Social Innovation
Social Innovation uses innovation frameworks such as Design Thinking to tackle social problems. We identify unfulfilled needs of communities and craft novel solutions with an impact!
Chong Jie Xin
Director
Director's Message
Hello! I’m Jie Xin, the Director of Social Innovation! I’ve always been drawn to the process of building, from seeing ideas start at zero to shaping them into initiatives that create tangible value to the communities we work with.
This year, SI is guided by I³: Inspired. Innovate. Impact. We begin by being inspired, grounding ourselves in research, observations, and conversations with our communities, while learning from existing ground-up initiatives. This ensures our work is informed by context rather than assumptions. We then innovate by creating a space where members can take ownership of projects they care about and feel supported to explore, test, and iterate.
Ultimately, our focus is on impact. By setting clear outcomes and building with sustainability in mind, we aim to develop solutions that continue to benefit the community beyond our direct involvement. I³ reflects the multiplying effect that occurs when inspiration sparks innovation, leading to meaningful, lasting impact.
The Team
Nanthar
Developmental Vice Director
“Animal lover, currently outnumbered—and employed—by the three stray cats I adopted.”
Alana
External Vice Director
“I love sipping a cup of matcha while people-watching.”
Kendra
Internal Vice Director
“‘Success is by taking one step at a time,’ my wise cousin.”
Morpheus
Administrative Executive
“I floss better than the backpack kid.”
SI Projects (2025/2026)
Our project revolves around fostering intergenerational bonds and establishing fictive kinship, inculcating a fond affinity with the seniors. Titled endearingly as the "Ageless Orchestra", we hope that our few sessions have served to emphasize the irrelevance of age in the co-creation of a simple yet meaningful rendition, culminating in a harmony of both music & generations.
We partnered with MINDS’ Employment Development Centre to create a ukulele training programme that builds clients’ musical skills, confidence, and teamwork. The initiative aims to expand their performance repertoire, increase visibility, and generate long-term opportunities for revenue and corporate support.
We aim to provide children from low-income households with an immersive and interactive cultural experience, enabling them to broaden their horizons and learn about the diversity of cultures across different countries. Through hands-on activities and engaging stations, the program seeks to enrich their understanding of the world beyond Singapore.
Through our initiative, we aim to create meaningful interactions with youths, raise awareness about important social issues related to fashion sustainability, and empower individuals to take action. Whether it's sustainability workshops, creative upcycling projects, or impactful conversations, we believe small efforts can lead to big changes!
A 14-day fitness challenge in CAPT that helped participants build sustainable habits with peer support, guided by habit science from the book Atomic Habits. A bot tracker helped participants monitor their habit-building progression.
SI Projects (2024/2025)
Eldercare work that involves evidence-informed interventions such as life review and intergenerational bonding are proven to improve the well-being of seniors. However, such interventions may be costly and require skilled manpower that make it difficult to implement these strategies in the nursing home context in Singapore.
In collaboration with Methodist Welfare Services’ (MWS) Research, Innovation & Training Academy (RITA), Project Chronicles pilots and tests a more accessible model of life story journalling through scrapbooking and with volunteers that can be mobilised under the guided supervision of trained professionals. This allows CAPTains to explore a cost-effective way to build capabilities within the eldercare sector that increases the well-being of seniors in a sustainable manner.
MWS/RITA and SI Facilitators of Project Chronicles (Credits: RITA)
Snippet of a Life Story Journal (Credits: RITA)
Conversations for Journaling (Credits: Elvin)
Writers@CAPT was inspired by the need for an emotionally powerful befriending model between migrant workers and students in Singapore. In collaboration with the Migrant Writers of Singapore (MWS), a Facebook Group formed during COVID-19, Writers@CAPT innovates the befriending model between students and migrant workers by exploring a rare and expressive form of engagement activity – literary writing.
The project aims to enable deeper conversations between students and migrant workers on our shared human conditions and facilitate an exchange of literary and cultural assets.
Writers@CAPT (Credits: MWS)
Collaborative Writing (Credits: Elvin)
Stories told in Earnest (Credits: Elvin)
Our group's solution is Critical Crossroads, a choose-your-own-adventure application that tasks users to make and explain decisions presented by fictional situations, in a fantastical context. It is aimed at children from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds, to hone their decision-making skills through expression and introspection. We also innovate using digital solutions to overcome manpower shortages.
