Creative Process Journal

Reflection Week 1

Introduction

Transformative path for societal impact
https://freight.cargo.site/m/M1749148261502274384529783675238/Portfolio_G20230218_Muhammad-AlHakim.pdf

This semester's first design studio class touuched upon the design brief and the type of organisation that we would be handling for this semester.

This term, we are focusing our energies, effort and lessons learnt from the previous Design Studio and Business Management module and channeling it by helping societal concerns of a non-profit organisation (NPO).

Objective: Enhance the organisation's services, create innovative solutions, and establish sustainable business practices that positively impact the target community.

Personal experience:
I myself is a member of a small organisation called the Association for Public Affairs (APA), a organisation originating from a LKYSPP student-led group of the same name.

It was focused towards socio-political issues with a policy angle, seeing how policy can be affected and changed through the various political forums from engagement dialogues to elections itself.

I still remain involved as a webmaster, running and maintaining the APA website using Squarespace and even at one point ran their social media pages. Thus, I am able to understand the constraints that running a small NPO, even if they

Course of action

As a team, comprising me, Harshi, Ria, Naz, Syafiqah and Damien conducted a deliberative discussion exercise on what kind of organisation we’d prefer based on the suggested list.

While I was keener on engaging in an art and heritage-based NPO, it is clear that the common class consensus was towards NPOs, that is, Health and Animals. This presents a unique opportunity as I have rarely engaged with NPOs of that form so far, and it would present unique challenges for me.

After said discussion, we came up with a list that piqued our interest the most, as well as organisations that we felt had the potential to fulfil our briefs to the fullest extent.

To that end we choose three organisations:

1. Acres

Acres (Animal Concerns Research and Education Society), is animal welfare charity founded in the 2001 by Louis Ng, currently a Member of Parliament for Nee Soon GRC.

Acres is most known for their stance against animal cruelty and illegal animal trafficking, and for their flagship Wildlife Rescue hotline progamme.

Mission:
To create a caring and socially responsible society where animals are treated as sentient beings.
Vision:
A world where animals are treated with compassion and respect.

Ambition:
To drive forward a collaborative and sustainable animal protection movement in Asia.

Objective:

To foster respect and compassion for all animals
To improve the living conditions and welfare of animals in captivity.

To educate people on lifestyle choices which do not involve the abuse of animals and which are environment-friendly.

Areas of Focus:

Wildlife trade
Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation
Humane Education
Community Outreach
Promoting Cruelty-Free Living

Location:

Findings

1.Online and social media presence.

As a amateur webmaster, I was most keen in understand how Acres present itself online, as NPOs and NGOs in the past often neglect to make good use of online space as a means of advocacy and fundraising, this is a potential gap that we may be able to fill in.

Acres uses Wordpress to host their website, which is stable and relatively conventional platform for them to use. A cusrsory look at their webpage shows several basic UI/UX issues such as legibility and hierarchy issues but nothing major that would prove a hinderannce if we were to enhance their core service.

A good thing of note is their Call To Action (CTA) is clear and legible for visitors to the website, With a clear “Donate now” button, support us subpage and their wildlife rescue hotline all clearly indicated for visitors to see.

Not Great, Not terrible - HBO’s Chernobyl

I also ran through the website on Similarweb to give me data on the website performances, and see if there’s any issues or gaps in their online presence. This would be important information regardless of our solution for Acres, as it may hinder any outreach on that front.

Key issues that Similarweb hightlighted are:

Relatively low visit duration, but it could be due to visitors engaging the website for the hotline, CTA and their social media links.

Through similarweb, I was also able to determine that their CTA has been effective to engaging visitors to visit their donation page on giving.sg, with the vast majority of outgoing traffic heading towards the link. A possible opportunity would be one that pushes an increase in online engagement, which subsequently would push an increase in engagement.

2.Sources of Income

Through our research analysing Acres annual reports, news articles and postings, their funding comes from several sources.

Most prominent is the Acres Gala, which is their fundraising event.

However through that and the research that my colleagues has conducted, we are able to determine that Acres has a narrow focus towards wildlife advocacy, orientating their programmes

2. Nature Society (Singapore)

The Nature Society Singapore is an non-profit organisation, with a history streching back to 1940 as the Malayan Nature Society.

Being one of the oldest organisations in Singapore that is focused towards the natural environment and its conservation, the Nature Society is a well-developed and highly regarded organisation by both government and by the public.

Mission:

To promote nature awareness and nature appreciation
To advocate conservation of the natural environment in Singapore
To forge participation and collaboration in local, regional and international efforts in preserving Earth's biodiversity

What we do:

Organise nature appreciation activities like guided nature walks, bird and butterfly watching, slide talks and overseas eco-trips.
Conduct conservation projects and surveys.
Collaborate with schools and community groups to promote nature appreciation and education.
Campaign for the protection of natural habitats.

What we do:

Feedback from lecturers

After extensive consultation with our lecturers, we came into a decision to focus our project with Acres, weighing in their more directed focus towards animal welfare and clearer direction as part of our decision.

Whilst I know Acres by reputation, especially as its founder has continued to be very vocal about animal welfare even after he joine

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