You can now feel like a ‘shark’ on ‘Shark Tank’ by voting for these S’pore youths’ community projects

Season 4 of the National Youth Council’s (NYC) Youth Action Challenge (YAC) has just finished its run.

Launched in 2019, the YAC empowers youth to champion ground-up initiatives in partnership with the government, businesses and community organisations.

It provides youth teams with the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality through curated workshops, mentorship, guidance from experienced industry professionals, as well as funding.

How does it work?

YAC Season 4 commenced in October 2022 and concluded with a final open mic session in January 2023.

Teams were invited to come up with ideas, along four key themes.

• Mental Well-Being
• Support for Vulnerable Groups
• Inclusivity
• Environment and Sustainability

At the final open mic, teams pitched their idea to a panel of judges, with a chance to be awarded up to S$50,000 in grants.

Following the final open mic, teams that still required additional funds to implement their project went on to a physical Participatory Budgeting session on Feb.11, where they had the opportunity to secure additional funding.

Close to 70 youths from ITEs, Polytechnics, Universities and various youth communities voted on the selected projects to decide and allocate the amount of grants received by each team.

The exercise helps youths to gain first-hand knowledge of the trade-offs and challenges of allocating resources to various public needs as equitably as possible.

Youths from the wider public can also participate in the exercise by voting on NYC’s digital platform, until Feb. 25.

You can sign up here to vote.

Just a few interesting ideas, among many others

In case you’re wondering who to cast your vote for, here are three interesting teams.

1. Flint Paper Battery

We use batteries in many facets of our lives, such as in phones, toys and remote controllers.

But batteries are highly toxic to the environment at the end of their life cycles.

Team Flint Paper Battery is hoping to solve this problem by building an eco-friendly battery from cellulose paper, magnesium, and zinc.

The rechargeable paper battery is wholly compostable at the end of its life cycle, and costs half of what it takes to manufacture regular lithium batteries.

The team has successfully made a prototype and is working to improve its efficiency to meet or surpass the standard of lithium batteries.

2. SpedGrow

Vulnerable groups, such as children and people with intellectual disabilities, may find themselves at a higher risk of falling prey to cheats and scams.

SpedGrow aims to help these groups lead independent lives, and offer their caregivers a peace of mind.

Their smart protection system, embedded within a digital wallet, enables users to carry out autonomous financial transactions while providing caregivers with a level of control.

Their tool also employs a gamification approach to help users learn financial literacy and grow their savings.

3. Jalan Journey

Jalan Journey aims to engage youth more effectively in character education through experiential learning.

The team has made use of gamification to curate virtual experiential learning journeys for participants.

Through these learning journeys, users are able to meaningfully engage with the stories and perspectives of vulnerable groups in society, and better understand their lives.

They hope that this will eventually motivate participants to volunteer in their own capacity.

Like what you have seen? Find out more about other innovative solutions here.

Get involved

If you ever wanted to feel like one of the “sharks” on popular reality TV show “Shark Tank”, where entrepreneurs make their pitches to a panel of investors to get funding, now you can.

From now until Feb. 25, you get to have a say in which of these inspiring projects to fund.

In the Participatory Budgeting Exercise, you will have a virtual budget of S$30,000 to allocate to the teams which you feel will make the greatest impact in the community.

Votes will be aggregated and used to calculate a proportion of the actual grants that the project teams will eventually receive.

You can find out more about the YAC Season 4 projects and cast your votes via the YAC website here.

After completing the exercise and feedback form, you can also enter a giveaway for the chance to take home an iPad (9th Generation).

This sponsored article by the National Youth Council made the author feel hopeful about the future.

All images courtesy of National Youth Council.