Social Enterprise of the Year Bettr Barista is changing young lives through coffee

The art of – or rather, the math behind – coffee-making frustrated and bored 24-year-old Shirley Ng at first.

It was late 2011 and, on the recommendation of a social worker, she had just joined a three-month holistic training programme for marginalised women by Bettr Barista Coffee Academy.

The Secondary Two school dropout, who started working when she turned 13 and became pregnant with her first child two years later, was also distracted by the financial implications of attending a full-time programme.

Living with her in-laws meant that she had to chip in to support an extended family of 18, all whilst struggling as a breadwinner for her young family – and attending the Bettr Barista programme meant that she could not work for an extended period of time.

It did not help that she did not drink the beverage, either. However, things took a positive turn one week into the course.

“I was asked to be interviewed (by Channel NewsAsia) and started to Google about Bettr Barista the night before and I realised what they do, which is help people like me,” said Ng.

Spurred by the new knowledge, she started coming to school early and putting in effort into mastering the art of coffee.

Six years on, the young mother of two has turned her life around: She is currently a business development trainee at Bettr Barista earning more than $2,000 a month, a far cry from her $3-an-hour wage at a fast food restaurant.

These days, the fully-certified barista also enjoys teaching at its academy and mentors students in the same holistic training programme she graduated from.

Ng is among some 70 women, aged between 15 and 50, who have graduated from Bettr Barista’s holistic training programme. These women, referred to Bettr Barista by partner social workers, run the gamut from at-risk youths from broken or abusive homes to low-income single mothers.

Apart from specialty coffee skills training, the programme – now in its 19th intake and tweaked to last six months – includes 12 four-hour emotional training sessions with a psychologist, 54 hours of physical activities like yoga, canoeing and hiking, as well as a nine-week paid internship with Bettr Barista’s café partners.

The programme’s estimated cost of $3,500 per person is shouldered by Bettr Barista.

Recognised for its role

For its efforts, Bettr Barista was named the Social Enterprise of the Year, the highest honour of the 2017 President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award (PCSEA) and presented $50,000 by President Halimah Yacob at the Istana last month.

The PCSEA was first started in 2012 to recognise outstanding social enterprises for their contributions to the local community.

In 2017, 19 home-grown social enterprises across different industries, including winners Bettr Barista, Homage, Jaga-Me and Popejai, were shortlisted out of 41 entries.

Pamela Chng, 41, founder of Bettr Barista, who called the award “a nice form of recognition” for the small team of about 30 staff members, said it is important that there are “models out there for younger social enterprises to look at”.

Plans are underway for the company, founded in end-2011, to go regional in the next five years, “as early as 2019”.

“(The work) is hard but possible if you stick to your vision, and focus on the right and important things,” Chng said.

A long list of personal achievements

Apart from the certificate awarded at the end of the holistic training programme, Ng has since obtained 10 other coffee-related certifications, including nine awarded by the Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) and a Singapore Workforce Skills Qualifications’ advanced certificate in training and assessment.

“I only have a PSLE certificate and I don’t know where it went. But when I take out my coffee certifications, I have a full list of everything that I never thought I would be able to achieve,” said Ng, who now drinks a minimum of two cups of coffee per day. “I sometimes sit and think: ‘Is this really Shirley?’”

Celine Oh, 19, who joined the programme four years ago after dropping out of secondary school, is now one of the company’s lead baristas and placed in the top 6 at the Singapore Latte Art Championship last year.

Like Ng, Oh is internationally certified by the SCA. The secondary school dropout has also privately obtained her O Levels certificate and plans to further her studies overseas next year.

“I want to come back as a better person to help this organisation, and to contribute back to the community,” said Oh.