Five teams to get up to S$20,000 each to help people with disabilities

SINGAPORE — Five teams will be awarded up to S$20,000 each in seed funding to turn their ideas to help people with disabilities into reality, after beating more than 100 participants in Enabling Community coLAB, a social innovation project by the Ministry of Social and Family Development and SG Enable.

The winning teams include Team Platform Enable, which set up a marketing and ticketing Web platform to showcase talented performing artistes with disabilities, and Team Go Easy, which designed a mobile application called GoEasy that allows users to access and contribute information about the accessibility of a place for free.

The winners were announced at an award ceremony last night. They were selected from 10 finalist teams, which were shortlisted from more than 100 participants who came together last month for a social innovation hackathon.

Enabling Community coLAB was organised to call for solutions that would help people with disabilities better work, play and shop as well as be a part of the community. According to figures in the Enabling Masterplan 2012-2016, about 3 per cent of Singaporeans are living with a disability.

Said Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing at the award ceremony: “When we started this, one of our biggest concerns was whether we would always get back the same people, with the same ideas. But we were pleasantly surprised to find people from diverse backgrounds coming together to contribute ideas and perspectives ... and I think that has helped to enrich the entire process.”