Halogen pilots Accelerator programme to help youths scale social impact projects
It is expected to support up to 20 initiatives over six to nine months
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[SINGAPORE] Youth-focused charity Halogen is piloting its new Accelerator programme, which helps young people in Singapore scale their social impact projects.
The pilot will help teams refine their initiatives to support causes such as mental well-being, sustainability, education and social support. It is expected to aid up to 20 youth-led projects across four stages of development over six to nine months.
Ivy Tse, CEO of Halogen, said: “(The pilot) gives young people the structure, networks and practical guidance to build on the causes they care about, and to turn early ideas into initiatives that can serve communities meaningfully.”
Besides providing access to mentorship, workshops, curated learning, real-world testing and collaborations with the charity’s network of corporate and social service partners, Halogen will teach character-building skills to those selected for the programme.
Xena Goh, head of Accelerator at Halogen, noted that the charity’s “area of strength is looking at how we grow the (young people) as changemakers through the programme”.
She added: “There’s a lot of focus on how we bring in character-building elements, because if they run a project well and learn… what we have is not just one successful project, but (also) a young changemaker who (goes on) to start multiple projects.”
Those applying for the pilot should already have a social impact, which Halogen can either help them kick-start or scale.
Goh expects “a good number of the (participants to) come in with pilots and with existing problem statements around how they are doing things”. She added that teams could explore how to make their projects sustainable, or even how to start a charity or social enterprise.
She noted that young people often have issues that they care about, but lack the skills and knowledge to scale their ideas.
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Scaling under Accelerator “means serving more beneficiaries or community members, or scaling deep – instead of serving 100 families, I will serve 20 families but spend a longer time with them”, she explained.
Halogen said the pilot will help the teams track their projects’ growth, in terms of reach and community engagement.
Fostering changemakers
The Accelerator pilot, which was announced on Saturday (Jun 20) at The Accelerator Summit 2026 at Temasek Shophouse, builds on Halogen’s National Young Leaders Fellowship (NYLF).
NYLF is a nine-month programme that helps those aged 15 to 19 build leadership skills through workshops, fireside chats and learning journeys.
Participants plan and lead monthly engagements with organisations and grassroots initiatives to learn more about policies and social issues. Since launching in 2022, there have been 142 participants from five countries.
One of them is Eve Ang, who founded Immunova AI, an open-source initiative that uses artificial intelligence to forecast immunotherapy and expand access to precision oncology in under-resourced settings.
“(My work) has always been about pushing boundaries (to help) underserved communities, and using tech as a way to solve problems,” she said.
She advocates for the need for sustainable health, and is looking for ways to make the technologies she developed financially sustainable.
Videep Agarwal, another participant, founded The World in Pages, a magazine that sheds light on underreported global issues. He hopes to partner more non-government organisations and raise awareness about the communities he is spotlighting.
Meanwhile, Natania Tan founded the Youth Can Do It initiative, which promotes youth volunteerism through community partners. The ground-up movement has rallied more than 4,000 volunteers and reached 80 partner organisations.
Halogen’s resources and network supported these participants as they developed their projects. At the summit, they led presentations and workshops on creating social impact, alongside other NYLF participants.
There were 185 summit attendees, including guests from partner, funding and community stakeholder groups.
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