[ Above: SCAPE general manager Evelyn Lau (centre) with Andrea De Cruz (second from right) and other guests at the partnership session.]

By Bryna Sim

SOCIAL enterprise - that's the buzzword going around these days in schools and organisations. And now it's also on the lips of local celebrities such as Irene Ang, Nadya Hutagalung, Andrea De Cruz and Robin Leong.

Just as chef Benny Se Teo runs his restaurant business Eighteen Chefs while employing ex-convicts (as reported in The New Paper on Tuesday), these personalities have also jumped on the social enterprise bandwagon.

At a partnership session on 23 Sep, *SCAPE Co launched its own idea of a social enterprise for its upcoming youth-centric mall *SCAPE, in Orchard Road.

Actress and liver transplant survivor Andrea De Cruz currently runs Cinq, a hair spa and salon in Telok Ayer Street that employs girls from local girls' homes to do washing, perming and styling, and she is considering opening her second outlet at *SCAPE.

She told The New Paper: "This industry constantly needs young people, and opening another branch would provide more job opportunities for such girls."

Like Ms De Cruz, founder of Fly Entertainment Irene Ang also feels for at-risk young people as they roam the streets after school and get "up to no good".

"Many of them grow up in broken families like my own and are not academically inclined, so I want to reach out to them and let them channel their energies into something useful," she said.

Her intention is to set up a space in *SCAPE for performing arts-related mentorship programmes which will be kept affordable, so that young people from broken homes can be groomed to be writers, dancers, or singers.

Ms Ang employs some of them in her company and pays them between $800 and $1,500 a month.

"As we pay the (trainees), they are also being taught useful skill sets which will ultimately be for their own benefit," she said.

Ms De Cruz agreed, as she feels that the girls' home assistants she employs are there to "undergo training for a skill they've never had in the first place" and are "paid market rates", so it should not be considered exploitation.

Taking a risk

She added: "In fact, I'm taking a risk employing these girls as they sometimes run off and I've to bear the responsibility."

She said she earns money only from the hairdressing business as a whole, but not from any specific individual she employs.

Former actor Robin Leong is offering them free lessons in martial arts, stunt and acrobatics classes via his Ch?i Life Studio.

"Many underprivileged people have no chance to try out these things, but they now can be exposed through the studio," he said.

He intends to use his own resources and profits made from other classes he conducts to fund the lessons for the underprivileged.

Model and host Nadya Hutagalung is not sure yet what her shop would sell, but is considering products that are "socially responsible, and which educate and engage people in caring for environmental issues".

*SCAPE general manager Evelyn Lau said she is looking forward to starting the mall as the "first social-retail colony in Singapore, if not in Asia".

"To make money and win hearts at the same time is what we aim to achieve. It's possible to behave in a socially conscious manner within our capitalist society," she said.

This article was first published in The New Paper.