O, what a winning innovation
Founder started performing arts centre to fund non-profit school for dropouts
Weekend • December 15, 2007
Lin Yanqin yanqin@mediacorp.com.sg

RUNNING a non-profit school to help youth dropouts to complete their O levels is a worthy cause — but with high rental costs and student bursaries to fund, it is also an expensive one. So, to offset the mounting costs of running the City Harvest Education Centre (CHEC), founder and principal Kenny Low (picture) last year started a performing arts centre called the O School. Its dance classes generate revenue to pay for the costs of CHEC and also provides steady employment for promising young talents to become full-time instructors, performers and choreographers.

Mr Low's entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with his mission to reach out to youth, won him this year's Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year award at the Social Innovators' Forum gala dinner on Friday night. Said Mr Kevin Teo, head of the Schwab Foundation of Social Entrepreneurship's East and South-east Asia offices, who sat on the judging panel: "Using unconventional approaches to address the needs of a challenging student population and leveraging a social business to support the operation of the school, Kenny certainly provides an inspiring role model for Singapore's next wave of social entrepreneurs."

Speaking of his experience in starting and running a social enterprise, Mr Low felt that although seed funding was valuable, it was important not to handhold such businesses too much.

"After we got funding … there was no alternative, we had to make it," he said. "It made us tougher, and now we're sustainable. As entrepreneurs, we must have backbone and not let a lack of support hinder us from trying."

O School is now recognised as a leading dance studio, training the likes of Singapore Idol winners Taufik Batisah and Hady Mirza, and organising dance conferences like The Big Groove.

At the same time, the school helps reach out to youth at risk by engaging them through dance.

Social enterprises like O School can't maximise profits for shareholders since it channels some of this back to supporting its social causes. But Mr Low chooses to focus on the intangible benefits. "The power to create jobs, to create a service needed by people … there is economic value in it," he said. "It shouldn't be seen as a sacrifice."