Making Social Impact through Social Innovation

The experience of the 10th Social Innovation (SI) Wing could, as a whole, be summed up in one word – “Adventure”. Twenty CAPTains passionate about wanting to create social impact through creative and ingenious ideas came together and turned those ideas into prototypes. As our 10th SI Director, Ashwin, would put it, SI provided a blank canvas for us to give even the boldest, craziest but just-might-work idea a chance. It was this vision that led us to the creation of four working prototypes that addressed the pertinent needs of different communities.

Project Connect. The brainchild of Team Startup, Project Connect is a prototype digital platform that aims to connect members of vulnerable communities who require affordable dental services with qualified dental professionals who are willing to provide their services at a subsidised rate.

CAPT on Record. The Youth Are Not Alone (YANA) team hopes to create a safe space for CAPTains to share their mental health struggles in a podcast series. Through this podcast series, YANA seeks to validate not only the interviewees’ experiences but also those of the listener. In doing so, they seek to de-stigmatise conversations on mental health, thereby cultivating a more educated and non-judgemental attitude towards mental wellness. This can, hopefully, create a domino effect for CAPTains to have their own conversations about mental health within their own social circles. Follow and listen to CAPT on Record here.

Silver Kakis. Through interacting with the elderly in Singapore, team Karang Guni ascertained the need for better systems to monitor the health of the elderly as well as to foster a stronger sense of community in the digital age. This was the inspiration behind Silver Kakis, a mobile application which allows for senior activity centres to monitor real time health of the elderly in their care as well as to grow a sense of community through the application’s socialising and networking features.

You Tell Me. Anchored by CAPT’s ethos of active citizenship and community engagement, You Tell Me believes that community engagement can be integral to our daily lives. They created a one-stop platform that enables users to discover community engagement opportunities that are aligned with their strengths and interests. They hope to help users discover the meaning and beauty in the different ways in which they can give back to society and promote active community engagement across greater society.

Through these projects, SI Wing gave us a chance to boldly explore the vast possibilities of our ideas. It also gave us a safe space to make mistakes because we knew that even if we failed, we would “fail forward”, learning from each mistake in the process of refining our ideas.