Deep Tech Meets Deep Human: on being a Ministry For Good Ambassador and meeting Deaf Advocate Lily Goh

In the past decade, my startup growth journey from the world of transport in AirAsia and Grab, e-commerce in Sephora, to fintech and blockchain with Liquid and ACCESS, including this pandemic, had one narrative in common: inclusivity.

All of us belong together. We are in this together. We will get through this together. Trust that I will do all I can to help the causes I support: inclusivity, health care (palliative care and mental health advocacy), and the prosperity of our people in Asean.

In Q120, Eugene and I had a few life-changing conversations on social impact, where he asked me to join him to help build Ministry For Good.

In this regard, I'm honored to join Ministry of Good (https://www.ministryforgood.org/) as their Ambassador. I'll be helping them with their BD, community outreach, and fundraising efforts. If philanthropy, social impact and deep tech are of interest to you, reach out to me for a chat.

Ministry For Good (MFG) is a spin off from a successful ad tech startup, Ministry XR (https://ministryxr.com). MFG's mission is to help companies deploy deep tech in underserved markets that make real social impact, from special needs communities with inspiring stories to tell, to communities that need access to education and healthcare. Our first two verticals will be focused on haptic tech for the deaf community, and VR/AR tech in education.

MFG has been in semi-stealth mode with no PR (will do so when the time comes), and we are in the works of prototyping our haptic tech for an upcoming project which we are excited about, so stay tuned for further announcements in the coming months. We are focused on tackling the UN’s SDGs, especially those related to healthcare, education, and inclusivity goals.

Finally, Ministry For Good seeks to make meaningful change in the communities we operate in through active collaboration with stakeholders. For the outreach of our haptics vertical, I had the privilege of e-meeting deaf advocate Lily Goh, who sits on the Board of the Singapore Association for the Deaf and runs her own social enterprise, ExtraOrdinary Horizons (EO Horizons), which offers Singapore Sign Language courses and services, deaf arts performances and more.

Lily's entrepreneurial spirit and resilience inspired me in so many ways in these extraordinary times. In her vision to help others and to advocate for the deaf community, she did not make her deafness a limitation, making her a truly extraordinary individual. I recommend you watch her introductory video on her vision for her social enterprise, EO Horizons here. Below is a transcript excerpt from the video, filled with heart and vision:  

What is EO Horizons?

It is a social enterprise.

What does social enterprise mean?

A business with the heart to help people.

What does ExtraOrdinary Horizons do?

EO Horizon's vision is "to create an inclusive society where the disadvantaged like single parents, low-income families, disabled (blind, deaf, wheelchair-users) and others, attain confidence in their own abilities.

ExtraOrdinary Horizons is like an educational and training school. We teach Singapore Sign Language (SgSL) [and] enrichment programs, so that you can support our employment and entrepreneurship. ..

We provide interpretation services to our clients who are deaf and [hard of] hearing, for better communication facilitation, and for better accessibility. Our other communication support includes note-taking, subtitling and language translation, for example, Chinese-to-English and English-to-Chinese. We have our special-interests group, Youth Deaf Generation (YDGEN), [which] supports the deaf arts development in Singapore."

What an inspiration! I hope Lily's story inspired you as much as it has inspired me. Lily is very enterprising, and she shared with me that she'd like to explore Youtube's monetization model. In order to do that, she needs at least 1,000 subscribers.

So let's get Lily to 1,000 subscribers! Subscribe to her Youtube channel now at: https://www.youtube.com/user/eohorizons

Thank you all and stay well.

Read the full article at: https://kathyjah.substack.com/p/deep-tech-meets-deep-human-on-being