Character education is a privilege. Often, students who do better academically will be given opportunities by their school or institution to take additional classes and workshops that focus on the essential non-academic skills and behaviours, such as leadership and entrepreneurship. This drives the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ wider, as these non-academic focal points become key attributes that influence university placement, internships, and even post-graduation employment.

In Singapore, this is apparent through the streaming system in Secondary Schools. Low-progress learners are streamed to the Normal(Technical) stream, and co-curricular workshops given to them often center around intervention or discipline-building topics. Unfortunately, this has formed a stigma of inferiority amongst them, and the lack of exposure to adult mentors and rigourous non-academic skill-building only served to amplify the problems that they had before even further. Halogen Foundation, a nonprofit organisation in Singapore (with Institution of a Public Character status, the highest accreditation for a charity), runs a programme specially to target this need. They partner with companies to provide funding for a 60-hour entrepreneurship programme (called Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship, or NFTE for short) that aims to activate the entrepreneurial mindset in the underserved youth population - notably the low-progress learners, underprivileged, or teens from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Singapore hub of the Global Shapers Community has been invited to partner with them on a project that will work synergistically with how they engage with their corporate funders.