History

A pleasant journey which started with a small thought to where we are now.

One early morning a young professional from Singapore sent an email to his group of friends about the Australian forest fire killing hundreds of Koala bears. Everyone probably just saw or deleted the email, but for one lady who responded. That evening both of them met up in a coffee club and decided to do their small bit for the animals, they joined the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Their mutual interaction did not end there, they shared a common dream, a dream to leverage on their professional skills and contacts to build a NGO for the needy. The two individuals were Abhijit Banerjee and Sussan De.

A story was being weaved in another part of the world. A young Engineer from UPenn (USA), Prasanth Narayan, had earlier helped a US based NGO in fund raising and had just moved to Singapore. He had a desire to reach out to the underprivileged children in developing nations. His ideas of institution building were nascent, but he received a boost when he travelled to Philippines and witnessed a school for the needy children to teach Education in Human Values was run by the Sathya Sai Ashram and senior bureaucrats from Asian Development Bank in Manila. Abhijit had a chance meeting with Prasanth and the connect was instantaneous. The trio started meeting more frequently and conceptualised the idea of an institution.

On a fine saturday afternoon, Sussan met up a local friend from Singapore, Ibrahim Iqbal. IBR as he is commonly called had worked previously with the Habitat4Humanity (a foundation supported by Jimmy Carter) for their house building projects in Batam, Indonesia. IBR was very enthusiastic about Sussan's proposal and agreed immediately. IBR was a good fit to the team and gave us access to local and government organisations in Singapore. Soon thereafter, a common friend, Avinash Dubey also joined the cause.

We now had a cohesive team who were all fired up on the idea to build an organisation catering to the welfare of the Children and Youth. The team of five had numerous discussions and vehement debates to crystallise the objectives, business model and the organisation structure.

We made information gathering and networking trips to Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. The extent of poverty and social injustice inflicted specially on children was heart wrenching. Emotions were high and so was the conviction to make a difference, thus EPICS was born.

We read up every possible legal incorporation law of the land, contacted people from the foreign cell of the Singapore government to charity organisations in Singapore, Vietnam and freelance social entrepreuners in Afghanistan. In the process of incorporation, our collective experience got richer and we evolved as young entrepreuners with a cause.

Most of us were from the Banking and Consulting circle and hence we felt the need for diversity. We also wanted to broad base and build a formidable team. We then hand picked individuals with varied skill sets. A small team of 5 people had grown to include finance professionals, engineers, lawyers, media reporters, teachers and management consultants. We were a diverse team with a common objective and each one of us played our part to form strong links to build a complete chain.

We had a corporate style of functioning, hence the operational glitches among the members were bare minimum. We worked in multiple teams associating specific tasks to timelines. EPICS has 4 sub-teams.

• Marketing
• Information Technology
• Legal Team
• Accounts Team

We had to complete extensive preincorporation activites and during the process of incorporating Earnest People's Initiative for a Caring Society [EPICS] as a legal entity in Singapore, we applied for legal clearances from various government agencies. We also designed the website and set up the email accounts for EPICS.

We developed initial point of contacts in the universities and some corporates for volunteering and fund raising. After 6 months of earnest efforts, we are into business.