About Us

Our Breakthrough Approach

The Empowered Families Initiative (EFI) is a developmental program that aims to invest in the plans of Singapore’s lower-income families to improve their life circumstances and their socio-economic position. These plans could encompass employment or business opportunities, skills upgrading, clearing debts, savings, building their assets and more. Through EFI, families have access to funds, savings matching and peer support networks. Combined, these resources help families empower themselves by increasing their self-confidence and resilience - key ingredients to break through and unlock cycles of opportunity and upliftment. The Breakthrough might happen at different stages for families. We help them build the foundation to make it.

With our Breakthrough Approach, we want to not only change the lives of our EFI families but also bring about systemic change, creating a new mindset and dialogue around poverty and working with lower-income families.

Our Vision

  • With our approach we aim to change the mindset of low-income families by providing a springboard towards upliftment by helping them achieve their goals, building their confidence and consequently unlocking cycles of opportunity.

  • We hope to scale up and out by reaching more families, involving EFI alumni and building capability within the sector through Community of Practice (CoP), bringing the concept of EFI to more orgnisations and programs, unlocking more buy-in and continuous funding to increase impact.

  • By providing evidence of success, we hope to drive systemic change by changing the values and mindset of the stakeholders in the system (social service professionals, funders and government) to recognise that low-income families have talents, potential and aspirations which can be leveraged to improve their quality of life, rather than just recognising their needs.

  • In 10 years, we hope to have enabled 14,000 low-income families to achieve their aspirations towards a better quality of life through a network of EFI chapters as part of various social service organisations and programs, strategic partnerships, funders, educational institutions and other contributors.

Meet the Team

Over 25 years’ sector experience | Existing relationships with sector partners | Strong faith and commitment to making EFI a Breakthrough in the ecosystem

  • Adriana Rasip

    CO-FOUNDER & BOARD CHAIRPERSON

  • Dilip Kumar

    BOARD MEMBER

  • Sonia Jalal

    CO-FOUNDER & BOARD MEMBER

  • Palvindran Jayram

    CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Our Alumni Volunteers

Our Alumni volunteer community, made up of past participants of EFI, is the bedrock of our initiative. EFI alumni members play the roles of co-facilitating EFI peer circles, mentoring EFI participants, organising workshops and events, and sharing insights to improve and co-create EFI’s subsequent iterations.

Since the inception of EFI in 2022, our Alumni pool has steadily been increasing. It is our belief that people of similar lived experiences have better understanding of the circumstances that lower-income families face. Leveraging on the wisdom of their lived experiences, they would be in the best position to contribute to and inform the practice of supporting these families to break out of poverty and start a new cycle of possibilities.

 Our Partners