Students
Story and experiences
Students
Story and experiences
Entrepreneurship For Impact
In Collaboration With Singapore Management University
For moms from low-income families, growing their income often feels like an uphill battle. With children and the home to take care of, it is difficult to commit to regular working hours. As such, many of them work to establish home-based businesses (HBBs).
While this may seem like a perfect solution, the recent influx of HBBs has made it difficult for aspiring entrepreneurs to stand out and get their business off the ground. Many of these moms struggle to launch their businesses, grappling with low customer numbers among other challenges.
AT A GLANCE
16
Student Participants
6
Mothers
AT A GLANCE
Why Building Social Enterprises?
Learn Tried-and-Tested Social Entrepreneurship
Methodologies
Develop New ASEAN Friendships
Gain Exclusive Access to Social Entrepreneurs from ASEAN
Gain Career-Relevant Skills and Experience
What Goes On?
Programme Outline
Online Session | Hands-on Project Activity
Conducted in international classroom setting
1
Social Entrepreneurship in ASEAN
Understand how PES factors influence social enterprises differently in different countries.
2
Empathy in Social Entrepreneurship
Understand how empathy impacts the way we view both customers and the social issues we try to tackle.
3
Creative Problem Solving
Understand how to craft business ideas that solve real customer needs in ASEAN.
4
Final Presentation
Learn how others have built on similarities and exploited differences to produce innovations.
Fajris Zahrotun Nihayah
Indonesia
"I urge you to not hesitate because it is actually a very fun program! There are so many things that you could learn from this program and meet people from different countries - you get to know the insights of many social causes or many social problems around the world. So join in, it's very fun!"
Nattanich Lecksiwilai
Thailand
"This program gives me many inspirations to initiate my own social enterprise (to help with) Thai people's livelihood.
I will definitely use Design Thinking and also (my) great experience from this program to start my own social project!"
Yit Kang Yordan
Singapore
"My experience of going through the design thinking stages is going to stay with me for a long time to come. It might even colour the way I approach some of the problems that I face, the way I address or ideate problems nowadays. The process, the framework, and the learning down when it comes to thinking of solutions."
Yew Jun Huo
Malaysia
"I would say that it is meaningful, the experience, even though this exchange was quite short for me. It brings a lot of impact, for example, I got to collaborate with different people from different backgrounds and countries. From here, I got to learn from their perspective of looking at particular issues around the world."
Goh Si Xuan Kymberly
Singapore
"It was an unexpected experience because I signed up for this without much expectations with what I was going to go into or get out of this program at the end of the day. To be quite honest, initially, I thought this program was to learn about the business aspects behind social entrepreneurship. But somehow it became creating my own social entrepreneurship project with a bunch of other teammates from the other ASEAN region. So I thought that was quite interesting that I got to network with other teammates from the ASEAN region so I thought that was quite interesting. Tt was quite fun overall, to meet like-minded people who are passionate about social issues."
Our Approach
In 2026, Bamboo Builders partnered with Singapore Management University's Centre for Social Responsibility (SMU C4SR) to connect student leaders with 15 single mothers from Rise & Thrive (R&T), a charity supporting underserved families toward financial stability and personal growth.
Before stepping in, students were equipped through our flagship leadership training, covering frameworks such as Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and Design Thinking, alongside Google-certified e-learning in Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, and Generative AI.
Over a 6-month period, students co-collaborated with the mothers on business growth plans, established clear SMART outcomes across five key business metrics, and supported them with pricing, catalogues, social media presence, and sales activation, culminating in a final showcase at SMU's flagship Patron's Day.
Bamboo Builders is proud to have facilitated this exchange: students gained a rare opportunity to put their skills into practice, while the mothers received sustained, hands-on support in growing their home-based businesses.
Our Testimonials