Youth, re-defining success, and the importance of listening: Praxium on Nightcap with Susan Ng from 938Now

Yee Hui Tan
Praxium
Published in
26 min readDec 27, 2018

A few weeks ago, Louis was invited to chat about Praxium’s work with youth with deejay Susan Ng on her show Nightcap on radio 938Now, which explores parenting in modern times through conversations with different experts.

It was our first time in a radio studio and we were taken aback by how many functions DJs had to juggle — from entertaining listeners, managing social media channels, creating content, and switching between multiple roles of traffic announcer, newscaster, and talk show host! But more than that, we were moved by Susan’s warmth, professionalism, and passion for the topic.

Read on for our conversation about youth, purpose, and why listening might be key to helping young people uncover their potential.

Alternatively, listen to the recording here!

S — Susan Ng , L — Louis Puah

S : I’m Susan Ng, good evening, thank you for joining me tonight. Tonight we’re going to talk about a young man who is helping other young people discover their passions through his social enterprise, Praxium; how he and his team have created unique learning opportunities for young people… a young man whose dream and whose passion really is what he is doing exactly right now.

How many of us have those dreams and those passions that we’re able to follow, to fulfil and then to bring to fruition, and then make a success of it?

I think it’s a never say die attitude that young people like Louis have today that I find very inspiring, and I’ve had many young people come through the studio since Night Chat was started one year ago, and each one has come in with a story. Each one has come in with something that they believe very strongly in. Many of them like Louis, have followed their dreams, their passion, combined with hard work and made all of these things come true.

Will they succeed in the long haul? Will they continue doing this for the next 20 and 30 years? I don’t know but does it matter? I don’t think so. So let’s meet my guest for tonight, Louis Puah. Louis, good evening, thank you for making time tonight.

L : Hi, thanks for having me.

S : You started an enterprise, Praxium. Why?

L : Why? Well, I went through school being quite a good student. However, my fascinations were mostly outside of school. I started playing video games since I was 4, and that was the seed for me figuring out what I wanted to do in the future. I wanted to do game design and stuff like that.

I was fortunate enough that my family was kind of supportive, but I didn’t see that for the friends I had around me. It was a lot of “You should study hard and be a doctor” kind of stuff. For many of my friends, that causes a lot of stress, a lot of pain, and that’s part of the reason why I started Praxium, because learning should be fun right? You should enjoy it so why is it causing so much stress?

S : Right. Stress that you see in your friends, because they were pursuing something they weren’t enjoying? There is a difference between stress that you go through on a daily basis — that’s good stress I think, there’s no such thing as a stress-free life right? Were they going through stress because they were pursuing something that really wasn’t what they set out to do?

L : Yeah, it really wasn’t what they set out to do and I think a bigger part of the stress is not knowing what they want to do.

They are suffering so much, or working so hard for this particular path. But at the end of the day when they’re struggling, it’s always “Why am I doing this?” And if you can’t find the answer to that, that’s when things go downhill.

S : Is it okay for a young person not to know what they want to do?

L : It’s completely fine. But at least have a sense of what you like, what’s your interest, what’s your hobby. Spend some time on that. We’re kind of in a competitive situation in Singapore, where every waking moment is spent trying to do better and better. There’s not enough time then for ourselves to just reflect, calm ourselves and pick ourselves up. I think that’s most important as you figure yourself out.

S : So you knew from a rather young age that you wanted to work with youths or did this just fall into your lap as you went through school?

L : This youth thing came a little later. It came from a lot of reflection. I mentioned earlier how I was very interested in playing games. particularly about how you can do a repetitive mundane thing on a game like Candy Crush or whatever and you still find it fun. I figured why not apply some of these principles in game design to other areas of life? I figured in education is one aspect where we could do with a little more of joy, a little more fun.

What if we made learning more like a game, more fun and more addictive in a certain sense. So I think that’s one big motivation.

S : I mean gamification is quite a big thing nowadays lots of schools have adopted it and are trying to make things more fun for the kids. Learning should be fun, I agree with you. Learning should also be something that we do because it’s for learning.

You studied Communications, you said and New Media? And I know you’re not doing that now, but I’m sure you found that the way that you have been trained to study, to research, and to approach your subjects whilst you were in school. Is that any good today as you run your own organisation?

