These citizen-led solutions are quietly transforming Singapore

[This is a sponsored article with the Singapore Government Partnerships Office.]

Hackathons often spark brilliant ideas that can contribute to a better nation. Yet, more often than not, they fizzle out before making a real difference. 

But in Singapore, Build for Good is attempting to change that trajectory.

Build for Good is a citizen engagement initiative by Open Government Products (OGP) that aims to empower Singaporeans to make the city-state better in their own ways through their month-long hackathons and accelerator programmes. 

It provides a safe space for startups and innovators to test, refine, and scale their social impact projects, and with mentorship, resources, and a network of partners, ideas that start small can grow into initiatives that genuinely help communities across Singapore. 

To date, Build for Good has organised four hackathons, with over 300 participants who have built solutions for public good, from improving accessibility to strengthening community support networks.

Simplifying caregiving through citizen innovation

Several of these projects have since moved beyond the prototype stage, supported by Build for Good’s accelerator programme, which works with selected teams to refine their ideas, conduct user testing and explore sustainable operating models.

This includes CareCompass, a free-to-use app designed to assist first-time caregivers, particularly those supporting dementia patients, in navigating the often overwhelming world of caregiving.

Founded during the 2024 Build for Good hackathon, CareCompass simplifies access to critical resources: users provide a few details about their care recipient, and CareCompass generates curated guides tailored to their needs. 

The AI-powered app consolidates essential information, from available subsidies to relevant local services, helping caregivers quickly find the support and resources that can make day-to-day caregiving more manageable.

It’s a solution that deeply resonates with the team, as every member has either been a primary or secondary caregiver, or has been closely involved with family caregiving. 

For Joshua Gei, one of the founders of CareCompass, the experience was particularly vivid. When his grandfather suffered a stroke in 2020, he encountered the complexities of the caregiving system firsthand.

At discharge, our family faced challenges coordinating care. Nurses, social workers, and doctors all had different pieces of information, from arranging home renovations to understanding which subsidies applied. Managing all this while adjusting emotionally was overwhelming.

Joshua Gei

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After coming together as a team during the Build for Good hackathon, Joshua and his co-founders quickly realised they had all faced similar caregiving challenges—and that’s when the lightbulb moment came.

“We realised we all had similar stories—fragmented information, overwhelming logistics, emotional exhaustion,” he recalled. “That’s when we knew we weren’t just building an app, we were solving problems our own families had struggled.”

The resources and guidance offered during the hackathon were crucial in turning the team’s idea into a working solution.

The Build for Good programme that produced CareCompass partnered with the Singapore Government Partnerships Office (SGPO) to foster deeper co-creation between citizens and government. Through this partnership, SGPO connected participants with subject-matter experts across government agencies, helping teams gain a clearer understanding of the problems they were tackling.

For CareCompass, this meant gaining access to the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) and getting referred to DementiaSG, allowing the team to validate assumptions, test features, and design the app around real caregiver needs.

“AIC and DementiaSG provided access to backend data and connected us to caregivers on the ground,” Joshua shared.

With their progress and validated concept, CareCompass was eventually selected for the Build for Good Accelerator programme, receiving S$20,000 in funding to develop, pilot, and launch their solution. 

Community partners such as Mindfull Community engaged 20 caregivers to provide feedback on the platform, and there are ongoing plans to pilot with grassroots teams in Braddell Heights and Punggol.

These partnerships ensured that CareCompass is grounded in real caregiver needs, complements existing resources, and evolves based on both on-the-ground and digital feedback.

Joshua Gei

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Since launching in Nov 2024, CareCompass has garnered around 500 registered users and over 2,000 total users, and continues to expand its reach. 

The platform has also merged with Heartbeat, another solution developed during the same hackathon aimed at tackling senior isolation, to create a more holistic caregiving ecosystem. 

By integrating Heartbeat’s wellbeing features, including daily check-ins, reminders, and engagement tools, CareCompass allows users to monitor their care recipients’ overall wellbeing more effectively.

Bridging gaps in mental health support

While CareCompass tackles the practical challenges of caregiving, another team at the same hackathon was focused on empowering individuals in their mental health support through EBI.

The platform’s founders are all too familiar with the frustrations of mental health discontinuity—none more so than Richard Xiong.

After just four months of therapy, his therapist relocated overseas. “I had to begin the process again,” he recalled. “Waiting months for a new appointment and having to retell painful experiences felt like reopening old wounds. It often feels like taking two steps forward, then one step back.”

But Richard is not alone. Many patients in public healthcare face therapist changes due to leave or reassignment, forcing them to start over repeatedly. 

He came to realise just how widespread this issue was during Build for Good’s “Human Library” session, where participants got to engage with mental health experts and discuss the challenges Singaporeans face today.

Through these conversations, he and the rest of the EBI team realised that mental health—despite being a growing concern in Singapore’s fast-paced society, particularly among youths—remains burdened by stigma and systemic gaps in support.

Thus, they created an app that helps users articulate and process their feelings through AI-powered prompts, offering journaling, chat, or voice-based interactions, including an assistant that’s even able to converse in Singlish. 

EBI summarises key concerns and coping strategies from entries, allowing users to track their progress and share insights with mental health professionals.

By combining guided self-reflection with personalised insights, the platform addresses the fragility of the therapist–patient relationship and the gaps in support between sessions or across providers.

To bring the app to life, the team similarly benefitted from OGP and SGPO’s combined support, which provided not only mentorship but also connections to experts in the mental health space. 

These partnerships helped the team understand real-world challenges, validate assumptions, and shape the app to address the needs of users on the ground.

At first, EBI was rolled out in an open public beta during the 2024 hackathon, where members of the public were invited to sign up and use the platform for free. The team went on to be selected for the 2024 Build for Good Accelerator programme, alongside CareCompass.

Following the beta, which engaged nearly 300 participants, the team’s focus has shifted from direct public promotion to clinical validation, with the aim of demonstrating EBI’s effectiveness in a healthcare setting. 

The team is currently conducting a clinical trial in collaboration with local healthcare providers, focused on patients with disorders of gut-brain interaction such as IBS.

The platform’s potential extends beyond mental health. It is positioning itself as a broader tool for mental wellness across the healthcare spectrum, particularly in areas where psychological support plays a crucial role but remains underserved. The team believes EBI can help bridge this, supporting patients at scale while giving clinicians better data to track progress over time.

Reflecting on their journey, Richard sees the collaboration as essential: “In many ways, I see innovators like us as the seeds of change, and the government as the water and sunlight that help those seeds grow.”

“Without the creativity and drive of the community, there would be no seeds to plant; but without the structure, trust, and nurturing environment provided by the government, those seeds could never take root.”

You, too can make a difference

Both CareCompass and EBI demonstrate how citizen-led innovation creates meaningful social impact when supported by structured programmes like Build for Good.

As the EBI team puts it: “We believe that when it comes to solving complex societal problems, success depends on shared ownership between the community and the government.”

Like the teams behind these initiatives, you, too, can make a difference. 

Have an idea that could create positive change? The Singapore Government Partnerships Fund by SGPO supports community-driven initiatives. Learn more about SGPF here, and explore other solutions through Build for Good here.

Featured Image Credit: Build for Good