1 intention
60 coaches
120 coachees
S$20,000 raised for the Bone Marrow Donor Program
Look at what community can do when we come together.
Collective Change Institute’s Coaching for Change program matches coaches with members of the public who are keen to experience breakthroughs in their lives. Coachees don’t pay these coaches for the coaching directly. Instead, they pay it forward to CCI’s charity of choice.
Within 3 years, the C4C program raised $20k for the Bone Marrow Donor Program, the only bone marrow registry in Singapore that helps recruit and match donors with patients whose lives depend on a bone marrow match. These funds sponsor the operational costs needed to add another 111 donors to the registry.
The Charity-Coach-Coachee Triple Win
The Bone Marrow Donor program does important work. Every day 6 Singaporeans are diagnosed with a blood-related disease. For some patients, a bone marrow transplant is often their last chance of survival. A bone marrow transplant involves the infusion of healthy blood stem cells into the patient’s body to stimulate new bone marrow growth and restore production of healthy blood cells. The chances of a match is highly dependent on ethnicity. The team is driven by the charity’s mission of finding a donor for every patient. To get more people to sign up as a potential marrow donor, BMDP drives awareness, recruitment, swab processing, donor engagement, public relations, stakeholder communication and fundraising activities. All it takes is a simple cheek swab. The swabs are then sent to a laboratory to identify one’s Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing, before he/she is included into our register of potential marrow donors.
“We are thrilled to be able to do our part of society through the Coaching for Change program. We came up with this program to address a fundamental challenge all aspiring coaches face – putting themselves out there to start getting life coaching clients in”
CCI leverages their reputation, network and resources to fund this program such that our coaches can start working with coachees. “It doesn’t matter if they are still in training. It has shown over and again that a positive impact happens as long as the coach is passionate and equipped with fundamental coaching know-how. We are so proud that simply through conversations, we get to impact many, many lives beyond our immediate circle,” says Lin Tan, Director of Training of CCI.
What drives CCI?
CCI’s mission is to create ripples of change. Inspired by Mother Theresa’s quote:
The #changecatalysts who undergo CCI’s Professional Coach Development program emerge after 6 months of intensive coach training and personal development confident and ready to take on paid life and executive coaching clients. The Coaching for Change program takes place during these 6 months, and many coaches attribute a fantastic training journey to this flagship program – the one-and-only in Singapore – that brings them through a real-life experience of getting engaged by actual clients.
“We are dedicated to walking the talk. Impact doesn’t only happen after coach training, or after obtaining a ‘coach’ title. We are here to create impact, and we do it by opening avenues for our coaches – wherever they are at in their journey – to start working their magic with real clients.” Director of Talent, Lim Pei Ying shares that coaches who experience the difference they make with clients right from the start sets them up for success as they continue pursuing their professional credentials.
It’s not always a bed of roses
The bigger the goal, the bigger the challenges. Since the launch of the CCI’s Coaching for Change program in 2017, hundreds of coaches have contributed to the success of the program. The donations from the first 2 years were used to fund the building of haze shelters in Indonesia (through partnering with Big Red Button) when the haze reached critical levels over 2016-2019. Every few years, CCI appoints a new beneficiary and after a destined encounter with BMDP over the radio, CCI decided to play a part in raising awareness of this worthy cause.
It is not easy to coordinate hundreds of coaches, who are empowered to conduct these life coaching sessions at their own pace and time with their clients. Ensuring donations come in requires a strong compliance in the administration and tracking system. That’s when a dedicated coaching manager joined the CCI team to oversee the success of the program. Terence Eng brings his corporate expertise into the development and management of the processes. What keeps him going despite having to juggle managing the C4C program with his full-time job? “I get to witness first hand how the coaches grow in their craft, and am fueled by the inspiring testimonials from our coachees as they go thru the C4C program. Running the program gives me so much more meaning knowing that it is for a charitable cause , a life saving one. Contributing in a small way to impact so many lives, makes all my efforts running the C4C program such a rewarding one.”
Still, it’s processes arn’t the only factor. The charity conversation need to be kept alive throughout the coahcing journey, which spans 4-6 months. Coaches focus entirely on the success of the coachee, and the coachee is not ready to pay it forward until the end of the coaching. More emphasis on the charity portion might help, alongside a stronger spotlight on the beneficiary so that the larger ‘WHY’ leads the way.
What lies ahead?
Eugene Sim, Director of Partnerships says, “We are here to play the impact game. CCI will continue our efforts to deliver world-class coach training programs that produce world-class coaches. Imagine what happens when individuals with the right heart are equipped to conduct life-changing conversations? That vision drives us and with the support of our community and our team, we lead the way as a coaching community in Asia dedicated to making a lasting difference to society.”
