“This Youth Month, we want to let our youth know that all Singaporeans are committed to journeying with and empowering them to write the next chapter for Singapore.
I am reminded by what the youth themselves said in the Youth Action Plan, Vision 2025: ‘We may not always get it right but with hard work, compassion and determination, we’ll foster an inclusive, sustainable and progressive Singapore.’ Surely, we can support them in this.”
— Mr David Chua, chief executive officer, National Youth Council
Source: Youth Month 2021: S’pore salutes the young and the selfless, The Straits Times, Published 8 July 2021
I read the above quote in the news, on the topic of Youth Day, which fell on 4 July 2021 here in Singapore. It got me thinking: To what extent has Tinkertanker carried its weight in supporting youths’ vision of an inclusive, sustainable, and progressive Singapore?
A decade and a bit ago, I left my job as a secondary school teacher and co-founded Tinkertanker with another secondary school teacher and a software engineer. We started off as a technology-focused company looking to participate in the then-new digital economy of Internet services and mobile apps. While this move allowed us to pursue our passion for technology, the desire to nurture the next generation of youths, that once drove myself and my co-founder into the teaching profession, lingered on. It was hence no surprise that we soon found ourselves back in the classroom teaching coding and electronics under our education branding Tinkercademy, supplemented by Get Hacking, our e-commerce store bringing STEM toys and electronics to makers and schools.
Since then, we have provided coding lessons to many students and we are glad to have been given several opportunities to teach in public schools — undeniably a social leveller, despite some highly debatable flaws. Nevertheless, we were always cognisant of the need to do more. We also wanted our business to engage in corporate social responsibility activities, and though the scale of these activities would inevitably be smaller given our humble company size, we aimed for an outsized impact. We set a clear philosophy for the company — “empowering others, in turn, empowers you”. We provide internship opportunities to our youths and instilled the belief in our young employees that we have a social responsibility to extend a helping hand to those in need however we can.
So what have we done so far?
As a technology and education company, it is natural that most of our activities would involve technology education. In all that we do, we try to leverage the concept of inclusivity as part of our ethos. With so many different kinds of learners, no one type of teaching style or syllabus would fit them all. Consequently, we teach in a way that maximises understanding for all. We include open-ended and challenging exercises to push the fastest students to their limit, while proactively looking out for students that are struggling to keep up to make sure they don’t fall behind. We design our classes to be equitable, rather than just ensuring equal access.
We have also participated in a few initiatives that are aligned with our ethos of inclusivity. One such programme is the Guiding & Empowering students for Affiliation and Resilience to Unlock their Potential (GEAR-UP) programme, created by the Ministry of Education to provide customised support and after-school engagement for students. In this programme, we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with schools to design and implement engaging hands-on tinkering activities, to pique students’ interest in leading technology domains such as machine learning and the Internet of Things. This not only allowed the students to pick up technical knowledge and skills, it also helped improve their well-being and self-esteem. According to a recent news article, the GEAR-UP programme has seen some initial success in terms of student attendance, and we are proud to have made a small contribution to this programme.
Another programme we were thrilled to help deliver was Central Singapore’s CDC’s My Digital Bootcamp programme, offering financially disadvantaged students a chance to take part in coding holiday camps, with funding kindly provided by UOB. During our camp, students built games in Scratch, programmed robots, created enthralling animations, soldered accessible buttons, modelled realistic Mars base stations in Tinkercad, fabricated glasses using 3D pens, and more. They also got to bring home a digital-making toolkit, allowing them to further enhance their digital skills beyond the camp. Thanks to this initiative, we were able to make a social impact much larger than our SME footprint would normally allow.
We have also created a programme called Tinker X, an open, self-directed learning programme for coding and engineering enrichment, blending instructions and independent study. We believe that to thrive in the “Industry 4.0” world, we need to foster skills that are not easy to build in a structured environment, nurturing individuals willing to take risks and develop critical thinking skills to tackle open-ended problems. We offer a scholarship programme so that anyone, regardless of financial background, can be a member of Tinker X. These members contribute back to the programme by mentoring others and sharing their newly acquired knowledge with the wider community.
At our Get Hacking e-commerce store, we aim to make STEM and electronic resources available at accessible prices. We bring in products that are not readily available in Singapore, and we created a companion website, Let’s Get Hacking, to share instructions and ideas for STEM projects with everyone. The site aims to inspire people to get into making and to hopefully develop solutions that will make a better and sustainable world.
Looking back, I am proud that we have lived by our ethos of inclusivity by creating inclusive learning opportunities for anyone and everyone who wishes to learn. In the coming era of next-generation disruptive technology, our fervent desire is that everyone should have the opportunity to learn, participate, and contribute back to society.
As a youthful company in Singapore (we’re only 10, so… we qualify for Youth Day!), we will continue to nurture the youths in their technical journey. We hope to live up to Mr David Chua’s message, to be committed to journeying with, and empowering, youth to write the next chapter for Singapore.
Happy Youth Month!