View our prototype by clicking the button below!
(A word of caution: the website has in-built text-to-speech that automatically plays when you click on a story!)
Exploring decision-making through fantasy with Dungeons & Dragons (Credits: Aaron)
One of the decisions that users are presented with in our story (Credits: Germaine)
An engagement to test the reception of our original stories with our target group (Credits: Dai Xuan)
Our entrepreneurship program at Jalan Kukoh seeks to foster self-assurance in youths, inspiring them to accomplish significant milestones and even consider entrepreneurship through equipping participants with practical baking, organizational, and marketing skills.
Trial Run Tiramisu (Credits: Peter)
Cat Cafe for CAPT, a pop-up cat cafe, was organised by the Five Guys to educate people in the CAPT community about the plight faced by cat shelters and promote animal adoption. To ensure a sustainable model, they collaborated with the Meownistry of Meow, Foreword Coffee Roasters, and CAPT Coffee IG, along with the use of the team’s existing assets (e.g. connections that can contact potential partners) and access to spaces (CAPT facilities).
Team Five Guys at Five Guys (Photo Credits: Samuel)
Bean the Cat (Photo Credits: Ivan)
SI Projects (2022/2023)
The 11th SI Directors identified that the Dining Hall was a great source of dissatisfaction amongst CAPTains and thus endeavoured to create a more positive Dining Hall (DH) experience for CAPTains and DH Staff Members. After interviews and feedback collection boards, we designed 2 engagements – our Mindful Eating campaign where we collaborated with CAPTSupport and our very own Overheard Conversations board.
11th SI Directors (Credits: Han Ming)
Mindful Eating (Credits: 11th SI Directors)
Feedback Boards (Credits: 11th SI Directors)
Team Bonfire’s target community is the elderly population in Singapore; we hope to unite and bring them closer together, just like people sitting together by a bonfire. We conducted two sessions with Lions Befrienders Bendemeer.
To provide a platform to spark conversations, we designed a board game similar to Snakes and Ladders to play with the elderly. We also used the theme of “Growing Years” to guide and facilitate conversations about one’s childhood, hobbies, thoughts and feelings.
Team Bonfire (Credits: Han Ming)
Board Game Questions (Credits: Team Bonfire)
Board Game (Credits: Team Bonfire)
SIU X Family aims to build stronger relationships between teens and their parents by fostering meaningful conversations within families. We created a Telebot to be added into family chatgroups on Telegram which will periodically send thought-provoking questions and polls. This will reduce the awkwardness and reluctance teens may face when trying to strike up deeper conversations with parents. We engaged with FamChamps to garner greater publicity for the bot while also seeking advice on the crafting of our bot's questions. We also collaborated with Vessels and included their game "Tabletalk" into our Telebot and allow families to gain access to the family game.
SIU X Family (Credits: Han Ming)
Frank the Family Bot (Credits: SIU X Family)
4Beans explores the feasibility of rolling out edible horticulture among seniors participating in senior daycare facility centres. Specifically, we hope to create a sustainable horticulture programme with our community partner where they can run the programme by themselves easily and without difficulty. This project serves to provide the elderly with a sense of purpose and belonging and provides an excellent platform for them to be able to interact with one another. Horticulture will be explored via the cultivation of vegetables via hydroponics. The set up will be designed with the elderly in mind and prototyped to cater to their lower mobility.
4Beans (Credits: Han Ming)
Hydroponics (Credits: 4Beans)
Pant Maturation (Credits: 4Beans)
CAPTilda aims to engage with and better understand the migrant brother community. We conducted physical exercise sessions and created a sustainable platform – a Facebook page - for the brothers to share their experiences with cyber-crime. We also noticed that dormitories saw a constant intake of brothers all year round, whereas existing scam awareness efforts were not done all year round. As such, we interviewed brothers and created a scam awareness video that was screened at a carnival (and can be screened at other
CAPTilda (Credits: Han Ming)
Physical Exercise (Credits: Joey)
Scam Awareness Video Screening (Credits: Theersha)
SI Projects (2021/2022)
Team Startup was spurred by the realisation that many vulnerable communities lack access to dental care due to financial difficulties. However, unbeknownst to them, there may be dentists who are willing to provide this subsidised service.
Thus, the team sought to design a digital platform that bridged essential and affordable dental care services to the communities that have limited access to them.
