ASEAN Youth Fellowship (AYF) 2022 by Sakhone
About the Program
The ASEAN Youth Fellowship (AYF) is a leadership development programme that aims to grow and connect emerging young leaders with a focus on public, private, and people sector collaboration. It is organized by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) in partnership with
the National Youth Council (NYC).
Objectives: The AYF aims to provide leadership development and build a strong network among up-and-coming leaders while exposing them to further opportunities in the region and enhancing social innovation in ASEAN.
During the programme, participants have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with senior policy-makers and thought leaders, as well as participate in exclusive institutional visits and learning journeys to key facilities and organizations in Singapore and the region.
AYF Sharing Experiences
- Day 0: Arrival and Welcome Dinner
Due to the Laos flight time being in the late evening and it was a bit delayed. So, the Lao delegates went directly to join the dinner and missed the welcoming ceremony in the first part. Although feeling a little bit jetlag, I really enjoyed the food and conversation with other delegates. We haven’t seen in-person before (but we do have an online pre-orientation), this chance I had more time to talk more deeply about each person’s story, their works, their projects as well as their passions and inspirations.
- Day 1: Team Building Activities at OBS
We travelled by ferry to Pulau Udin, a small island in the northeast of Singapore. Outward Bound School (OBS) is an adventure camp that consists of many activities.
The delegates were divided into 4 teams and around 4 activities (I won’t go into detail about to all activities).
- Trust Walk
- Key Punch: My team achieved the mission and win another team. My teammates are very proud of me because of my high responsibilities and they do trust in me. I was proud of myself too because this game reaffirmed to me that I haven’t lost my logical-mathematical intelligence or in other words I am still good at math lolz even if I really used it and sometimes I think I lost it already.
- Rough Escape
- Climbing/Belay School: I made it to the top (even if only 1 round), the mission was completed and unlocked from my inner self. This game also reflects a lot of experiences both mentally and physically as well as knowing/discovering our own strengths and weakness (I played better if the obstacle is metal or artificial material, but not good at the rope and big wood)
- Day 2
Ministerial Dialogue: Building a Resilience ASEAN
I was really impressed by the sharing from Mr Ong Ye Kung the Mister for Health in Singapore. He can deliver knowledge and experiences in many various areas — health, education, defence, business as well as ASEAN from his perspective.
Then, when I double check with his background, I no wonder why he has wider perspectives in many areas since he had held many positions namely the Minister for Transport, Minister for Education, Second Minister for Defence and board member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He is also the Chairman of the Chinese Development Assistance Council.
Learning Journey under Social Innovation theme
The organizers arrange 2 tracks of the Learning Journey that participants can register on a first come first served. I decide to choose the Enabling Village instead of the Citizen Adventures Geylang Precinct since it is more related to my full-time job on People with Disabilities (PwD) work. The Enabling Village is an inclusive community space. Home to several social businesses and community services, and to build a more inclusive society. It brings together community amenities, lifestyle retail services and inclusive programming for all with a special focus on disability-inclusive training and employment for persons with disabilities. Its community services include an inclusive pre-school, a wellness centre and community gym with specialized equipment, and an assistive technology centre. This session is my favorite session in this AYF program because there are many interesting spaces, and projects, and also we have an insightful asking and answering about the inclusive community especially PwD. I like the most is the Art Faculty which is a social enterprise shop that sells products made from PwD cooperating with modern designers in Singapore, that’s why their products are beautiful and well-designed.
More information: https://enablingvillage.sg/
Panel Discussion: Tech For Good
Key takeaways:
- Accessing digital but not knowing how to use it safely (scammer, cyber security). Education is not developed even if we have tech devices if we don’t know how to
- The panelists have discussed the trend of technology especially Electric Vehicles (EV).
- The key point is to serve people’s needs as human-centric design, not only focusing on smart tech things.
- Tech can shape who you are (your lifestyle) and who in love with(what kind of things you are interested in).
- Design for Acceptability: roll out to users to use and let’s see how they react. The early adopter is like the gold dust — why do they use it? what challenges?. If the users don’t accept it, then we go back to revised prototype process and then test it to the market again.
- Day 3
Panel Discussion: Mental Health and Well-being
“Hangry = hungry + angry. When hungry, why are you angry?”
Key takeaways:
- A Safe distance of being a listener: Finding & seeking help is no need to be doctors/psychologists, can be friends or family. In return, we should know Mental Health Literacy as well, sometimes we might switch to a listening role when a friend/family/or someone wants to speak with. A safe distance of being a listener is trying to be aware that we don’t fall into down feelings because we also should care about our own feelings as well.
- Compassion for yourself first
- A volunteer takes care of a volunteer or a therapist has another therapist to support.
