Organised by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC), the President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards (PVPA) is the pinnacle award and platform to recognise individuals, organisations and leaders who have achieved excellence in giving.
Further crafted into various categories, one of which is the City of Good Award that recognises impactful cross-sector partnerships. For this year’s recipients, we are thrilled to announce two joint winners for the City of Good Award – Agape Connecting People & Barclays Singapore, and Pro-Bono School.
Our two award recipients are inspiring embodiments of what is possible when like-minded partners come together with their different strengths and capabilities to create positive impact for the communities they want to serve.
Agape & Barclays Singapore – Rebuilding Lives Through Employment Training
The partnership between Agape Connecting People and Barclays Singapore started with a chance encounter in 2020. As a social enterprise, Agape’s vision is to help ex-offenders, single mothers and persons with disabilities reintegrate back into society through economic empowerment.
As a small organisation, Agape is constantly in need for funding as means to keep their vision of transforming lives, alive. And the crucial support of Barclays couldn’t come at a better time.
With funding provided through Barclays’s LifeSkills initiative, Agape launched their training and job centre in 2021 to provide work-ready skills and employment opportunities for ex-offenders and various underrepresented individuals.
The partnership ventured deeper with more than 50 Barclays staff volunteering over 50 hours in 2021 to coach Agape clients with resume writing, job interview tips, on top of constantly giving encouragement through their job-seeking journey.
Clients in the program also continually received counselling and mentoring support even after successful job placements to ensure they are equipped to navigate through their work environment and address any workplace challenges.
To date, over 100 ex-offenders have benefitted from the program and are now working in leading organisations such as Fullerton, Regent Hotel and Whirlpool.
Pro Bono School – Growing Social Sector Capabilities Through Skills-Based Volunteerism
With limited resources, tight budgets and a focused priority on service delivery and operational processes, many social organisations struggle with the necessary talent and expertise on their other corporate functions – marketing, sales, finance and information technology.
Enter Pro Bono School – a collaboration between Empact, Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Credit Suisse, to train and upskill employees in social organisations and help build up their capabilities with the assistance of corporate skills-based volunteers.
Employing a one-to-many training model, P&G and Credit Suisse run different modules related to their core expertise. Volunteer trainers and consultants from P&G run sessions on marketing, media, sales and human resources while Credit Suisse volunteers cover modules on cash flow management and projections, technology needs assessment and volunteer redesigning programs.
Serving as the bridge between P&G, Credit Suisse and the participating social organisations, Empact helps in scoping out the challenges faced by participants and ensuring the training and consultation curriculum meets their needs.
Over 93% of participants from social organisations were happy with the new knowledge and skills they gained, and they appreciated the chance to co-create solutions, better prioritise their needs and take away concrete steps from the consultation sessions.
The volunteering experience also helped to solidify the corporate volunteers’ sense of responsibility towards the community and increase in appreciation of specific social needs and issues.
Seeking to amplify the impact beyond the original project aim, Empact, P&G and Credit Suisse also engaged social organisations in the region with the purpose of taking Pro Bono School online and beyond.
Social organisations from many different countries including places as far as Mongolia, Nepal and the United States benefitted from the online training provided by corporate volunteers.
The efforts of Pro Bono School helped create a mindset change, raise awareness of the needs of the social sector and instill a virtuous cycle of doing good through corporate volunteerism.
Interested To Find Out More About Our Other PVPA 2022 Winners? Click Below!
PVPA 2022 People of Good Award Winners
