OPEN till 27 Aug 2011 - find out more at http://bit.ly/oaz3nn  

We've got a great double bill coming right up on Aug 13: a workshop and think&drink5 for mingling afterwards.

For those not yet in the know, RYSEC is the Rotary Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, a social business plan competition. It's a collaboration with Rotary in Singapore which we supported them in the creation of in 2009, continue to be involved in its evolution, and huzzah it's now the 3rd year running.

We had a first workshop on Aug 6 covering the basics of SE for those curious about the idea of social enterprises. This Sat Aug 13 will be our second workshop (there are only 2!) for those who are preparing to launch their ventures (or who may have just done so), covering slightly more technical topics like strategy mapping, business model generation, etc. 

Here's a sneak peak of the good stuff we've lined up for you:

What Makes A Good Entrepreneur? Why do some fail, and others succeed?           MOOLAH: Where can I get it?                                                                      SEpreneur Clinic - Sharpen Your Idea                                                            

(and a heckuva lot more, but that'll be giving it away)

 Our rockstar presenters and panellists include the likes of:

• Meng Wong, serial entrepreneur
• Tong Yee, co-founder of School of Thought (and the Thought Collective)
• Gwendolyn Tan, co-founder of SGEntrepreneurs and Partner at Thymos Capital
• Stefan Jacob & Pin Kwok, co-creators of BoP Hub
• Bernard Leong, co-founder of Chalkboard
• Allan Lim, founder of Alpha Biofuels
• Harveen Narulla, co-founder of GreenPost

(and more, of course.)

think&drink5 (special surprise version!)

And because the workshop will lead in straight to think&drink5, we HAVE to make a special mention because - this one will have a similar theme! Social Entrepreneurship: The Hype, The Highs, and What You Don't See.

Featuring Olivia Choong, Meng Wong, Tong Yee. Moderated by lovely new entrant to Singapore's shores, Lara Dudley.

The low-down:

Group Therapy @ 49 Duxton Rd (it's on Level 2)

7pm - 8:30pm (or.. whenever, really)

Featuring - The Above

SEE YOU THERE.

(And because we like you, here're some snippets from Aug 6, right below.)

such a range of emotion in one image!

Heard of the Rotary Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (RYSEC) 2011 yet? Started in 2009, it’s Singapore's only dedicated Social Business Plan Competition. It provides a unique combination of catalysing social entrepreneurship and experienced mentorship support to participants, which include previous winners GIVE.sg, Milaap, among others.

Since helping create RYSEC back then, the competition is back again. This time, Syinc is designing 2 capacity building workshops for potential RYSEC participants, to equip them with fundamental skills to getting things started! (well that's the idea anyway ;)) 

Picture this: Spending the day in a live art gallery, learning about Social Enterprise and how to get started with building one. Nice? Well that’s what 20 young people got to do at our first workshop at the White Canvas Gallery in Tiong Bahru – targeting folks relatively new to the concept of Social Enterprise.

Details

Saturday, 6th August

White Canvas Gallery @ Tiong Bahru

11:30am - 6pm

We structured the day along the (presumably) logical series of questions that budding social entrepreneurs might ask themselves at the start of their journey with the following sessions (and guest speakers!):

Opening with James Norris' "What is a Social Enterprise",
Allan Lim's "How to get started with the right problem/cause",
Syinc's own "Creating user-centred solutions to problems (ie. with design thinking)",
Bernard Leong's "Essential pieces of writing a great business plan",
and ending off with Harveen Narulla's "Building a great team".

We also had a special guest appearance from a past participant - Han Ying from Project Node. She shared her journey in starting her team's initiative, which had all sorts of colourful tribulations any early-stage SEpreneur might face. It was great to see how far her team had come since participating in RYSEC 2010.

We’ll be posting up videos and notes from the sessions over at the RYSEC page, so if you haven’t already, head over there and like it now! You’ll benefit by receiving notifications about the competition deadlines, and whenever we post up workshop materials. Fair deal eh?

Of course, what event wouldn't be complete without Murphy’s Law visiting. First, imagine a rainy day. Not good right? Now imagine it raining INSIDE THE GALLERY. Yes that’s right folks, the air-conditioner decided start leaking gushing whilst setting up for the workshop. T’was thanks to the fast thinking of Haresh and Vikram who negotiated a settlement with the aircon – it would stop pouring as long as it was switched off.

Thanks to all our awesome speakers, team mates, the White Canvas Folks (Colin, Maria, Gerald, and Hanna), and most importantly, our participants!

That’s it from us for now. Stay tuned for a following post about RYSEC workshop 2 (and mystery surprise)!