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Our inaugural event marks a significant milestone for ACTSmarket in our 2.5-year journey as a social enterprise. Two hundred guests enjoyed a marvelous evening with a 20-piece big band, karaoke singing, auctions, wine-tasting and a shopping spree. The merry-making were all done in the spirit of supporting a good cause...
]]>Our inaugural event marks a significant milestone for ACTSmarket in our 2.5-year journey as a social enterprise. Two hundred guests enjoyed a marvelous evening with a 20-piece big band, karaoke singing, auctions, wine-tasting and a shopping spree. The merry-making were all done in the spirit of supporting a good cause: to empower the disabled and needy communities.
Executive director Cheryl Lee sharing ACTSmarket’s vision and mission.
Mr. Peter Sim belting out a passionate “Fly Me to the Moon” to his wife,
who bidded for his performance during our karaoke segment.
Emboldened by his daughter at his side, Mr Chiang Kwok Shong overcame his shyness
and performed their duet of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”.
Guests holding up a soap made by trafficked women from Kolkata and a necklace made by
teenage orphans from a Cambodian children’s home.
Anita and friends took a closer look at our Village Artisan scarves made by
needy women from a traditional north Indian community.
Guilt-free shopping: every purchase gives hope to the maker for a brighter future.
The skilled blind weavers of D.F. Blind School crafting their woven products.
Website developed by interns, ACTSmarket
Pop-up at Credit Suisse
Building rapport with your employees, and staying top-of-mind with your clients and partners is important.
Recently, the 2015 Deloitte Millennial Survey which polled 7,800 people across 29 countries show that consumers are increasingly buying products and services provided by socially responsible companies, and the masses flock to them for work opportunities too.
Instead of the usual gifts like hampers and thumb drives, here are ways you can do good, while doing well.
ACTSmarket is a one-stop marketplace that enables other social enterprises to work with the underprivileged and handicapped to hand make crafts for a living, helping them to live with dignity. By showcasing nearly 200 handmade products, we offer you a chance to give them hope and a sustainable livelihood through a simple act of kindness – the act of shopping.
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In this light, ACTSmarket presents our CSR Gifting Guide:
As our products are handmade by the disadvantaged, we provide customisable gifts such as having your company logo sewn/typed on, or notebooks or pouches or tablet organisers with name embroidery.
Here are our top picks:
On top of that, we can include a story card which can have your company logo and message printed on one side, and the story of the beneficiary who handmade the product on the other side. This will tell the story of the product to your staff/clients/partners.
For more information on our customisable corporate gift offerings, kindly contact us here.
We can bring life and joy to your next company event or bazaar!
Pop-Up Booth @ Agape Village for CANA Film Festival (Sep 2016)
You may even involve your staff in the selling of products. If you would like to gather your staff to own the event so that they can organise and sell the products at the booth, we are more than happy to provide introduction and training to your staff to equip them to mend the booth. This would give them an opportunity to be directly involved in lending a hand to our beneficiaries for a chance at sustainable livelihood.
We can provide exclusive coupon codes for your company’s EDM blast to encourage individuals to purchase products handmade by disadvantaged.
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Show others that your company cares – about equal opportunities, social justice and helping the needy make a living. Simply choosing the crafts made by the disadvantaged for your next corporate gifts made. This gives them great exposure for them to share their skills and stories too.
For enquiries, please contact Eugene at info@actsmarket.com
Kristel Tan
ACTS Community Reporter
Some entrepreneurs are motivated by profit. Others, by the pure challenge of creating a business from scratch, and being handsomely rewarded. For Cheryl, who has done 6 start-ups and sold 2 of them, her 7th start-up began when challenged to solve a distribution problem faced by social enterprises.
So, what exactly makes her tick? We sat down with her to find out more.
“I’ve started businesses before. Sold two and closed down three. So I have gone through the gamut of challenges that came from starting a business from scratch and selling it off, and going through the pain of closing businesses because they were not profitable. So, starting my seventh one was not an easy decision.” …
“My past businesses were what I wanted to build for myself. But in this season of my life, I wanted to do something that is socially and spiritually meaningful.”
“Six years back, I bought some hand-made cards from a Thai pastor. They were made by HIV-infected, former prostitutes who were thrown out of brothels in Chiang Rai. I was moved. How low can one sink? The church took in the homeless ladies, rehabilitated them and taught them useful skills to start their lives afresh.
I wondered how I could get more of her greeting cards. Should I email her? Do I have to queue at the bank to send money? What a hassle!
