Hi, I am Solyh Ahmad and I am currently based in Singapore as a Program Manager at an international non-profit organisation, Ashoka.

In my line of work, I deal with a lot of people, thus social skills play a critical role and certainly pivotal in dealing with human-to-human relationships. As I get to interact with many social entrepreneurs around the world, doing fantastic work that impact societies positively, one key social trait I observe them having is resiliency, as they often have to navigate their social enterprises radically different than a for-profit business.

Firstly, resilience is driven by persistence, and often the ability to survive any setbacks and come back stronger. It is also known as the ability to restart, reinvent, search, and carve new opportunities through a growth mind-set popularised by Carol Dweck’s work. Often times, it takes courage to remain steadfast to their social mission for these social entrepreneurs as social impact work is usually complex.

Their experience invited myself to introspect and look at how resilience have personally applied to me. I have pursued a non-traditional and non-linear career path that included restarting in a new field, and even a new country. What keeps me driven is that I am addicted to the adrenaline of challenging myself, not letting myself get too comfortable at a certain place so that I can keep growing and learning. Just like these social entrepreneurs, it reminds those around us to endeavour and remain true to my mission of growing and learning to serve the society through betterment.

Furthermore, resilience is key especially in the current climate of uncertainty as our society is witnessing upheavals and change at breakneck speed. Those amongst us who are comfortable with uncertainties and have the ability to adapt quickly will thrive. Hence, the approach I took to develop resiliency is to be a self-starter – for example, many workplaces these days encourage one to be empowered to come up with new ideas and lead new initiatives. Take this as an opportunity to acquire new skills and confidence to conceive an idea into fruition. With each and every success in doing so, it will build on our capacity and capability to face with any challenges and overcome it innovatively as it forces us to be resourceful in overcoming the unfamiliar. This is also a message I would like to invite our listeners to partake and emerge stronger by being resilient with every adversity we overcome.

Thank you Solyh for sharing your insightful thoughts on resilience with us.

I can resonate with what Solyh says about the importance of resilience in the non-profit sector as I was interning in an NGO called Aidha in Singapore over the summer. Aidha aims to empower foreign domestic workers in Singapore that come from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar through financial education. I really enjoyed my experience working in Aidha. However, it was also a challenging time for the team as the world was trying to adjust to the new normal due to Covid-19 outbreak. Aidha provides foreign domestic workers with courses such as money management, opening a bank account in Singapore,  dealing with stress, Zumba, and yoga. That is why I witnessed how the organization had to work hard to adapt the course material to online format in a very short period of time. This task required a lot of resilience. To build on Solyh’s ideas, I can say that resilience is mostly the key element to overcome a difficult situation as my experience also showed. It is the inner strength of someone that allows us to perceive the difficulties not as obstacles but as great opportunities to learn and grow.

In fact, we also have a resilience course in Aidha and I had the opportunity to facilitate the discussion of our students in the breakout rooms. This is when I learned about the students’ creative and interesting ways of staying resilient in the face of tough situations. Their ideas made me realise that simple things we do can helps us build resilience. For instance, one of the students shared how seeing her plants grow gives her hope and motivates her.

So, I think resilience is very much about having a positive mindset as well. Staying optimistic and hopeful is a great way to focus on solving the problems we face and keep moving rather than losing time and energy, being captured by bad emotions. What is your method to remain resilient?