A Message from our CEO
This message was extracted from our Annual Report 2022. Learn more about our role in the youth development landscape over the past 20 years in the full report.
Voyage on the sea
We have a metaphor within our team that likens our organisational journey to one of a sea quest. We are members on board a water vessel, and are constantly learning to navigate changing environmental elements whilst steering this vessel across an open ocean, towards a destination.
The voyage mission for our team has always been one that never wavered. We believe that young people have the ability to make a positive difference with their actions and words, wherever they are. To do this well, young people need to develop positive character, mindsets, and skill sets, so that they can steward their influence to create meaningful change in their personal lives and for the communities around them.
On Halogen’s part, we aim to create learning and experiential opportunities for young people from all walks of life to uncover this hidden potential, and equip them with skills to navigate the uncharted waters of life.
Steering Ahead
We have stayed the course while enduring much transitional change in 2022. Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Halogen team had to embark on a number of shifts to keep our organisation and work relevant to young people.
We pivoted most of our activities back into on-site modes for greater in-person engagement of our youth participants. While technology and teleconferencing tools bring great efficiency, they cannot compare to the power of genuine, human connections forged face-to-face, as we saw at our National Young Leaders Fellowship and NFTE Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. We learned new ways to run tech-enabled engagements, without sacrificing the ability to build deep dialogue and create memorable in-person experiences for our young people.
To prepare ourselves for the dynamically evolving youth landscape, we built a library of developmental attributes to sharpen our articulation of the character, mindset, and skill sets growth we want to see in the youth we serve. This library of knowledge is research-informed, providing a basis for an attributes-based approach that we can apply to our curriculum curation, programme development, implementation and evaluation.
The Halogen team also went through an internal organisational restructuring to consolidate and redesign our work scopes. We took on several digitalisation initiatives, and optimised relevant work processes to avail bandwidth for growth and innovation. The newly modelled teams can focus on developing new competencies, and establishing fresh offerings that will allow us to serve young people in areas beyond training. Serious, hard work was accompanied by inspiration and cheer, through the many stories we get to tell through our work. In many ways, our developmental work with youths help them navigate their futures, regardless of their chosen pathways. It is this single mission that continues to fuel our hearts, through the changing tides and waters.
Two decades of impacting young people
We have been privileged to have a whole ecosystem of supporters who also seek to invest in young people with us. As Halogen reaches its 20th year of inception this year, we share a sense of overwhelming gratitude to the community of benefactors, volunteers, partners and supporters who have contributed to our journey. Thank you for helping us make our youth development work possible through your time, expertise, sponsorship and belief.
In 2023, we want to celebrate the many people who’ve made their mark in one form or another:
These inspiring Halogen stories will continue to illuminate the minds of our youths, inspiring them to always dream brighter and do bigger things, in their individual journeys and collective ventures.
The next frontier
As Halogen ushers in the next phase of growth, we also have dreams of new frontiers to attain, and new adventures to embark on. We want to see a world made better by future-ready young people, and build an environment where young people have the courage to step up and catalyse change in their communities. We will amplify our efforts to equip and enable young people to lead themselves and others, and empower them to lead change. In time to come, we will also enable this sphere of impact to grow beyond Singapore’s shores, to enable our youth to explore new aspects of collaborating with like-minded young people from the region.
The next decade of youth development will be a volatile and complex one. But we know that with the strong anchor of our mission, and guidance from the compass of our values, we will navigate through the turbulent waters, and stay the course to help our youths pursue a brighter future. We truly hope you will come on board with us to invest in our next generation of young people. As these youths grow to take the helm for issues around the world, our actions of today matter the most. The journey we’re on is a crazy adventure, but one that is worthwhile and deeply fulfilling. Come be a part of our mission, and join us for our third decade of making an impact in the lives of youth!
