Halogen Foundation Singapore received a total of USD $20,000 as part of the Community Impact Grant from PayPal in 2021. We are immensely grateful for this funding as it has enabled us to continue our work to support and nurture the youths of tomorrow! 60% of the funding was allocated to the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) Programme and 40% was allocated to the ELEMENTS Mentoring Programme.
The NFTE programme is a funded programme that was specially designed by Halogen Foundation to activate the entrepreneurial mindset and build business skills in youth from underserved communities, through a structured and hands-on curriculum. Over the past seven years, the NFTE programme has reached a total of 32 schools, 3,298 students, and 3,151 corporate volunteers within Singapore. Despite the pandemic, NFTE still served a total of 555 students from 13 schools in 2021, thanks to the support of our 993 volunteers. Based on our 2021 cohort, we saw an average increase of 1.4% in the Entrepreneurial Mindset Index (EMI), an index which measures the mastery of eight core domains that have been identified as critical to entrepreneurial thinking.
This year, with our refreshed curriculum and new Problem-based Learning approach using the Lean Canvas Model, over 750 students are enrolled into the NFTE curriculum, which is an increase of 35% from last year’s cohort!
In addition, we also introduced our ELEMENTS Mentoring programme to offer youths a holistic mentoring experience. Named to cover four key elements of a youth’s growth – Personal Discovery, Career Navigation, Skill Set Development, and Early Career Mastery, the ELEMENTS Mentoring was contextualised to equip young people with a better understanding of themselves and their capabilities. In this programme, youths are paired with mentors from established institutions and companies from our Halogen+ community, to uncover their strengths and goals.
We successfully completed 2 mentoring cycles in 2021, with a total of 127 mentors and 150 mentees. We were also grateful to have 5 PayPal employees volunteering to join us as mentors. Here’s what one PayPal mentor has to say about her experience with our mentoring programme!
“My experience with the ELEMENTS Mentoring Programme has been an amazing and mutually rewarding one. My mentee was able to learn from my experiences as I have taken a similar path before, and as a mentor, I was also able to learn new things and discover fresh perspectives from my mentee.” – Kwok Yih Huei, PayPal Mentor, ELEMENTS Mentoring Programme
PayPal has been a tremendous partner to our organisation over the past year, and we are immensely grateful for the support and funding. As we continue to work together, we look forward to impacting and serving more youths!
If you would like to join us in making a difference in the lives of youths, come join our community at Halogen! There are plenty of opportunities available that you can check out here!
