Almost 80 professionals and volunteers from the non-profit and social impact space, as well as students from NTU filled up our venue at Food For Thought at the National Museum for Be An Idea’s 11th Fuze Night. Bringing together the best people in the social impact sector, Fuze Nights serves as a platform for our humble, local superheroes to relax, connect and learn from others in the same space. We were psyched to hear and learn from our speakers.
Everyone participated actively during an interactive game of Social Bingo!
“Jump in, you won’t regret it!”
Sandra Marichal, Founder, #up2degrees, talks about her passion for climate change. She kicked off the night of inspirational talks by sharing some images of the world's coldest country; Antarctica. Due to an increase in global temperature, our natural air-conditioner (Antarctica) is melting. She also shared an interesting survey about the cinema being one of the coldest place in Singapore, and encourages us to reduce our carbon emissions.
Facts: just by turning our air-conditioner up by two degrees, it saves us 34% energy consumption -- which equates to savings of $746 annually. It also reduces 6,500 kilograms of carbon which equates to 300 trees.
“Go into it and believe it will succeed.”
Edmund Quek, Executive of Communications and Outreach at Samaritans of Singapore was our second inspiration speaker for the evening. Starting with a commonly asked question, “Why do people take their own life” ? Edmund shared that a combination of causes could be attributed. For instance, transportation delay faced and a series of unfortunate events within the day wear down someone’s coping ability - these could be why someone would contemplate suicide; also, coping thresholds differ as well. We learned that suicide is preventable, but more awareness on suicide prevention is needed. Through the #howru campaign from 2015 to 2016 - A plaster for Singaporeans deepest wound, Samaritans of Singapore reached 4.5 million views on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Edmund ended off by encouraging everyone to take the important first step by asking one another “How are you?”.
Up next was our guest performer, singer Sarah Yap. Sarah mesmerized our audience with her voice and lyrics - and she can be found performing regular gigs at Acid Bar on Mondays.
“Believe (In your) instinct; believe in yourself; you need to lead your own life.”
The knowledge speaker for the evening was Alfie Othman, Executive Director at The Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise, raiSE. Alfie shared about his four loves in his life. Football, chocolate, his wife and he's undecided about the fourth - Alfie shared that there must always be an unanswered question within you to live life forward.
According to Alfie, a social entrepreneur values the tools of measurement, and intentionally designs impact within programs. Alfie also advised that a sustainable social enterprise does not emphasise on money as the biggest issue; and instead, puts ideas and execution in the front and centre. In closing, we have to be clear about the social issues that exist, be primed and ready to address any emerging social issues and fill in the gaps.
“Empower more businesses and take them all online!”
Our final speaker for the night was Daniel Thong, Co-Founder at ServisHero, a mobile platform designed to bring the on-demand economy to local service providers. Daniel worked in the technology space for a couple of years and saw that technology can provide jobs for people, especially for people who have been affected by income inequality - a gap which ServisHero aimed to fill. Visibility on Google search is important in the next 5 years. Closing the sharing with a personal journey story, ServisHero helped one of the handy men who was unemployed for the past 10 years to get a job; his trade was no longer invisible to the people. As of today, ServisHero has 100,000 downloads and have created $5 million of value.
To wrap the evening up, we invited the speakers and audience to engage in a panel discussion, with buzzing dialogue about the challenges speakers faced and more in-depth details on their projects.
Fuze Night ended with some guests staying behind to mingle, exchanging ideas and also looking for future collaborations.
Fuze Nights typically take place on the last Wednesday of each month. Look forward to more insightful talks and opportunities to connect every last Wednesday of each month.