In October 2014, I was selling pressed flower calendars to raise money for a social project to help liberate child slaves. A few customers commented that they had bought the calendars before and really liked them, but did not know where to buy them again until I came along. Later, a lady asked if she could put a few sets of animal hand puppets on my table for sale. Apparently, her friend started a sewing project for impoverished women in Sulawesi to make those hand puppets for sale.
It dawned on me that there was a major distribution issue. There are many kind social entrepreneurs in rural communities trying to create livelihood for the needy. Their hearts desire to restore dignity to the needy, and not perpetuate a beggar’s mentality through handouts. However, if these goods are not easily available to shoppers, then there is clearly a big distribution problem that needs to be solved.
So I thought, if we have a global marketplace like a website, I can shop anytime I want, wherever I am. Perhaps e-commerce can enable such social enterprises to be sustainable.
From left: Founders David, Kwok Shong, Eric, Cheryl, Rachel and Desmond
I pondered over the idea for many months. The burden just grew heavier. Then I shared this idea with a few friends and got their support. I then decided to take on this project although it could be extremely challenging.”
“Unlike other online marketplaces, we only accept vendors who are social enterprises, charities and VWOs. ACTSmarket is about making social impact. So we only partner with those who are committed to serving the disabled, poor and needy. Our customers can enjoy unique, handmade, limited-edition products at reasonable prices; and have the satisfaction that they are helping someone needy make an honest living.”
“Money, of course! (laughs) There are so many risks involved in e-commerce start-ups. Digital start-ups has a 94% failure rate. My husband and i provided the seed capital.
My second sacrifice is time. Launching a start-up takes long hours of hard work and I have sacrificed family time and leisure.
It's not easy to find well designed and well made artisanal crafts produced by disabled and needy communities. We had to work with these communities to develop new brands and products that will appeal internationally.
Generally, many social enterprises are small and run by individuals with no or little business experience. So they face huge struggles in every aspect of running a business, building economies of scale and working with beneficiaries who cannot work at the same level of productivity as fit and better educated workers.
Thirdly, for ACTSmarket, it's challenging to find competent people who share the same mission, vision and heart for this work. I mean everyone knows that when we do a start-up, we are entering uncharted waters. So I have to look for those whose heart can resonate with our vision and mission, but are also adaptable and flexible to changes.”
“It would be great to see a global and active network of people groups and organisations – an ACTS community – connecting and collaborating to make this world a fairer and better place for all. I am such an idealist! (laughs). Truly, I believe we can retain our ideals and yet be practical in living out our ideals.
ACTSmarket is just the platform for the ACTS Community to come together to trade, exchange info and ideas, and to have better access to talents and resources.”
“Collaboration! Most definitely.
This is a huge and challenging vision. It will take different communities of people to build a global ACTS community. The ACTS community should grow organically, with catalysts like the ACTSmarket team. Each of us offers different talents and gifts. For example, the social entrepreneurs are risk-takers and starters that responds to social needs. They equip the needy with skill-sets and run the business. The charities and NGOs are good at implementing large-scale social programmes. ACTSmarket will focus on branding, product development and distribution. So ACTSmarket will work with diverse community groups to build capacity in marketing, sales and operations, to build economies of scale for all.
We also hope to mobilise volunteers. Who knows? If you are good with designing jewellery or crafts, you can volunteer your talent. We can help mobilise people through our platform to come together and collaborate with the goals of empowering the needy, doing social justice and making the world a better place.
“A social enterprise must be profitable in the long term or the social impact it desires to create will not be sustainable. The mission of every business is to meet human needs and doing these in ways that create employment, release creativity, drive innovation, increase resources and wealth. Meeting human needs should be its reason for existence. However, profitability is necessary to continue serving needs. So a social entrepreneur must learn and apply good business practices and disciplines as he serves.
ACTSmarket is a non-profit social enterprise, serving other social enterprises. By partnering with them, we are also serving the needy people.”
“I am gratified when I see breakthroughs in people’s lives and they are transformed for the better. And if a few come back and give me a sincere ‘thank you’, that’s icing on the cake.
Deep down, it’s the steadfast love of God that I have experienced in my life that motivates me most. I am not gifted with a huge amount of patience to do what the social entrepreneurs and NGOs do in directly serving the disabled and needy communities. But I am willing to offer my talents and experience in business to enable them.”
“If they can a social cause that puts their talents and passion to meaningful use and yet make money, that will be fantastic! Ultimately, no matter what work you do, no experience is wasted.”
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