L : Yes it is, there are a lot of things I didn’t expect to learn in school that I did. But it was an enjoyable process as well because I was learning things that I did want as well. I mentioned game design and in Communications and New Media there were game design classes. That was what I was going for. That’s the motivation and fuel on the side while I picked up all these other things.

S : Life is a journey, isn’t it? Learning is a process and life is a process, we don’t get to where we want to get tomorrow and I’m sure the young people you work with today realise that to a certain extent but it’s hard to verbalise those thoughts isn’t it? ‘Cause you’re working with secondary school students. Many of them have to live for tomorrow and for the next test and for the next exam. Talk to me about your work with these young people.

L : What you just mentioned is the most common thing that we see. The next day, the O Levels or whatever. That’s really what’s on their minds, and that’s really where everyone’s attention is.

As a student you don’t think so much about finding out who you are, and stuff like that.

Sometimes we think that life is a journey and because of that we postpone thinking about it and we’ll think ‘Oh we’ll just figure it out later.’

But the journey requires you to take steps. If you don’t take steps, you don’t figure it out.

We don’t take enough steps.

S : How can we get young people to take those steps? Because you’re 28, you know your journey has just begun and you went through your O and A levels in not so many years ago and so you can remember that process you went through, you know the stress you went through, the pain, the joys, the everything.

What do we need to do? What do we need to do to help our young people, many of us our listeners will have young people at home and we have young people who are listening in, what would you suggest?

L : It’s funny that you mentioned that, because the O Levels, A Levels were not really on my mind. I would spend a lot more time thinking about my games and the things that I liked to do. That’s where I spent my effort on and that kind of gave me clarity about who I am, what I liked. It’s really spending that time to figure it out.

So in relating to Praxium and what we do, that’s where we start to help youth kind of figure out what is it that they like, what they enjoy. Because over time when they spend too much time in tuition classes, they start to lose sight of what they liked.

We see that a lot among the tertiary and uni students I talk to. They start to forget what gives them joy and energy, what they want to do.

S : Right, so your passion really is to help young people discover their passion. Some people are quite clear on what they want right? You were quite clear on what you wanted to do and we had a chat as we’re walking down the corridor earlier, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that combined with having the right doors opening at the right time and for you the time was right for you to start your own social enterprise.

It’s a combination of things coming together, it’s the perfect storm, the perfect storm brings about that perfect solution for us, whether or not you will do this for the next 20 or 30 years may or may not be on your mind at this point but you want to get it right now don’t you? And so you’re working with young people to help them to do this?

L :

Yes, and I think a part of being in the perfect storm and being in that right place right time, is knowing that that place exists to begin with.

For myself I was lucky enough to know and experience games and dive so deep into it. My parents didn’t stop me and force me to study or anything, and that kind of environment allowed me to flourish. For yourself in radio, it’s something that you’ve been exposed to since you were young and that’s why you were able to figure it out.

S : Absolutely, my father worked here. He did actually. So I was exposed to a young age, but I was also very interested and you were interested in business because as you said your parents started their own businesses, so they didn’t stop you but you also saw where they came from. And you said something very telling, they came from nothing, they started with nothing and yet they did what they had to do. And so now you are starting with or you started with a dream, a passion and you started your own social enterprise. How’s that going for you?

L : Well starting it was pretty tough — it’s tougher than anything I’ve ever done, whether it was in school or not. A lot of things I find myself having to learn and relearn again for the first time, and that kind of embodies the kind of spirit that we want for our youth as well. The experiences we’re going through as a young company and a young organisation. We see it and we embrace it, and then we want the young people to also embrace it and know that even if it’s hard it’s worth doing.

S : You talked to the youth that you work with in schools and various other places, you talked to them about their passion about wanting to find what they want to do, finding their dreams and making those dreams come true when kids want jobs with purpose nowadays but we also want to talk about success don’t you? When you start your company, you do want it to succeed and so let’s talk about success, how is it defined by kids today?

L : So I went to this Youth Conversation that National Youth Council ran and success was really one of the key topics they were talking about and redefining it. It’s really nice to see a lot of young people because you don’t often hear from young people in a public space and that’s where we got to do that. It’s really inspiring because many of them had dreams.

They wanted to be sportsmen, to run their own businesses, and things like that, and it was quite clear to me that they want a different definition of success, they kind of have it for themselves. It’s just — is that something everyone else would agree with?

