Recently, one of our client partners asked us whether we conducted training (or capacity building, as we prefer to call it) when I first founded Skillseed. I shared that we did not, as we started out working on the ground designing and co-creating skilled volunteerism and community development projects with our community partners. I honestly did not foresee that today, we would have a whole suite of equipping modules in both the realms of social innovation and community engagement skills.
So why did we decide to start our capacity building complement in Skillseed?
The story begins in 2015, when an enthusiastic group of educators and staff overseeing community projects in a local university contacted us. They requested for us to train them in how we designed our community-centric projects so that they could be better equipped to advise their students. At first, I had my reservations and asked if they had considered approaching their own professors to coach them in these frameworks. After all, they had plenty of experts in this tertiary institution. Without hesitation, the head of the department said:
“But that’s mainly theory. We want to learn from practitioners. From your actual, real-world experience on the ground.”
#throwback 1: Our first formal foray into capacity building, with our educators presenting their project.
And that’s when we took a step back and reflected deeply on what she said, and recognized that in our mission to plant seeds of skill in our communities, we could amplify our impact by planting said seeds in our volunteers and educators, so that they could learn from our errors and, to repeat an oft quoted phrase, do good better.
So we started out putting together content on how we approached designing and co-creating projects with communities. But we had not considered capacity building in soft skills at that point in time.
Fast forward a couple of years. We were running a local camp centered around the theme of inequality during which was a segment where we and our young adult participants had the privilege of breaking fast with residents living in rental housing during the Hari Raya season. One of our participants, R, was a particularly eloquent and bright young lady who wanted to start a project on alleviating poverty in Singapore. From our conversations, I understood that R was a “high potential employee” in her workplace, and she certainly stood out in the way she spoke, discussed ideas, and carried herself. She joined the camp so that she could better understand the challenges centered around inequality, and I thought it was a great opportunity for R to engage our resident collaborators, and gain first-hand insights that would inform her project.
After returning from breaking fast with our residents in small groups, our social worker partner K, who had been in the same group as R, pulled me aside.
“Huijia, you know R right?” said K, with a note of urgency in his voice.
“Yes of course! R!” I replied, expecting that K might have been impressed by her.
“Eh I tell you, she was so awkward throughout the entire session you know! She can’t even engage the family in a simple conversation. She talks as if she’s interrogating them, which then shuts down further conversation. I’m not her, and I feel so embarrassed. How to do her project like that?” K lamented, to my surprise.
K proceeds to share that this was not an unusual occurrence. In the course of his work, he has met many bright, credentialled folks who have good intentions just like R, but fail to establish a connection with whom they want to help.
“You should do something about it.” K opined.
“Er, ok I will…?” I stuttered, still feeling rather taken aback.
#throwback 2: (a much younger) Huijia facilitating the debrief at the void deck after our engagement with the residents.
And eventually, we did.
That encounter validated what we had always believed in - that it really isn’t just what you do that matters, but how you do it as well. In fact, the immortal words of Maya Angelou nicely encapsulates our belief:
So we took a hard look at our experiences. The times when we legitimately screwed up, but were still able to, after many difficult conversations, preserve the trust that we had built with our communities and forge on together, stronger than before. The times when we felt we DIDN’T screw up, but in the way we communicated, still pissed our stakeholders off. We took the time to be vulnerable, and bit by bit, poured our heart into building what we offer today as Human-centered Leadership and Community Engagement (HLCE) skills.
To me, this is simply us sharing what we care about, and caring about what we share.
We hope that you have enjoyed experiencing our curriculum as it lives and grows, like a tree, as we continue to learn from a mix of research, our work on the ground, and from best practices gleaned from our fellow practitioners.