Youth challenge winners aim to help young people with career planning
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Members of Advisory (from left) Ng Wan Jee, 23, Teow Junhao, 21, Brendan Loon, 23, Mock Yi Jun, 23, and Nur Hazeem Abdul Nasser, 22, in a photo taken before the Covid-19 outbreak. As the top team in the Youth Action Challenge Summit, the non-profit organisation will receive $50,000 in funding and $2,000 CapitaLand vouchers, among others.
PHOTO: NATIONAL YOUTH COUNCIL
To help young Singaporeans make informed career and future education choices regardless of background, youth-led non-profit organisation Advisory has devised ways to provide them with resources.
Advisory hopes to create a level playing field and support youth in pursuing their passion, said co-founder and president Mock Yi Jun, 23, who is currently serving his national service.
The organisation has come up with an online resources repository and a mentorship programme - as well as other events - to help youth, mainly aged between 16 and 28, find out more about the careers and pathways that are of interest to them.
Advisory was the winner among 12 finalists out of 57 teams which took part in the inaugural Youth Action Challenge Summit, held online from July 13 to 19 and organised by the National Youth Council (NYC), Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth as well as the People's Association Youth Movement.
Members of each team had three minutes to pitch their ideas to four judges before being judged on project feasibility, impact and validation of problem and idea.
The challenge, launched in September last year, encouraged youth to develop innovative concepts to address societal challenges.
As the top team, Advisory will receive $50,000 in funding and $2,000 CapitaLand vouchers, among others.
NYC chief executive David Chua said: "The recognition goes to not just the winners but also to all the other participating youth teams for taking the initiative to meet societal needs, and persisting in turning their ideas into action despite Covid-19 and circuit breaker conditions. That is sheer tenacity, and I am proud of our young people."
Advisory was founded in 2016 and has benefited more than 87,000 students through its programmes and events, said co-founder and deputy president (external) Brendan Loon, 23, who will begin post-graduate studies with the University of Oxford later this year.
It was formed when a group of 12 then students met through the Youth Corps Singapore Leader Programme, and decided to work together to address the issue of empowering youth in their education and career choices.
The non-profit now has 51 members, mostly youth who are still studying.
Mr Mock said the team plans to channel the funding to its upcoming online Guidance platform, which will be piloted next month.
Students will be able to go online to book one-off industry consultation sessions with the 150 in-house coaches available.
It is also working on an Advisory Schools Programme with the Ministry of Education to roll out a suite of programmes - including soft skills workshops and mentorship systems - at seven post-secondary institutions next year.
Another group, AmbiSense, emerged among the top three teams, with an artificial intelligence-driven safety alert app to help those in the deaf community.
The team, led by National University of Singapore electrical engineering student Woh Jingru, built an app prototype that can register particular sounds in the surroundings and send a vibration and visual alert to the deaf user's mobile phone.
The prototype currently picks up three sounds: car horn, fire engine siren and bicycle bell.
Ms Woh, 23, said the team partnered the Singapore Association for the Deaf to learn more about the problems the deaf community faces, and decided to solve the issue of safety when outdoors.
AmbiSense plans to continue testing the app and use the $50,000 grant to expand its current five-person team, so that more sounds and features can be added to the app.
It also hopes to reach out to the elderly, who are prone to hearing problems, to see if the app could be useful for them.