S : Okay let’s hear what their definition of success might be.

L : It’s really personal, so it depends on what their goals are and it’s going to be tailored to that. So if it’s about sports it’s really just about being able to pursue it and make a living from it, they may not need to be an Olympic champion but they want to keep doing it and that in itself is great to them. They might want to do arts and be able to just survive, and to be able to show their work to more people, that’s kind of what matters to them. But money does come into the picture.

S : Yes, you gotta put the food on the table at some point and pay the rent right? So how do they figure that out?

L : I think with the Youth Conversations it’s an ongoing kind of effort, so we started off just identifying what you’re aiming for. As for the practical bits, figuring it out, I think that’s an ongoing process that National Youth Council is working on. It’s something that we do in our own work as well.

S : What would you say to us adults and parents based on what you’ve heard from the kids on their definition of success? Because to me it seems as if so long as they’re happy with what they’re doing, they’re satisfied with the results they’re getting, and they get to pursue their passion, whatever their passion might be. For a period of time that to them is success in that particular area. Because you’ll have many successes won’t you? Different areas of your life right? Whether it’s personal or whether it’s you know something else. How would you talk to an adult or to the parents, to help me understand when my child defines success this way it’s okay?

L : I think that comes down to like the root this parenting relationship kind of thing. How much do you listen to your child? If they say something or think something, do we immediately start to evaluate and judge it and say whether it’s right or wrong? A lot of the work I do is just sitting and listening and empathising with what they feel, what they think, and some of these ideas of success.

The youth are fine.

It’s really the action plans where we get tripped up over. We’re fine with the success but most of the time, we’re not fine with the plan they have to get it. I think that’s where our work is at. Where we find it most useful to see kids who want to be Youtubers and influencers and stuff like that. It’s not that it’s a bad dream, it’s just your plans needs a bit of help.

S : Is that where you step in?

L : Yes exactly.

S : Have you seen that work for some of those kids?

L : I think it’s worked for MOST of the kids.

I think we have to realise that the environment that the kids are in, their voice, their interest and their passions are not really heard that much. They’re not paid attention to that much.

Their voice is almost never the top priority in any phase of their life. When someone gives them that space to air their voice they embrace it, and that’s where all the motivation and all that energy starts coming in. They start to learn on their own, they start to grab things for themselves.

S : So should we then as adults stop thinking about our young people as not having any conversation in them, that they don’t have anything important enough to say? It’s that we don’t give them the platforms and the opportunities to say what’s important?

L : That’s right. It’s not always easy though. Even if you give them the platform it’s not always easy because as adults we kind of have this power distance. Adults are “Authority Figures” to the youth. So my team really benefits from being young, because then we’re like bigger brothers, bigger sisters to them and they relate to us a lot more easily.

S : So you want a chance to speak up, speaking on you’re a young person yourself would you like that opportunity ? To be able to contribute to speak up?

L : Yes

S : To Singapore, not just to your own community and to your own thoughts, but to Singapore as a nation.

L : And I think we all have a part to play in like Singapore’s success in the future, whatever successes.

S : Actually you have, you meaning all of you in your 20s you have a huge part to play in the building of Singapore because you are Singapore in the future. You are our future , you’re our leaders of tomorrow, so what I’m hearing you say is we should give you more opportunity more windows open more doors for you to step forward and actually contribute.

Because sometimes I think we think the kids a bit bo-chap you know. Right? You hear that very often I’m sure. But perhaps it’s not that, perhaps they either don’t know what to say or they don’t know where to contribute, and that is your point.

L : Yes, I’ve been seeing so many more young people these days who care about issues in Singapore and they are so patriotic. They would do a second NS if they could kind of thing. Not LITERALLY though.

Like myself they kind of put themselves through the hardships, the cauldron, to do these difficult things and money is not always a concern. It’s not always the objective, it’s the bigger picture. It’s what Singapore could be facing in the next 10, 20, 30 years.

We grew up in an environment, in a country where foresight and planning is so important and many of us have actually picked it all up and we’re actually planning for the future. We also know it’s not just the government’s job it’s also our part to play as well.

