Elim Chew

Last updated

Elim Chew (born 1966) is the founder of the street wear brand, 77th Street. [1]

Contents

Career

Elim's first attempt into the retailing turned out to be a huge success in the retail scene. Prior to that, she was in Britain undergoing a hairdressing course and returned to Singapore to open a salon.

In addition to expanding her retail businesses, Elim lent her expertise, experience and time to various youth organisations in Singapore. She co-founded Singapore Street Festival – a platform for showcasing local talents in areas such as performing arts, visual art forms, fashion, entertainment and sports, The Young Entrepreneur Mastery (TYEM) – a non-profit academy that supported youth entrepreneurship and inculcated an entrepreneurial mindset in out-of-school youths. Elim was also a founding member and director of the Social Innovation Park (SIP), [2] a social enterprise incubator which aimed to provide a replicable set of integrated services and resources that would help create a platform to support social entrepreneurs' business models that advocated societal change. Through this platform, she championed Pop and Talent Hub, the first social enterprise talent development platform in Singapore which gathered talents from social homes, institutions and also professional artists to sell their artworks with the objective of making them self-reliant.

Community work

As part of Elim's on-going community campaigns, she launched My Voice in 2004 which was a book featuring 77 earnest real life experiences written by youths from all walks of life. My Voice was supported by MCYS, South East Community Development Centre (CDC), UFM 100.3FM and Drama Box. The 2nd edition of My Voice – Breaking Free was launched subsequently on 9 December 2006. All proceeds from the sale of My Voice was used for funding life skills, entrepreneurial and creative skills workshops run by TYEM, which guided youths to take on life challenges with purpose and confidence.

On top of that, Elim also sat in over 20 committees. She chaired and co-chaired several public service, youth and community groups including the Programming Committee for *scape. *scape was an iconic youth community space for free expressions supported by MCYS and National Youth Council of Singapore (NYC) and Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) of Ministry of Trade and Industry. [3] She was a member on the Board of Trustees, [4] Entrepreneurship Committee and Investment Committee at the National University of Singapore.She got the award for the most Promising Woman Entrepreneur in 2001 by the Singapore Association of Small and Medium Enterprises

Awards

Her accolades included being named the "Most Promising Woman Entrepreneur of the Year" by ASME in 2001, awarded "Mont Blanc Businesswomen Award" in 2002, "Young Woman Achiever Award" by Her World and "Leadership and Mentoring Award" by Research Communications International in 2003. She acknowledged that her first award in 2001 gave her the opportunity to become a youth ambassador in Singapore.

Personal life

She is a member of City Harvest Church. When key members of the church were charged by CAD she was quoted : "City Harvest has been my family for 21 years and a family comes together in challenging times".

Related Research Articles

Yu-Foo Yee Shoon is a former Singaporean politician. A member of the country's governing People's Action Party (PAP), she served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1984 to 2011. Her political appointments included Mayor of South West District of Singapore and Minister of State at the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.

77th Street was a clothing company based in Singapore founded by Elim Chew in 1988 with a small shop at Far East Plaza, Singapore. Citing rising rents, Elim Chew closed the last 77th Street outlet at Ang Mo Kio in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loretta Chen</span>

Loretta Chen, is a Singaporean theatre director, television presenter, radio personality and author. She was the Group Business Development & Creative Director of The Activation Group, a regional creative agency and production house. She is currently based in Honolulu but is Visiting Professor at the School of Leadership and Organisational Studies at the University of Southern Maine. She is also Adjunct Professor in Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and University of Hawaii.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Leadership Academy</span> Premier Pan-African high school in South Africa

The African Leadership Academy (ALA) is an educational institution located in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, for students between the ages of 16 and 19 years old, with current alumni coming from 46 countries.

Inderjit Singh Dhaliwal is a serial entrepreneur and former politician in Singapore's parliament representing the Ang Mo Kio GRC from 1996 to 2015.

