Earth Craft

Earth Craft (n): Craft work that is environmentally friendly.


Actually, I just made that up. I'm constantly amazed at the level of talent that I come across in our programmes in school (I sure don't remember being anywhere as creative as these dudes and dudettes when I was their age not too many moons ago.).


But it is, little gems hidden in Northbrooks Secondary School. Enough said. I'll let their work do the talking.

It's still too early to tell, but I bet there's going to be a lot of flowers and bees in this one.

The clay guru shares a funny moment with her students.

Whoever can guess what this is get a prize from me :)

I think this look a lot like me!

And this is Roy from my favorite online comic brought to life. I didn't know you could use key like that.

And They All Wear Pink Bags!

I just couldn't find a picture of the schools bags, I asked the girls in my class, 'Why is it that everyone's bags are pink? You see Barbie, Cars, Shrek, and they're all in pink!'

Their reply was just, 'Because we are girls what!' My apologies then, I stand rebuked.

The Primary 5 cohort of CHIJ Lady of the Nativity went through the InnoWorks™ at red dot museum programme to generate and think of new and fun ways to teach maths.

I haven't gone back to the school to take a look at their end products yet, I can't wait for it.

The class that I took was 5 Hope, supposedly the smartest class in the cohort and well, it showed. Despite being obvious smart alecks, they came up with really innovative ways to teach math.

The girls were real darlings (maybe because it was only 2 days, instead of 200 days as a teacher), and again, the visit to red dot design museum proved successful and was really good in expanding mindsets and revisiting mental boundaries.

I remember seeing a team of the girls entering the Bukit View Design Competition (because I snucked a peek at the Bukit View Design Competition entries, but that's another post for another time) but I couldn't be sure, but all the best Team Nativity! We're rooting for ya!

Recycling's The Way to Go

To make our InnoWorks™ programme at for the Secondary One cohort at Dunearn Secondary more interesting, we decided to up the usual challenge to the students more interesting.
Design, pitch, plan the materials and then redeem for the materials that you need to make your product.


And since each team only had limited amount of points and there were limited resources, it was most interesting to see how they would decide which materials to use.


'Eh, let's use the colgate box.'

'Don't want la! The cardboard so flimsy, plastic bottle better.'

'No plastic will not be good for our product, so hard to decorate it.'

'Then I do lor, come pass to me.'

'I still think colgate box is better.'


Once again, the level of creativity and the quality of their ideas and works never fail to stump me. It's these little surprises that I really look forward to with each programme. I'll post about the great ideas by the Secondary Two cohort sometime later this week when I have the time.


Cheeras, happy holidays to all you students out there and have lots of fun! (But don't forget to revise ok? Heh)

Back to Bukit View

Last year, around this time, we did a InnoWorks™ for Bukit View Secondary for their sec 2s.

This year, we were invited back to do the same programme both their Secondary 1 and 2 cohorts.

As as usual, it's always a riot (I mean it in a good way) for trainers because it's honestly is great fun!

Bukit View Secondary has always been well-known in its cluster to be very innovation-oriented. And this is reflected in the quality of their students and how quick they are to come up with great suggestions and improvements for the school environment.

As usual, the red dot design museum is a catalyst and breeding ground for wild ideas. All the best to the students at Bukit View (do they call you Bukit Viewers?), Youth Enterprise Academy would certainly hope to be back to see you all again!

The Importance of Networking

During 1 of the 4 E³ sessions for National Junior College's I&E Club, Dean was going over the fundamentals of networking.

He asked the students how much they knew about networking, and they all thought that they knew quite a bit about the subject. I mean, c'mon, isn't it as simple as meeting new people and making friends? They reasoned.

We decided to put them to the test and did a mock of an actual networking session. It turns out that there was quite a bit about networking that they don't understand. That getting to know someone professionally isn't quite the same ball game as socialising and making friends.

We told them that there were a lot of things they were doing that could be improved on, like how proper handshakes, or how to walk, talk and speak properly. What kind of topic to talk about when meeting someone new.

And then we ran the session again. And this time, both Dean and I were dumbfounded at how much they have improved. In a matter of an hour, the students have stopped being students and were networking, exchanging contacts, getting what they want out of the networking sessions as if they've done it their entire lives.

After the workshop, Dean and I had this conversation.

'Well done, Dean. They improved alot.'

'Yeah, I didn't expect them to be this good after a quick session.'

'These kids are different, it's not like you don't know it already. They absorb what you teach and fling it back at you with equal finesse and they make it look easy while they're doing that.'

Isn't it remarkable?

The Zealots

This isn't the first time we've worked with St Stephen's School, but when Dean and I went down last week to do a little sharing on entrepreneurship during assembly, I must say that the boys were REALLY enthusiastic.

Especially if there were prizes at stakes. Which is a GOOD thing. Maximum participation if I may add. I had a really hard time deciding which hand shot up first everytime Dean asks a question.

The first step to being an entrepreneur is to be proactive, no entrepreneur made his fortune by just waiting for things to happen. It could be that they're young, but looking at these kids, if they keep stepping up like that, they'll be the future landscape-shapers. You'll see.

Also, another point to add, it may not be obvious here. But notice how ALL their school bags are blue?

So does that mean that for an all-girls school, you'll see a lot of pink bags?

