Apr 7, 2012 –
Eden Strategy Institute at TEDx Singapore
Singapore held TEDxChange 2012 on 7 April 2012, a global TEDx event in collaboration with TED and convened by Melinda French Gates. Simulcast in over 200 cities and countries, it was themed The Big Picture in Singapore.
The first talk screened was by Jeff Chapin from IDEO, who brought us through his journey designing sanitation solutions in Cambodia. He described how he learnt to communicate with the different frames of reference of local stakeholders, leveraged on their desire for social status to encourage handwashing adoption, and collaborated with lead users to co-design and manufacture sanitary solutions.
We then heard from Sven Giegold, a Member of the European Parliament and founding member of Attac Germany. He advocated cooperation between individuals, communities, and corporations to create international action to combat climate change.
Finally Theo Sowa, Interim CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund, convincingly argued the case for more representation of African women in international forums, citing numerous examples of groundbreaking work done by her peers.
After an ice-breaker facilitated by the team from The Hub Singapore, the Ideas Worth Doing segment in Singapore enjoyed a passionate talk by Veronica Gamez, Executive Director of aidha. aidha is a social enterprise that has worked with almost 2,000 domestic helpers in Singapore to impart skills in financial literacy, management skills, and entrepreneurship and bring them out of the poverty cycle.
Veronica explained how her world view was shaped by stories of how her countrymen from Mexico risked everything to cross the border to the US, in hopes of securing a future for their families. Similarly, Veronica described parallels in Singapore, recalling a conversation she had with a domestic helper.
“I do it so my children would not have to suffer like I do,” she said, when Veronica asked her why she was willing to put up with being made to sleep on the floor next to her employer just so she could fetch her water.
aidha is expecting a resource gap due to an impending regulatory change in Singapore, and the panel of contributors provided expert advice and help on how to scale up its operations in light of this. This was followed by a crowdsourced brainstorming session facilitated by IDEO, which saw our local TEDx community contributing hundreds of ideas to support aidha.
Eden Strategy Institute’s supported the TEDx event, with its Partner Mr. Calvin Chu Yee Ming contributing as an expert panelist.
“Eden has been supporting TEDx Singapore to structure today’s presentation over the past few weeks, and we are privileged to be contributing to aidha’s mission and good work. Singapore’s capacity to work meaningfully with the influx of foreign workers has important social and economic implications, and we are inspired with this community’s fresh ideas and willingness to help work on this,” he said.