Inspire

Inspire is an online platform connecting students and professionals to ensure the accessibility and credibility of career information.

Inspire is a website through which students and professionals connect, providing a platform for the sharing of accessible and credible career information. Inspire’s motto is “Teach. Animate. Learn.”, encompassing our mission of creating an online community filled with the passion for learning and sharing through engaging animations. In accordance with our motto, Inspire’s workflow is a three-part system concerning three user types: Professional, Artist, and Student.

Teach: Professionals write blog-like lessons about their careers, developing themselves in the process through the power of reflections.

Animate: Artists, who are recruited into Inspire’s team, animate the lessons to make them more engaging for Students, building up their portfolio in doing so.

Learn: Students watch the educational animations, thus learning about careers essentially directly from Professionals.

From a technical standpoint, Inspire is built using Next.js. Supabase is used for user authentication and as the database. The website has been meticulously engineered and tested to promise security, such as by requiring email authentication prior to registration, and an intuitive user experience, such as by implementing a minimalistic design.

Having been a student of what is considered a “neighbourhood” school in Singapore, I have experienced the lack or even absence of information regarding careers, including the educational pathways and skills required to succeed in those careers. Now, I am fortunate enough to be enrolled in an “elite” school, and I see vividly the drastic difference in the knowledge and insight about potential careers one can pursue. This issue clouds all careers, especially white-collar ones, as exposure to these careers are often restricted to only a small group of academically stronger or wealthier students who are entitled to more resources and privileges the majority of students lack.

Detractors may argue that high-demand but low-supply careers should be done by the most intelligent minority, but I believe the opportunity to learn about and pursue those careers should be presented to all irrespective of their current circumstances. It is imperative that we believe that anyone can do anything with enough willpower and perseverance. As Haikyuu’s Oikawa said, “talent is something you make bloom, instinct is something you polish”.

Information should not be exclusive to those deemed “gifted” at a young age, because nothing is ever static in life. The opportunity to grow, and the means to do so, must thus be provided to all. Hence, I strongly believe in Inspire and its potential to improve and empower so many lives globally.

Inspire aims to help students learn directly from professionals pursuing various careers such that they are better-informed when choosing their own careers in the future. Inspire's goal is especially important for students from low-income backgrounds living in communities where sufficient exposure to accurate career information is lacking. As previously mentioned, accessible and credible career information - in the form of webinars, career talks, Higher Education resources, and other privileges - is unfortunately only catered to the wealthier and supposedly more intelligent minority enrolled in "better" schools, depriving many of their right to be given a chance to discover and pursue what they are passionate in. Thus, Inspire aims to open the gates for all students to immerse themselves in a community of professionals and fellow students built upon knowledge-sharing and a love for exploration.

To achieve its ambitions, the main services of Inspire will be made available to all its users free of charge. However, Inspire will initiate fundraising events via Patreon or other platforms to sustain itself. The incentive for students to donate to Inspire would be Inspire launching career webinars to supplement its main services. The funds raised will be used to pay the professionals involved in the webinars, fund the operating costs of Inspire, and aid charities addressing challenges in education. This business plan thus allows higher-income users to cross-subsidise lower-income users. As such, Inspire serves all students, including and especially those who have not been given the resources nor opportunities to learn about careers today.

During the ideation stage of Inspire, I talked to friends and teachers in both "neighbourhood" and "elite" schools. They all responded enthusiastically to Inspire, hence I gather that the accessibility and credibility of career information are truly lacking, especially now due to the lack of sharing or networking events with higher education institutions and companies during the pandemic (webinars exist but such events are only catered to "elite" schools).

Furthermore, I learnt tons about the exclusivity of information when conducting a self-initiated service-learning project to teach underprivileged students coding (this is done in collaboration with CDAC, a non-profit self-help group for the Chinese community in Singapore). Interacting with the students made me realise how little the information which manages to reach the low-income is, because when asking them whether they are aware about some careers (specifically in tech), they responded with a sad "no".

To ensure that Inspire is down-to-earth, the team is comprised of students from secondary school, polytechnic, and junior college. This way, we are better aware of the situation for students throughout Singapore (and beyond) in all target education levels (secondary school, polytechnic, and junior college), empowering us to effectively innovate and take action to help fellow students via Inspire.

Currently, the website is a fully functional and tested product which has been deployed to the public. Undoubtedly, the platform will be gradually updated as users provide feedback, but as of now, Inspire is ready for use by Professionals, Artists, and Students. This is because the website has been tested thoroughly by the Inspire core team to simulate how the whole process, starting with Professionals and ending with Students, will occur.

We hope to engage students of all ages, particularly those of secondary school age and older, as well as working professionals to use Inspire. Hence, we are now tirelessly promoting Inspire to students (peers in school, LinkedIn connections, etc.) and professionals (teachers, LinkedIn connections, etc.) in Singapore and beyond.

By the end of 2022, Inspire aims to build a community of 100 Professionals, 500 Students, and 20 Artists who will make Inspire a robust, inclusive, and inspiring community for anyone, anywhere!

To be frank, Inspire does not implement any mind-blowing technologies. Inspire does, however, implement everyday technologies to achieve mind-blowing goals.

Inspire is a full-stack website built with Next.js which integrates both back-end and front-end, which is supported by Tailwind CSS. Inspire has been engineered to maximise efficiency, fast-loading times, and Search Engine Optimisation. For user authentication and storage of data, Inspire uses Supabase.

For creating the animations, Inspire Artists will be using Adobe Animate. For fundraising, Inspire will be using Patreon. For publicity, Inspire has already been using social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

Currently, Inspire serves 20 Students, 5 Professionals, and 4 Artists. By the end of 2022, Inspire aims to serve 500 Students, 100 Professionals, and 20 Artists.

Inspire hopes to educate more students more thoroughly regarding available careers they can pursue. Inspire also aims to allow professionals to develop themselves as by reflecting on their past experiences, they will be better equipped to plan for the future and learn from mistakes or regrets made before. Furthermore, Inspire wants to recruit Artists and hence enable them to gain experience and skills to strengthen their artist portfolio for future endeavours. To achieve these goals, Inspire will collaborate with schools and non-profit organisations pursuing a similar mission to increase our reach and thus improve as many lives as possible.

We have set up analytics on our website to view engagement/click/retention rates. We will also continue to monitor the number of users (Students, Professionals, and Artists) on our website.

As with any other business, Inspire requires financial support to pay for the database, maintain our website, as well as create publicity materials. Inspire would also need legal advice when formally registering as a startup and determining any administrative matters which comes along with starting a business. Without a doubt, Inspire would also need to expand our reach and encourage more people to register on our platform.

We are a team of students under 18 years old in Singapore and beyond. We each go to different schools (junior college, polytechnics, secondary school) pursuing different areas of study (computer science, media art and design, pharmaceutical science, etc.). This means that we have diverse experiences to accommodate the diverse audience we hope to engage. Furthermore, the majority of us have volunteering experience to teach or engage underprivileged students in Singapore, driving us to pursue Inspire because we believe in its potential to improve these students' lives.

Personally, I am currently leading a self-initiated service-learning project, Code for Hope, which aims to create a fair playing field independent of socio-economic status for all students by introducing programming to underprivileged students to equip them with said useful skill, better preparing them for the future. Inspire will further this mission by educating these students about potential careers in tech (and beyond)! Furthermore, I have interned at A*STAR, a research and development institution in Singapore. Prior to the internship, I had limited knowledge of what a career in research entails, hence I worry that my peers, who are similarly interested in such a career but were not fortunate enough to have the time and energy to intern during the holidays, are not able to be sufficiently well-informed when selecting their careers in the future. As such, I believe that Inspire is important as all students will be able to learn about the careers they are interested in conveniently and efficiently from the comfort of their own homes, should they wish to do so.

Inspire is not partnering with organisations as of writing this, but we are looking to collaborate with schools (e.g. my school, Raffles Institution) and non-profit organisations (e.g. The Astronauts Collective).

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