S : Wow you know what? That makes me feel so good, very heartening to know seriously that you and other youths like you, really do have those deeper thoughts and all you need is a platform to be able to do that and to say that you have a part to play in the building foundation. That is amazing because that’s where all of your work is going. It really is you’re building the kids of today to be our leaders of tomorrow…

I have to say at this point that you are an inspiration to me truly, because of what you said when I asked you what parents ought to do.

Everything you said are all the things parenting experts have come on to say. At the end of the day, we do need to build that communication with our children and keep those communication lines open. We do need to be able to listen to them, every time our kids come to us with a problem or with an issue I believe they are not looking for an answer, not every time anyway, they just want someone to listen to them.

Through the social enterprise that you founded called Praxium you work with enough teens to already realise that sometimes that could be missing home from school, from the community that they’re with, and sometimes all we want, all of us, is someone to listen to us. As we talk, we are able to find those solutions. But I think that parents, and I speak for myself, I jump in too quickly and say “You know what son, you can do this.” And my son would roll his eyeballs and I’ll go “Alright, he wasn’t asking, he was just sharing a story”. So in your journey with young people you talk about process as being important and it is. It is like travel. The destination’s great but getting there is half the fun isn’t it? Is that what you’re finding now?

L : In my own work?

S : Mhm, in your own life.

L : Well in my own life I guess we do have like a goal, like a success point we want to reach and all that but it’s really the excitements in the journey right? How you get there because that’s where you form your story. How you kind of make history or make your mark in some sense. It’s the twist and turns that really surprise you and keeps you on your toes and what you like. I kind of like that, it’s kind of fun.

S : Now we talked about success earlier before the break and how youths are thinking about success and you gave your explanation on it. You said something I thought that was really important, that they know exactly what they want to do, you know they want to be whatever a blogger, a Youtuber, a sportsmen, whatever it is but sometimes what’s missing is the plan. You know what? As parents we don’t like it when there’s no plans, we want to see some sort of plan. I mean you wanted to go into business for yourself and your parents did not object. When your parents started their business they didn’t go into it blind either, they kind of had a plan.

You may not have a foolproof plan, I mean no one has right, because things change tomorrow something will change and then you need a backup plan you need to have plan B sometimes even plan C. That is missing sometimes from the kids, is that where Praxium steps in? Tell us about your work.

L : Yes it’s exactly where we step in because as you mentioned how, you’ll need a plan A, a plan B and C and all that, and it’s really tough for young people to build those plans on their own. You mentioned my parents right and they didn’t start a business on their own. They had mentors, older people who believed in them and supported them. For myself I had my siblings, they’re all so old. They’re like 14 years older than me and everything. They were my mentors as I grew up and I had that growing up. It helped me figure out what are plan A’s and B’s and all that.

We realised not everyone has that because most people’s siblings are just a few years older and most people’s parents wouldn’t come in as a mentor, they come in as a parent. So we’re really that older brother that’s 10 years ahead of them, 15 years ahead of them, that’s young enough for them to relate to but old enough to know better about society and what can and cannot be done.

S : And help them, you don’t want to give them the solutions because they do need to experience and find the solutions because that’s what you did right?

L : Yep so when we have mentors coming in, that’s something we take care of pretty carefully. Not everyone can be a mentor that easily. There’s a little bit of training you need to do, you need to sit with them. It’s not about telling them the answer like you mentioned.

A lot of it is just understanding where they are coming from, letting them know the challenges, letting them come up with the plan and kind of gauging with them how that might work.

S : So listen to them actually, that’s important, do you work only with staff members or do you have volunteers help you?

L : We do have a number of volunteers. Our team is pretty lean. A lot of the work we do is in liaising with schools. We’re working with organisations to run programmes with youths. Our team really works in designing the programmes, figuring out how to train the mentors and stuff like that. All the mentors come from different walks of life, different industries and it’s a range from like arts, design, media, technology, law, healthcare, whatever, your name it, we kind of have a mentor somewhere there. We bring them into schools or sometimes we bring the kids to visit them at their workplaces and we create that experience. And it’s all hands on, it’s all experiential so it’s not theory, career talks kind of thing. Kids kind of zone out when they hear too much talking.

S : Yes, so it’s a very collaborative effort?

L : Yes, exactly.

S : What is a typical training programme like when you are with the kids?

L : It depends. If we are in a school setting there’s a certain agenda.