- Corporations cares about Mental Health more to retain their employees.
- How to deal with the high-performance expectation vs. struggle inside?: try to normalize it and create a culture of compassion. Personally, I also face this situation many times. I do agree with creating a culture for compassion because I was a kind of person who will blame myself first when I fail, but later I figure out that I should have compassion of myself — it’s okay to fail Sakhone. Also, choosing a workplace or volunteer project group that gives freedom to try and accept failures (I mean rather than focus on failures, we focus on what we have learnt, what we can improve better, what can we build upon those experiences, and let’s try it again next time)
Learning Journey at the 360 on Food Innovation and Food Crisis
Innovate 360 is Singapore’s first venture capitalist & food accelerator with facilities and venture capitalist, recognized as a technology partner by Asia Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) Policy Partnership on Food Security. They helps Startups in Agri-Tech, Deep Tech, Sustainability, Comsumer Packaged Goods (CPG) to Commercialize, Scale and Go-to-Market.
More information: https://innovate360.sg/
Participants-led Session at Grab Head Office
It’s very honored for us to visit a Grab Head Office in Singapore. We have a really warm welcome and insightful presentation about Grab.
Participants-led Dinner
Participants-led Dinner is the whitespace for participants to choose what they would like to learn or do, hosted by Singapore participants.
- Day 4
Travel from Singapore to Indonesia
Ministerial Dialogue: Youth Leadership
Nadiem Makarim is the Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia and was the founder of GOJEK, the first technology company of Indonesian origin that has achieved the rare financial ‘unicorn’ status.
Key takeaways:
- Q: What did you think to decide to accept the job offer to be the Minister of Education? “If I turn down the opportunity, what can I explain to my daughter? I might regret the whole life not taking this opportunity” — Na Diem
- Q: “Pros and Cons from both private and public sectors that we should learn?” For public sector that should learn from the private: 1) Power to laid off staffs if performance didn’t well, 2) Digital, 3) Transparent Data, 4) Not relying on meeting: which is time consuming while less time to focus on individual tasks. For private that should learn from public: 1) Money is not everything especially for the young generation, 2) Media Control/Communication, 3) Crisis Control to people.
- Day 5
Panel Dialogue: Tech and Entrepreneurship
Key takeaways:
- International Companies should be aware of legal risk and cultural risks.
- Regulation should be more harmonized.
- If the customer segment is a niche market or a small market. We should identify the expansion. Otherwise, try to find a bigger market.
Learning Journey: Environmental Sustainability at Waste4Change
Waste4Change is a waste management service provider with a mission to shift the waste management ecosystem towards one that is more responsible, collaborative, technology-based and supports a circular economy.
It does this through four core services:
• Consult: Provide data-driven analysis and local expert insights to optimize waste management solutions
• Campaign: Offer facilitation and education programs across stakeholders to catalyse behaviour change towards a Circular Economy
• Collect: Provide responsible waste management through source-segregated collection and regular waste journey report
• Create: Value creation of waste through MRF pre-processing and value chain interventions.
To date, Waste4Change has successfully given data-driven waste management solutions to over 44 projects, conducted behaviour change interventions for over 42 community development projects, and managed over 5680 tonnes of waste from over 2000 clients.
SIF Connects!
It was an amazing event in which we have a chance to visit booths from another program from SIF, connect with other partners and stakeholders, and the impressive moments during ceremonies — speeches from AYF delegates, and a speech from the Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Council (NYC), video from amazing SIF programs, and touching songs that played by youth with disabilities.
- Day 6
Panel Discussion and Tour at ASEAN Secretariat
The one of touching moments during the ASEAN Youth Fellowship (AYF) in this post, is having a chance to ask a question that I’m passionate about. Actually, the program was really well-designed and covered many interesting topics but I can’t think of any questions to ask during panel sessions. Until the Education session, I really wanna ask questions but there are many delegates who raise a hand and I was not chosen. However, the last chance came during the ASEAN panel discussion which also discussed youth employment issue that I want to ask about. So, I took this opportunity to ask: “…How does ASEAN currently address the youth employment issue? and besides promoting employment, is there any action to raise entrepreneurial knowledge among youths…?”
Answer: “As the ASEAN Foundation work, we act as a younger brother of the ASEAN Secretariat. The ASEAN Foundation is an entity designing program aligning with ASEAN Secretariat. The ASEAN Foundation has many programs that support youths” — Dr. Yang Mee Eng, Executive Director, ASEAN Foundation. Another speaker added “ASEC also support SMEs to train certain skills”
Closing Reflections
It was one of the most touching closing reflections for me (I really want to share this experience, but I think it’s better to keep as a secret for future batches)
How to apply?
