Bigger, Smarter, Greener
Heartware Network, a youth development organisation founded in 2000, has recently moved to a new 3,600sqf green and smart office space at Ganges Avenue. 17 July 2018 marked our milestone event, celebrated with esteemed donors, sponsors and partners, and graced by Mr Desmond Lee, Minister for Social and Family Development and Second Minister for National Development.
The organisation is looking forward to leverage on the bigger space to support its growth in youth engagement and development for the local youth community.
The new Heartware Network office, will host a multitude of activities within the same space, enabling the organisation to increase its engagement of youth volunteers to serve a wider community. These activities range from curation of community projects by youth leaders, selection of youth applicants for youth programmes and on-boarding & training of youth volunteers before they are deployed on the ground to provide services to the local communities.
Joining at a cosy corner, the Minister struck a conversation with our YPC® member Amelia and Heartware intern Junjie.
The Hall accommodates up to 80 – 100 volunteers, and supports many volunteer activities, including mass training sessions.
With the bigger space, Heartware Network has been able to increase its intake of youth volunteer for our key service programmes, such as Heartware Tuition Programme and Heartware Support Our Pioneers Programme.
Heartware’s proprietary online volunteer management portal – Youthbank, was further leveraged on to assist the organisation in the monitoring of these youth volunteers, by tracking their hours of contribution to these programmes, as well as their level of responsibility, i.e. volunteer or volunteer leader. The portal further enabled the organisation to longitudinally track the engagement and development of youth volunteers across a specified period of time. This allowed the organisation to customise the development support to individual youth volunteers’ needs.
Youthbank is also able to accurately track the service hours for each volunteer. The accumulated hours were converted into benefits worth about $52,000, in the form of furniture, for disadvantaged families in 2013.
With the increased activities in the new space, the usage of electricity and water has correspondingly increase. The organisation was glad to have the full support of DP Architects Pte Ltd, ABB Pte Ltd and Water + Plants Lab Pte Ltd, in designing the new eco-friendly office space.
A flexible and spontaneous work environment, the new 3,600sqf office serves to showcase what the organisation represents – encouraging and empowering participation and volunteerism in youth. This is achieved through the introduction of a distinctive and iterative modular grid furniture system that iterates with various plug-in elements. The design also acts as a canvas for customisable spaces via tiered bleachers on wheels, loose seating and individual pedestals which can be packed back into the cabinetry.
Each staff has a pedestal that allow easy transfer and movement of personal belongings.
Writable surfaces are also freely available throughout the space, encouraging participation from youths while allowing them to create their own identity within the space itself.
ABB Pte Ltd supported the organisation with energy monitoring and conservation equipment to enable its staff and youth volunteers to remotely toggle the air-conditioning, lights and blinds to suit their requirement, conveniently from a mobile application. The installation of these smart technologies is a first in Singapore for a social service organisation and will be providing significant energy savings for the organisation as we grow bigger and conduct more activities in the new office space.
Adjusting office air-conditioning, lights, and blinds – just a click away.
Water + Plants Lab Pte Ltd supported the organisation with the installation of a green wall. The green wall, made up of green indoor plants, is a self-sufficient system that made used of the aircon condensate to water the plants. The plants helped to reduce the dust within the new office space and provided a relaxing nook in the middle of the new office space for staff and youth volunteers to re-energise themselves in the midst of their efforts to impact communities.
The green wall made used of the aircon condensate to water the plants.
“Our smart and eco-friendly work space will not only reduce the ecological footprint and greenhouse gas emission of our office, it will also create a much more sustainable workspace,” said Ms Tan See Leng, Executive Director of Heartware Network. “We hope to motivate and inspire our staff and youth volunteers to act sustainably in their daily tasks. The benefits of this initiative will go far beyond Heartware Network.”
Heartware Network would also like to thank additional sponsors that made the new eco-friendly and smart office possible:
- Courts (Singapore) Pte Ltd
- Europa Interior (S) Pte Ltd
- Formica (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
- HMG Global Pte Ltd
- Sunscreen (Singapore) Pte Ltd
- TaZ Corporation Sdn Bhd
- Zenterra Group
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For further enquiries, please contact:
DID: +65 6509 4414
Email: admin@heartware-network.org