S : So let’s talk about the school setting.

L : The agenda really is about exposing youth to more and that’s why they do things like career talks. We come in with something a little a bit more exciting. So it’s really just to let them know what this industry is really all about, what you’re getting into if you choose this and a lot of it is just listening to the questions that they have.

How we design the activity is going to shape what kind of questions they will end up asking, because if you do a talk they’ll end up asking “What do I need to study to get there? How’s the pay?” Because they don’t know any better, they don’t know what else to ask.

So for example if we have a session on healthcare and immerse the kids into what working in healthcare is like. We consulted a lot of doctors, nurses, and created a scenario where the kids will then sit in and play the role of a healthcare professional.

They play through a card game that we created and based on real patient stories and they basically have to make decisions. The one that I love the most is this one where the patient is an elderly lady who has late stage cancer. What they don’t know is that at the end, the lady will die no matter what they do. It’s meant to really bring in the emotional aspect of healthcare work. We know doctors and lawyers suffer huge burn out problems. A lot of people are leaving the industry because of not knowing what it was really like, not being prepared for the emotional burdens that they will encounter in healthcare.

S : So you help the kids see the reality of the whatever it is that they want to pursue, that is not glamorised

L : We don’t want to sugarcoat it. We give them the truth, the authentic version of what it’s like.

S : How does the truth hit these kids? When they finish this exercise and the different groups of kids would have gotten through the different scenarios, no matter what it is they do, think about, talk about, plan and this person in this game actually dies. What are the reactions you’ve seen?

L : Which is why I mentioned that depending on how we design the activities we get different questions. When we design something like this, the questions the kids ask is, “Have you ever encountered someone who passed away?” And they ask that to the doctor or the nurse who is in the room and the response is always “On a daily basis” and that hits really hard. Then a really deep conversation starts to happen, where they’ll ask “Why do you still do it if it’s so hard?” And that’s where the purpose of the work comes in, because “If I don’t do it no one else will, and you don’t want to be at the hospital and your family is in dire conditions and there is no one to help.”

It’s really where the purpose comes back in the work.

When we talk about passion, it’s not just like I like it, it’s a lot of meaning and purpose in that passion that we talk about a lot.

S : You work with so many kids, have you found that kids today are really looking for jobs with purpose of some sort?

L : They want that a lot of times, they don’t know where to start. They don’t know where to look. There’s this funny little story where if you’re a parent I’m sure you’re going to have your kids tell you I want to be a policeman, I want to be a soldier, I want to be something like that. A lot of times we say “Oh you’re still young that will change as they grow up.”

What happens is that the kids indeed keep changing and they stop learning how to commit to that one plan. Like yourself, you committed early on, you wanted to be in radio. I committed, I wanted to design fun experiences, and that kind of brought us through, but if we frequently kind of dismiss or we questions too much then they lose that confidence in what they want.

S : So at the end of the day, as adults or even as yourself mentors for young people, you are giving them a platform to share what were their innermost thoughts, and sometimes it’s easier to share with a stranger your innermost thoughts. Giving them a chance to have someone listen to them, to understand where they are coming from because they are not looking for solutions. They just want to talk some of these things through with like-minded young people like yourself and your team of mentors whether they’re your staff or whether they are volunteers. Some of you have gone through exactly the same thing right?

You’ve heard between oh I want to do this and I want to do that and that’s okay to have one or two things you really want to do in life. Because I think you may not want just one thing, I mean I did say that radio was the only thing I wanted to do when I was young. But as I grew up there were other things I added onto the list of must-dos and you know what I’m very happy to say that I was given the opportunity by my family to go and do some of those things. Not all of them, some of them I really couldn’t do, at least most of them.

I was able to take stuff off my bucket list and then you know what I think I became a happier person and I’m happier now doing what I do now because I know, you know what this is what I really really want to do cause I’ve gotten all the other things out of my system while I was still doing this.

I think that’s what I would encourage you to do and you may have more than just this.

L : Exactly and I think that’s something quite new to a lot of young people when I speak to them, they say I want to do this but I also like that. I would say why not do both?