In the past, AYF selected only a few participants from each country (1–2 participant/country). If I am not wrong, 1 participant was selected via the application process or nomination process and 1 participant was from the Government sector. In AYF 2022, we have lots of Singaporean and Indonesian since they are the host countries while there are around 3 representatives from other countries. However, I have heard lot of positive feedbacks and this program tend to select bigger numbers of delegates in the future.
For Laos, we have 3 delegates from a different situations. 1 delegate applied via the Government office, 1 delegate was nominated by an alumni and applied, and 1 delegate applied publicly via Facebook page/NYC website (which is the author).
We have applied via NYC link which includes uploading CV and writing 2 essays — “What do you think is a key issue facing ASEAN? As a young ASEAN citizen, how do you think you can contribute towards addressing this issue?” and “What do you hope to take away from your participation in the ASEAN Youth Fellowship programme?”
Initial Qualifications:
- ASEAN citizen currently residing in the ASEAN.
- The participants must be professionals and emerging leaders in their communities from diverse sectors (e.g. heads in national government bodies, CEOs and founders of national-level start-ups and civil society organizations, or management of private corporations and businesses).
- 27–35 years old;
Personal thought
During application process:
I hesitated to apply because after I checked the website and Youtube from the past years of this program. At first, I thought this program will be a lot of dialogue and seminars, I might get boring and another point is that only few numbers of representative delegates from each country are quite low (1–2 person/country), so I was not confident to apply that I would be selected and this program is really suitable for me.
After, I was selected and when I join the pre-orientation, I was surprised that all delegate’s backgrounds are amazing and figured out at that time that many of them are social entrepreneurs. Of course! I am really passionate in Social Entrepreneurship, now I am really excited to join the program.
Themes:
At first, when we applied, we don’t have a theme but almost on the last day I asked an organizer and figure out that AYF in the past has a main theme while AYF 2022 is flexible and has sub-theme based on delegate backgrounds. For me, I guess I was in the Driving Social Inclusions theme since I was allocated in that group for few times and my full-time work is related to PwD which match with Social Inclusions.
Impact after program:
My latest exchange program was YSEALI Academic Fellowship in October 2019, which I thought would be my last exchange program. However, after the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially when I become a full-time employee, I feel that my skills and experiences didn’t develop as much as I expected. So, I decided to come back to scholarship hunter again, so that I can learn and explore high-quality international-level program particularly an ASEAN focus.
After I graduated in Business Management 2018–2019, I usually question myself as a generalist who can do many things but not specialize in anything (nickname “a duck” can fly and can swim but is not good at either both of them). However, when I joined AYF, I met with many talented delegates. Almost every individual delegate has more than 1 thing to do — some have more than 1 social enterprise, some have 1 full-time job and social project during free time (so similar to my case) and they all do great in those things. This has proved that one person is not only doing great only one thing, but they are also being multipotentialities and it motivates me to keep doing good in many things which I strongly believe that I can be a multipotentialities people who do great in many things as well, not the generalist that only can do many things.
“I figure out that I am also one of multipotentials rather than a generalist” — Sakhone
The program didn’t has a main theme, but AYF 2022 has many sub-themes instead. This is a good chance for me to perform my knowledges and abilities in various topic discussions (both formal and informal) as well — including but not limited to Business, Start-Up, ASEAN, Human Rights, Social development for marginalized people/communities, Children Right, People with Disabilities, Mental Health. This reflects my every learning journey and experiences in my life. Business knowledge side I gain from study field and full-time job while social development field I gain from my volunteer experiences works. Every single learning journey and experience in my life is counted and bring all of them to use in this program. I feel so proud of myself, it’s not prefect because some topic I have zero knowledge to share some (e.g. housing policies), but I also can contribute quite a lot.
“Sometimes the experiences you did in the past will bring an opportunity to you in present. In a similar way, the experiences you do today might be a fertilizer to your future success” — Sakhone
The author’s profile (at the time of joining the AYF program)
For further connect can follow via: www.linkedin.com/in/sakhone-douangphachanh
Other resources and reference links:
SIF website: https://www.sif.org.sg/en/Our-Work/Cultural-Exchange/ASEAN-Youth-Fellowship
NYC Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=national%20youth%20council%20singapore
SIF Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/singaporeinternationalfoundation
Some social Enterprises and delegates stories
Young Happy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFxI_0hs2KE&list=PLG2y5bKr6jo7zs1avLHNskGQaN1U6uN0I&index=11
SOS Rescue Kitchen: https://thailand.un.org/th/206389-xaharraksaorkhaelaolkibniiid-nanthphr-tiiraphngsiphbuuly?fbclid=IwAR34QwkcnefL35JQADvet-rJZNapN1kFnZ5liS6lOXJR6X4Y-Shci-8JKNg
