ABOUT US
A community drawn together by a larger vision
Our team of purpose-driven learning experience designers, facilitators, as well as community and partnership practitioners.
Our Story
Skillseed was founded in 2013 with the vision of unleashing human potential for social good through an asset-based approach.
Skillseed’s core purpose is to help build a trust-driven and collaborative society, alongside our different partners. We constantly innovate by translating practical experience gained alongside our communities into operational knowledge and learning content for partnerships and citizen engagement. In parallel, we apply knowledge gained from research to our community work.
Through these practices, we aim to carve out a safe space to generate opportunities, and to provide exposure and challenge individuals to dream big, and empower them with the tools to make the changes they want to see, regardless of where in the world they find themselves, and how daunting the environment may be.
By 2023, we have formed partnerships with nearly 40 global community partners, and trained over 8,000 participants through the typical Skillseed approach of small-group, hands-on experiential learning courses.
Our Values
We believe that all co-creative endeavors will be made more inherently sustainable when guided by authenticity, dignity, compassion, relationality and a strengths-based approach. Ownership and ultimately deep trust, would be natural outgrowths of this paradigm.
Our Efforts towards UNSDG Goals
As of March 2024
Quality Education
We equip participants across all sectors and across a range of ages and abilities to be more relational, impactful and trusted in their various capacities and communities.
Reduced Inequalities
Through our not-for-profit initiatives such as Citizen Library and Resilience Trails, we promote inclusive, flexible and dignified paid engagements of individuals from under-resourced communities, while also providing them a platform to promote their voice, agency and stories.
Partnerships for the Goals
Skillseed is all about collaborations and co-creation.
8197
participants equipped and counting
> $3,460
channeled towards Citizens of our Citizen Library
> $195,869
invested in our Resilience Trails and Guides
7
active community guides supported by us
38
non-profit/social-enterprise partnerships to-date
> $327,961
channelled towards Community Partners
> 80,396 hours
of skilled volunteering and training
The Skillseed Story
Learning from Experts
Skillseed’s roots trace back to a once empty, light-filled space at Kroon Hall of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On her first day in the United States, a starving Singaporean female graduate student searched desperately for a canteen or a café in her graduate school - only to find a vending machine.
Annoyed, she wrote a proposal for an environmentally and socially conscious café at a beautiful spot at Kroon Hall. The Dean of the school, however, very kindly reviewed it and pointed out that she: 1) Had no prior experience running a café 2) Was an international student and this was her first time in the States, and 3) Had no background in business at all!
Not giving up, she rewrote the proposal and approached the dean again, who told her that he would approve the proposal if she could find other students to join her and an expert advisor from the Yale School of Management (SOM) to guide her. At that time, she knew no one, yet at the end of two weeks, she managed to gather a team of 6 Masters students and a lecturer in Entrepreneurship from Yale SOM to embark on this crazy endeavour. With guidance from these experts and peers, she proceeded to live her dream through real-world learning.
Live your Dream
They soon found themselves simulating a café from scratch to prove that the model worked – the group composted the coffee grounds, sold only locally-sourced goods and fair trade coffee, and even learned to be baristas! The café also served as a platform to showcase the wonderful social and environmental initiatives that their peers were doing (fair trade chocolate, an environmental film festival etc.). This was in addition to their full-time studies and the founder’s part-time job at the financial aid office. But it was an incredible, hands-on experience and imparted the founder many real-world skills that still serve her well today.
Leave a Legacy
Many years later, the once empty space is now better known as BYO café, run by students passionate about good coffee, great food, and most of all, making a social impact, as it sustains itself as a small institution that supports social and environmental initiatives while providing for students on financial aid.
This experience is proof that a single person with a good idea, the help of others, role models, courage and humility, can help to transform a community, one project at a time.
Skillseed was born out of the power of this experience and learning framework. This means carving out a safe space to generate opportunities, to provide exposure and challenge individuals to dream big, and empower them with the tools to make the changes they want to see, regardless of where in the world they find themselves, and how daunting the environment may be.
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