Craft @ Katong Convent

We recently completed a Coaching Programme for CHIJ Katong Convent. The main aim of the programme was to equip the girls with the necessary skills to make their own innovative products for sale. We engaged Agnes, a former teacher who has her own craft business now to helm the programme.

Here's some footages from the programme:

If you would like to view more of Agnes' work, visit www.bluecolander.wordpress.com

It takes a different kind...

of student to be able to apply what they have learnt from your workshop and put those ideas into great use.

The youth from the National Junior College Innovation & Enterprise Club are exactly the kind of students who have what it takes to convert ideas into winning designs.

The InnoWorks™ @ red dot design museum programme was aimed at helping them to idealize and conceptualise different ideas for competitions such as the RJC Toy Challenge and Citibank Ideas In Action.

And we were overjoyed when 2 of those designs got into both competitions above. I always believe that the red dot design museum is a great nexus for innovation and design. And Sharon, the President of the I&E Club, says it best,' I really enjoyed the exhibition of ideas (at the museum) and seeing how an idea that I had thought of during GEC (have) actually won a RedDot award. This highly motivates me.'

So congratulations to Edmund and his team, the Youth Enterprise Academy team is behind you every step of the way!

The New Wave of Entrepreneurs

As part of a career drive, Nanyang Girls' School invited us to bring together a group of entrepreneurs to give a career talk to their students.



So we approached some young entrepreneurs who're part of the Talentpreneur Hub community, Nicky Teo of Funeral Solutions as well as Goh Cheng Ze and Serene Yeo from Dotbox to share their experiences with the students.


We know that these young entrepreneurs will be able to provide a refreshing perspective to being an entrepreneur to the youth.

And sure enough, Serene and Cheng Ze flashed pictures of themselves in when they were still in secondary school, not too long ago, and they drew gasps of surprise from the crowd when they revealed that they were only 2 years older than the secondary four Nanyang girls.

Jaws also dropped when Nicky shared about his years of experiences in the funeral industry despite being only 18. Nicky has enjoyed numerous press coverage on his choice of industry and being successful despite his youth.


Joanna, Education Director of Youth Enterprise Academy, told the girls of the passions that Nicky, Serene and Cheng Ze had for their work, and to be able to make a difference in their industries. It is this common denominator that brought them to us as Talentpreneurs.


Their inherent passions is the reason why these entrepreneurs are making waves and headlines, and that was a message that resonated with the audience.


(from left, Cheng Ze and Serene, Joanna, Nicky and yours truly)

For more information on Nicky Teo and Funeral Solutions, visit http://www.funeralsolutions.com.sg/ .


For more details on Dotbox and their aims, visit http://dotbox.youth.sg/

Sketching & Ideas

The InnoWorks™ programme at Kranji Secondary was a little different from the usual. Mr Chua, HOD of D&T wanted the students to learn the foundation of design, aesthetics and sketching and to also view all of these from a designer's point of view.

So we asked Justin Lee, designer and artist extraordinaire to come in and lend his expertise and experience to help students to learn better. He shared with the students his beliefs and the sources where he draw inspiration from for his artwork.

Justin also taught the students on the finer points of sketching, and how to sketch on canvas as well as on a tablet.

With the focus of the programme being on toys (and toys are something that both Justin and I have had a lot of experience with), a visit to the red dot design museum helped cement the notion that even in the area of toys, there is still a lot of room for innovation. All you need to do as a young innovator and designer is to just simply, step up :) )

For more information on Justin and his works, visit http://www.justinleeck.com/

Not The Usual Programme

The teacher-in-charge of the Enterprise Club wanted a CCA programme for her students that was a combination of our E³, InnoWorks™ and Board Game programme.


The first session was on the Entrepreneur Mindset as an induction programme for the Secondary 1s who just joined the club, we shared about real-life examples of entrepreneurs and how they can adopt the same attitudes as well as strategies in their everyday school life.

The second session was where we taught them some techniques from our InnoWorks™ programme to help them to conceptualize and improve on ideas for a bazaar during Chinese New Year.


The third session was a board game programme, where students learned about entrepreneurship and how to manage money. I asked a few facilitators from the National Junior College I&E Club to come and help out as well as to share more about some of the things they do at the I&E Club in NJC.
At Youth Enterprise Academy, we connect entrepreneur clubs together. And hopefully at the end of the year, we will be able to do this kind of connection on a much larger scale.

The Smaller, The Better

If you thnk that younger children can never be entrepreneurial, you've obviously NOT met the boys of St Stephen's School.

They're smart, speak impeccable english, have a great vocabulary, and comes up with the most interesting bazaar and product ideas EVER.

I mean, honestly, who would have thought of using Crocs sandals in a game, or mini-golf to raise fun?

Youth Enterprise Academy was engaged to train the students and to teach them the finer points of entrepreneurship. We taught them how to sell, market and promote their products.

I'll be the first one to tell you that I honestly didn't think that red packets stuffed full of surprise candy and chocolate would sell during the bazaar but they were the first one to sell out! Other great ideas that came up were ang bao cranes, bookmarks and other small gifts made from low cost items. I figured it's probably the Kinder Surprise mentality but it probably means that these kids know their target customers more than I do.

But just coming up with good products isn't good enough. You have to back it up with great marketing and promotion. The boys from Soldiers of Fortune created a pretty good and effective example:

At the end of the day, it was a really good practice for the boys, to learn from their mistakes that they made during the bazaar. I hear that they're going to have another bazaar in the later half of the year so all the best boys!