Met the guys at AMK station (Ju Hu, Ah Chen, MH) and they were ALL not wearing formal. Apparently I heard JC wrongly the other day:P So Ju Hu was there for the free food only.. But he's so funny, he thought we Muslims had different break fast times since the timing on our watches are different. So I enlightened him about something called a radio broadcast:)
The MIF networking session was a great experience. Silly me, brought a camera but DIDN'T USE IT. TSK. After eating the food, we sat down and waited for Evelyn Han to introduce the MIF session as a place for people who'd applied for the Mayor's fund to network with one another. Apparently, the networking session was a compulsory thing for those applicants. We started off with an ice breaker, Human interest bingo.
Then the two guest speakers (I think they were brilliant) started the ball rolling. The first was Immanuel Beauty School's Hazel Menon, who spoke of the struggles she faced as a social entrepreneur, basically changing the scheme of her beauty course to make her trainees pay a portion of their fees because they were simply not COMMITTING. They were having a problem with ownership of the course, because not only do these trainees (most are female ex-prison offenders) getting an allowance during their training course, their employers were also guaranteed. This speaker was colourful - she had so many stories of her trainees that during the networking bit, when we approached her, she ended up regaling the stories for a full 1 hour O_O
But I find her to be very approachable, very willing to help and dispense advise. Asking her about Sparkle and what are the procedures to provide certification for the trainees, she gave us the full picture, and more. One has to commit to a trainer course given by ACTA (sp?) for 1.5 months, plan the trainee programme to meet the requirements of the WDA, then apply for approval. Quite a long process I might say that requires a lot of commitment that students like us just can't give. I guess Sparkle will have to wait. Plus she gave some insider info as to how she managed to attract employers to sign up for her programme ;) You must have some bargaining power lah, and good networks too.
Followed up with our session by sending her an email.
The second speaker was colourful. Alvin Lee from Castle Beach. FIRST time I heard of someone actually OWNING a portion of any beach in Singapore. Well, he doesn't actually own them per se, he rents it from NP Parks or something. This one had plenty of entertaining jokes. But I think it's brilliant of him to come up with such a great outdoors bonding/life skills learning activity. And the sandcastles you can create are TOO beautiful, it's crazy - I have to make them to believe it. See http://www.castlebeach.org/. His one take-away of the day: Do something that you are passionate about and any obstacles along the way will be peanuts to you.
And I love the creative aspect of building your own pushcart, plus the marketing involved. Kekeke. Proposal-making was fun lah, I feel like that's what I love doing, it didn't feel like a chore at all. Should think about marketing as one of my career choices;)
Some pictures from the proposal:
Project PoOOosh pushing BizBuzz pushcarts into the 22nd century!!
No comments:
Post a Comment