[16 February 2006]
A launch to empower new ideas - Social Innovation Park

The Social Innovation Park (SIP), in conjunction with the Social Innovators Forum 2006 and Social Entrepreneur Award of the Year 2006, will be launched on 16 th February 2006. This is a social enterprise incubator initiated by the Punggol North, Citizen's Consultative Committees (CCCs). Its Founding President is Miss Penny Low, MP of Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC.

The Social Innovators Forum 2006, co-organised by the Social Innovation Park and the Singapore Management University (SMU), is held at SMU's Conference Hall 1 on 16 February 2006 from 2pm till 5.30pm while the Award Ceremony will be hosted in the evening at the Sophia Room, Raffles City Convention Centre.

With the SIP launch, the incubator will serve as a leader in social enterprise, in which the provision of a replicable set of integrated services and resources helps create a platform to support entrepreneurs' business solutions that advocate societal change. Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth & Sports (MCYS) will be officiating the launch and presenting the inaugural award to the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2006.

Together with Miss Penny Low, the SIP founding committee sits Miss Jocelyn Chng, Managing Director of Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries and Miss Elim Chew, Managing Director of 77 th Street.

Both the MDs will also be the panelists in the Social Innovators Forum 2006 to provide an insight to the panel discussion on The Entrepreneurial Mindset. Other panelists include social entrepreneurs from China, Australia and New Zealand. This discussion will be chaired by Dr Pamela Hartigan, Managing Director of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

“Social entrepreneurship is one of the cornerstones in an SMU education. To instill in them a sense of social responsibility, we require all of our students to fulfill 80 hours of community service before they graduate. Our newly-established Lien Foundation Centre for Social Innovation will provide a nexus for scholars, business leaders and philanthropists to come together to promote social innovation. SMU is happy to be an organising partner for this symposium. It is in line with our mission to turn our graduates into socially conscious leaders,” said Professor Howard Hunter, President, Singapore Management University.

Similar to the objective of the SIP of embracing the idea of Social Entrepreneurships, Dr Pamela Hartigan believes that “ rather than setting up a business to generate profit and then figuring out how to be socially and environmentally responsible, social entrepreneurs are turning the equation around… starting out with the premise that the bottom line is social and environmental transformation, and they build their business model around making that happen.”

The highlight of this launch will witness the recipient of this year's Social Entrepreneur Award of the Year 2006. The 4 award finalists include Mr. Jack Sim, President of Restroom Association Singapore; Reverend Sam Kuna, Executive Director of Teen Challenge Enterprise Ltd; Pastor Don Wong, Director of The Highpoint Community Services Association and Mr. Aaron Ng, Executive Director of MINDS.

“Being a social enterprise means we do more than just business ” said Rev Sam Kuna, founder of the Tampines Changkat Killiney Kopitiam, which has provided stable employments trouble youths and adults from the Teen Challenge Recovering Centre. Together with Rev Sam Kuna, all the other 3 entrepreneur finalists will be recognized for their efforts to create changes in the society.

This special event is supported by the Ministry for Community Development, Youth and Sports.