Vanessa Kirsch is an American social entrepreneur widely recognized for her work in public and civic service. Kirsch is currently the Founder and Co-Ceo of New Profit, a venture philanthropy fund based in Boston, Massachusetts. She also founded and formerly led Public Allies, a national youth service organization, and the Women’s Information Network, an organization that provides support, training, and political access to young women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Periquet</span>

Anna Marie Periquet is a Filipino-born entrepreneur advocate, businesswoman, socio civic leader, talk show host, 5-dance Latin dancesport athlete and champion, public servant, and a former member of the House of Representatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social Enterprise Association</span>

The Social Enterprise Association, also known as "SE Association", was a platform to bring together social entrepreneurs, social enterprises, academic institutions, and businesses in Singapore. The goal of the SE Association is to strengthen the culture of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises so as to bring about positive social impact within Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronni Kahn</span> Australian social entrepreneur

Ronni Kahn AO is an Australian social entrepreneur, best known for founding the food rescue charity OzHarvest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Low Ngai Yuen</span>

Low Ngai Yuen (劉藝苑) is a Malaysian film director, producer, actress and TV show host. She is also a women's rights activist and an entrepreneur in the arts industry. She directed the production of short films and documentaries that advocate women's rights. Low is the current President of Kakiseni, an NGO platform for the performing arts in Malaysia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uganda National Entrepreneurship Development Institute</span>

The Uganda National Entrepreneurship Development Institute (UNEDI) is a privately owned national resource development institution in Uganda whose focus area is entrepreneurship education, training and research. The institute provides training techniques, faculty support, consultancy, research as well as teaching and development of entrepreneurship training materials.

Nisreen Shocair is the President of Virgin Megastore Middle East and North Africa as well as a TV personality.

Sofana R. Dahlan is an accomplished Saudi lawyer and social entrepreneur. She holds the prized distinction of being among the first three female lawyers to have been granted the permit to practice law in Saudi Arabia and has served as a legal consultant in different parts of the Arab world including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Dahlan was also the Vice Governor for Entrepreneurship Advancement at the Small and Medium Enterprises Authority of Saudi Arabia from 2016 to 2017, making her the first Saudi female senior economic policymaker. Most recently she has enrolled at King's College, London in order to pursue a PhD in Culture Media and Creative Industries specialising in: The Obstacles Facing the Development of Creative Industries in Saudi Arabia: A Deep Dive into Intellectual Property Infringement and its Implications.

Social entrepreneurship in South Asia involves business activities that have a social benefit, often for people at the bottom of the pyramid. It is an emerging area of entrepreneurship that is supported by both the public sector and the private sector.

Caroline Diehl is the founder of The Media Trust, where she was chief executive until 2017. She is also the founder and executive chairman of The Community Channel Ltd, a charitable Community Benefit Society that owns the UK broadcast television channel, Together TV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bestie Tamara Atti</span>

Best Weretamarapere Atti, popularly known as Bestie Atti is a Nigerian lawyer, technology entrepreneur, business development professional, women development consultant and founder of Bestie Network Africa, a social enterprise that promotes education, entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership for young African women. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Corporate Bestie, a technology company that provides an all-in-one incorporation and regulatory compliance tool for entrepreneurs and enterprises to start, launch and manage their businesses without stress or complex paper work so that they can grow, get access to funding, build customer loyalty, develop investor trust, create new jobs and contribute to economic development.

Mirabelle Morah is a social entrepreneur and the founder of BlankPaperz Media, a digital publishing platform. Morah was a panelist at the 2019 and 2020 Social Enterprise World Forum where she spoke on "Innovation in Youth Engagement," and "Building Youth Movements." She is also a recipient of Her Network Woman of the Future Award.

Nang Lang Kham is a Burmese businesswoman and philanthropist. She is a Deputy CEO of Kanbawza Bank, and the executive director of the Kanbawza Group, a major business conglomerate founded by her father, Aung Ko Win. Nang is also known for her philanthropic work as the co-founder and chair of the Brighter Future Myanmar Foundation, one of the biggest contributors to social and community development in Myanmar which supports heath, education, poverty reduction and youth empowerment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibilola Amao</span> Nigerian engineer

Ibilola Amao is a Nigerian and British engineer, principal consultant of Lonadek Services and consultant for the vision 2020 initiative. She received several awards such as most active women business enterprise IWEC 2016, Energy Institute Champion 2016, C3E international woman of distinction Award, Access Bank “W” 100, and the 2019 Forbes Africa rising star Award. She was a Vital Voices (VV) GROW fellow, a member of vv100 and a WEConnect international fellow. Ibilola was also the co-founder of the cedar STEM and entrepreneurship hub.

Lily Goh is a Deaf Singaporean artist, entrepreneur, and community leader.

References

  1. "Elim Chew". National Library, Singapore. Archived from the original on 27 July 2010.
  2. Social Innovation Park Archived 3 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ACE – Action Community For Entrepreneurship Archived 6 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  4. NUS Board of Trustees Archived 29 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine