The Arthur Guinness Fund is targeted at people with a business head and a social heart, who are committed to finding innovative solutions to address the social problems they see in the world. The Fund was recently launched in Singapore with a focus on empowering marginalised women to lead better lives; Bettr Barista Coffee Academy was selected as the first social enterprise to receive support.
UP Singapore and the Fund are working together to host the first-ever Arthur Guinness Fund hackathon with a specific focus on single mothers and ex-offenders. The hackathon will bring together like-minded people for a weekend of intensive collaboration, to develop solutions to help these marginalised women overcome the social and economic barriers making it difficult for them to support themselves and their family financially.
Guinness has allotted up to $60,000 in investment to support the best ideas generated over the hackathon weekend, where teams will work under the guidance of expert mentors, with the money awarded to the teams judged to have the most innovative, and viable ideas. These winning ideas will then be overseen by Guinness through a long-term commitment, to help develop them into real-world projects which can effect sustainable social change.
Channel NewsAsia had a feature on Bettr Barista & the Arthur Guinness Fund. Video below:
Singapore is consistently being ranked as one of the easiest places in to do business. And, as a result, new businesses have been sprouting up in recent years. But let’s face it – no office space is flexible enough to meet the constantly changing needs of a company. Many business do not need a fixed office space all the time, and many other have an extra desk or room at times.
How can we create a network of efficiently managed co-working spaces, so that every office can become a co-working space?
Do read more about the challenge we posted on Do Good CoLAB for the Urban Prototyping Weekend during UP Singapore.
Participate and help us to solve this challenge by posting suggestions and comments.
There are also other challenges that might interest you over at Do Good CoLAB. Do check them out and share your ideas!
Over the past couple of months, in the Singapore entrepreneurship and tech startup space, there have been activities and buzz around Big Data, Cross Pollination among different groups of creatives and hackathons. UP Singapore is an event trying to bring all three movements together.
This June, over a two-week period, UP Singapore, through a unique series of exhibitions, lectures, workshops and ‘Urban Prototyping’ hackathons, aims to bring together the brightest thinkers, entrepreneurs, researchers, government employees, and engaged citizens in Singapore. Together, with a selection of global innovators, the goal is to collaborate and create innovative solutions that will make our cities smarter, more efficient and simply better places to call home.
If you are an individual interested in Big Data, this would be the perfect chance to get access to previously unavailable datasets that will be shared by data partners from both the public and private sectors into the UP Singapore “data sandbox”.
This would also be the perfect chance to meet like-minded individuals across a range of disciplines and put your collective skills together to create interesting solutions in the following areas of interest:
- Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS)
- Tourism
- Creative Arts
- Education
- Community Engagement
UP Singapore is looking to engage with data analysts, programmers, artists, graphic designers, financiers, academics, students, CEOs, NGOs, urbanists, architects, doctors, entrepreneurs, social workers and anyone else who has the ideas, vision or desire to improve our cities.
UP Singapore will culminate at the 2012 World Cities Summit in Singapore. Leading projects from the weekends will be selected through “crowd voting” and showcased in partnership with Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB) and the “Data-Centric City for the Future” Pavilion. These projects will also be candidates for further development and fundraising of up to S$250,000.
Spaces in this event are limited, so do pre-register for the event on the UP Singapore website.
UP Singapore: 15th June – 4th July 2012.
City Camp:
15-16 June at
NUS University Town, Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium
8 College Avenue West
Singapore, 138608
Urban Prototyping Weekend:
22-24 June at
NUS University Town, Education Resource Centre
8 College Avenue West
Singapore, 138608
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