By Huijia Phua, Co-Founder
I blame this on Peter Petite, a friend and devoted educator at a high school in China.
It all started from an innocent conversation we had about the need for students to be involved in meaningful youth development programmes, and the fact that there was no clearing-house, at that point in time, for teachers and students to find a variety of such programmes. His views resonated strongly with me, and before I knew it I had talked to several educators and programme providers, and was soon hard-pressed to come up with something fancy to replace “that thing that I’m working on, you know”.
“PROJECT SKILLSEED” was a name that came naturally to me due to my background in environmental sciences and as an ex-educator. I saw this initiative as a continuous, collaborative effort among forward-thinking teachers, innovative programme providers and our team, hence the word “Project”, and envisioned our efforts as planting “seeds” of skill in the youth that would participate in said programmes. With hope, these “seeds” would blossom and bear fruit as life and career literacy skills that would serve them well in college, their careers and beyond.
Since that fateful conversation, I have been very privileged to connect with educators who have been very generous with their time and advice, and some pretty amazing people running some outstanding programmes on the ground. I was also very blessed to meet Karen Lee, my current partner, a gifted marketer who has a passion for youth and the aesthetic eye that I sorely lack.
With that, we hope to be a platform for youths to “Learn Different”, while having loads of fun at the same time!