10-Year Anniversary

Opening Address: The Over-The-Rainbow (OTR) 10-Year Journey – Yen-Lu Chow

Welcome – volunteers, partners, supporters, friends, special guests – the OTR community. We waited 10 years for today. Thank you all for joining us in this 10-year anniversary celebration this Sunday. We are family.

I’m feeling blessed and grateful – and a bit emotional – this morning. What an amazing journey so far – we’ve accomplished so much, as a community. We gather here to celebrate these achievements. We’ve also made this year the Year of Happiness at OTR. We are one happy family.

Things weren’t always so happy for us. On October 22, 2009, we lost our son and only child to suicide, he was 26 years old. He was suffering from manic depression and lost his battle to the illness. It was a parent’s worst nightmare – and the darkest time of our life. His suicide was also a wake up call, for us as parents, but for the society as a whole.

Our son was a very caring and compassionate person. He once told us, “wouldn’t it be nice if we can make a difference in someone’s life.” His life, his passing and legacy became the inspiration and the genesis of our family foundation, and Over-The-Rainbow (OTR) youth mental wellness initiative.

From a humble beginning – we started with just two founders and a few family friends as volunteers – a website, Facebook page, brochure – our first outreach, first event, first workshop – slowly momentum built and soon gathered steam, one thing led to another – OTR has since grown into a recognised force in the mental health space.

Since launching in October 2012, OTR has been a pioneer and trailblazer in the space of youth mental wellness – innovating and pushing the mental health envelope with outreach events, community initiatives, media projects, mental wellness programs, workshops and festivals, volunteer training programs, peer support systems, online support platforms, mental wellness magazines, newsletters and social media campaigns. These initiatives and activities collectively have touched nearly a million lives through both online and offline touch-points, and transformed many others. OTR provides a platform for self-discovery, healing, and transformation – an environment where young people can find themselves, discover their higher self, connect to their purpose and spread their wings – where they can transform and transcend – via holistic self-care and a supportive community. We have so many stories of young people going through their journey with us – and who have embarked on their own path of transformation.

From an organization that pioneered mental wellness as a journey and championed prevention and preemption over clinical intervention with innovations such as Holistic Self-Care, Circle-of-Care, Guardian Angels, Wellness Space, Mental Wellness Festivals, Youth Matters, OTR Listens, Rainbow Connection magazines and a change inside-out approach to life and human wellbeing, innovation is a constant driving force for positive change.

What started from the ashes of a heart-shattering family tragedy has transformed into a thriving organization with a mission that turned into a movement to transform mental wellness for the 21st century.

We first arrived in Singapore some 26 years ago. I was with Apple at the time. My entrepreneurial journey began soon after, founding multiple tech start-ups. I became an angel investor and venture catalyst: as venture partner with Venture TDF (a pioneering Singapore VC backed by the Singapore government; co-founded BAF Spectrum, a Business Angel Fund in partnership with SPRING Singapore; co-founded Fatfish Medialab, a digital media accelerator under the MDA iJam program; served as a Director of Business Angel Network SEA. As an angel investor, I’ve invested into nearly 40 early stage startups – many of these startups have failed; so I’m expert on failure. I served as executive mentor and adjunct professor to NUS Enterprise, mentor to INSEAD, advisor to SMU BIG incubator, countless judging panels on startup business plan competition internationally – from Beijing to Bangkok to Singapore) – numerous government panels on entrepreneurship & innovation: A*STAR, EDB, IDA, SPRING, NRF, SMART Innovation Centre; I spent many years mentoring and advising entrepreneurs and helping young businesses, as advisor and mentor.

I also dabbled in professional sports: I became an early stage investor (by pulling together a consortium of mostly friends) in the Singapore Slingers professional basketball team, still Singapore’s one and only professional sports team; I also serves as the vice chairman for a number of years, alongside Tony Fernandes (AirAsia co-founder) who was chairman, and who went on to create the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) in which the Slingers play. Sports and the arts both play an important role in the mosaic of a vibrant culture and cosmopolitan city that is Singapore, and a pathway for young people with the talent and aspiration to pursue sports as a career path. It is also a great entertainment venue; we enjoyed going to the games and bringing friends to the games. We (all the investors) lost money, but we had fun doing it.

That was 13 years ago. In the movie The Last Samurai (and the book with the same title), the protagonist Lord Katsumoto (played by Ken Watanabe) asked Algren (played by Tom Cruise) “You believe a man can change his destiny?” To which Algren replied, “I think a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.” Our son’s passing changed my destiny, it changed the course of my life. I’ve since become a mental wellbeing champion, social innovator, ecosystem builder, philanthropist and humanist. Nowadays I find myself at the nexus of 3 major social ecosystems: mental health – with the work of OTR; mentoring – with Asia Institute of Mentoring (AIM) which I founded nearly four years ago which now Asia’s leading institute in mentor training and certification with a vibrant ecosystem of mentors and mentees, and an emerging global footprint; and sustainability – in my role as the founding executive mentor of Young Sustainable Impact SEA (YSI SEA), an innovation network in sustainability (17 UN SDGs) by youth for youth, spanning 10 countries in ASEAN comprising of nearly 150 impact startups and a community of nearly 4000 young change-makers.

Life is a journey – with many of its ups and downs, and potholes along the way. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Sometimes we are given lemons in life. The question is: can we make lemonades out of lemons that is life? This is the story of OTR – one of the triumphs of love over grief, hope over despair, courage over great odds.

13 years ago, we lost our son. But we’ve gained an entire community, a family that is OTR. OTR is an organization that thrives because of a big heart: the heart of the founders, the heart of her volunteers, partners, of this community; the heart is the source of our energy, ingenuity, inspiration, creativity, passion, persistence, resourcefulness; compassion: to want to help others – to help ourselves – to help create a better world; will: an indomitable will, to do good – for the greater good; and vision: to reimagine mental wellness – to transform mental wellness – of universal mental wellbeing – always seeking to take wellbeing to a higher ground. OTR is the little engine that could.

This is a very special moment for us. We wish to celebrate this moment with you. Let’s go back in time – down memory lane.