S : Yeah, why not do both? You don’t have to do it concurrently you can do it one and then do something else and I know of people who have given up a particular role in their life and gone to follow their passion. You’ve heard of lawyers who turned bakers. People who worked in the financial institution who’ve started restaurants, stuff like that. That really is about following your passion and dream but you gotta have a plan. Right, that plan is important, it’s easy to say I want to start a restaurant but gee where am I going to get the money from it, how are we going to do this and what are we going to do to make it work.

So what is it going to do for you Louis as you continue on your journey with Praxium? Continue on working with young people and continue of you giving yourself to the young people, what’s next for you?

L : What’s next?

A lot of our work has been in schools, and school is a place where there’s agenda, there’s things that needs to be done. What we want to do more of, is work outside of schools. So this is an environment where parents are sending their kids for programmes possibly, we haven’t been doing this but it’s something we do more of. Because that gives us the context where we meet the kids on a regular basis to work on that agenda, the kids agenda, what they want. That gives us the space and we’re really excited to move on to this next, especially from next year on.

S : Alright and you’ve been involved with Youth Conversations and these conversations took place earlier this year. You were talking to kids in this area of redefining success and also about lifelong learning you know, we’re really into that now. How is all of these conversations helping you in the work that you do and going forward.

L : I think a lot of the work I do is embodied in what I believe. I believe in lifelong learning, I believe in youth and this redefining of success so even if it didn’t have direct relevance to work I would still do it. Regardless, it furthers the mission, it furthers the cause even if it’s not part of the business.

But that been said, there has been benefits because you meet people in some of the conversations about lifelong learning, people from MOE and they are very passionate about education and lifelong learning. That’s where we can start to work on collaborations, working together, stuff like that. Those are some of the concrete benefits we go from there.

S : So Praxium is your first social enterprise and I have a feeling you’re going to go on opening other businesses. I get this feeling that you’re going to do that. What is your definition of your own success? How do you know you’ve made it?

L : I’ve thought about, it’s going to sound kind of morbid, but I’ve thought about death a lot. I think about it in the sense of what would have been the impact I made on the world after I’m gone. Because it’s a legacy, it’s what you leave behind. I didn’t want a case where I lived and I died and nothing happens, nothing changes. So I thought “Why not we do something about learning and education because that’s pretty meaningful.” So even though you’ve mentioned how I might start other businesses… maybe. But right now what’s on my mind is that for the rest of my life this is what I want to do.

When I began it was a 20 year plan, maybe now it’s a 50 year plan or something. It’s something I’ll keep working on as of now as least.

S : Yeah and along the way you’re going to find those little branches of a tree, a tree needs to have branches and I have a feeling you’re going to find those branches. I wish you great success in the work that you continue to do with the kids that you’re working with and also I wish you success in your life as you journey on, you’re only 28 and I do wish you the best in that area of your work as well. If you had just one thing to say to all of us, what would that be?

L : I think now’s the time to dream.

Now it’s time to work on what’s crazy. We’re in this really uncertain world, we don’t know what’s going to happen next. That’s best time to do something no one expects. That’s how you come out on top in a certain sense. The traditional rules don’t apply anymore so you can reinvent how you want to do things.

S : You know what, I think that’s the world going forward, we do need to reinvent ourselves and for many of us something holds us back but when we find that we have to reinvent ourselves, we actually do do it. I think it opens many many doors for all of us, for young people for older people, for people who are either on their second careers or people who are finding something else that they want to do in their lives.

Louis I thank you very much for coming in to join me and I wish you well on the work that you do with young people and I’ve to say you are an inspiration. At least to me, in front of me as you talk, you are an inspiration to me.

L : I think that only happened because you listened, and that will continue to be important for young people in everyone’s lives. Just listen to them and try to think of them as inspiring people too, that might help them do better in future.

S : Yeah and you know what? That shall be what we will walk away with tonight, that we do need to spend some time listening to the young people in our lives and give them an opportunity to shine in whatever way that they want to shine. Listen to what Louis says, now’s the time to dream.

Thanks to Chloe for typing this up, to Hoffman for organising this so smoothly, and to Susan for hosting us. Her show Nightcap runs every weekday from 9pm to midnight on 938now.

Find out more about our programmes for youth at Praxium, join us for Learning Day, or follow our adventures to #reinventeducation on Facebook, Instagram, or via our bi-weekly mailers - crafted especially for people like you who give a damn about education.

Read through the whole transcript and have thoughts of your own to share? We’d love to hear from you!

--

--