The Festival For Good event at Singapore Management University on 19 August was a tour of the wonderful world of the social enterprises in Singapore, with products ranging from health and wellness, to fashion and lifestyle—all with the aim of creating a positive impact on our world.
Besides a pop-up market, the Festival For Good hosted a number of experience capsules in which visitors could take part in workshops such as nail art DIY and pottery.
The festival was organised by raiSE.
We kaypoh-ed our way into two capsules and spoke with the social entrepreneurs working to give back to society in their own unique way.
Mobearlize
Meet the group of University students who call themselves Mobearlize, whose final year work has turned into a passion project called EMMA, a Retrofit Motorized Wheelchair Unit that aims to ease mobility for elderly persons and people with disabilities.
The team hopes to manage the social enterprise full-time after they graduate later this year.
“I do a lot of volunteering and I feel that this is my way of giving back to society in a way I know best – through engineering,” said Chua Rui De, 25, one of the co-founders of Mobearlize. “It’s very fulfilling to know that there are people who are very excited to see this product come to the market… It is a morale booster for us as to how we can give back to the society by doing good.”
“We are now in our second phase of prototyping and we hope to launch this by end of this year. There will be some pilot trial with commercial properties also happening at the end of this year, so we hope Mobearlize becomes commercially available sometime early next year.”
Euforia Singapore
Shopping has never been easier, thanks to ecommerce. And so is donating online to meaningful causes, because crowdfunding. Now, Melvin Ho wants to let you both at the same time, with his e-commerce site ‘Euforia’.
Euforia is a website where you can buy local designs and a cut goes to support local charities.
“Euforia came out of a desire to help to do what we can to help the society,” said Ho, who was inspired to give back during this studies in Australia. After helping his friend who was then in Stirring Hearts, a company that creates greeting cards and gifts for a good cause, Ho wanted to push the boundaries further and extend a helping hand to other social enterprises and non-profit organisations. Euforia Singapore currently supports the Animal Lovers League and the Down Syndrome Association of Singapore.
“It just fuelled by the desire to just go in and help and do what we can to help society in general,” shared Ho. “The greatest satisfaction is not just the networks but for the beneficiaries as well. We are trying to go out there and engage with consumers and other stakeholders in giving back, and they have been very positive with our business model. It is always very gratifying when we are able to link them up with our beneficiaries.”
