While leading Youth Expedition Projects in Bago City, Philippines during his days in NUS, Ellwyn Tan came to realise the importance of a sustainable solution to rural poverty. Together with fellow NUS students, he co-founded BagoSphere, a vocational training company that provides affordable and effective training programmes specifically tailored for rural youths living at the bottom of the pyramid to access high value jobs. Recently, Ellwyn and one of BagoSphere’s interns, participated in the Young Social Entrepreneur (YSE) 2012, organised by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF), and emerged as one of the top three groups to secure seed funding for their projects.

YSE was conceptualised by the Singapore International Foundation in 2010 to inspire, equip and enable young people of different nationalities to embark on social enterprises in Singapore and beyond. The idea is to build and nurture a network of budding social entrepreneurs powered by a desire to create businesses that benefit communities.

To find out more about Bagosphere, click here. To find out more about SIF’s programmes, click here.