Special Seeds Ezine - Rare Disorders Society (Singapore)

Special Seeds Singapore is the first local online parenting magazine for parents of children and youths with various special needs. Run by caregivers, for caregivers, the ezine serves as the trusted guide to parenting special needs in Singapore.

Launched on 20th January 2016 with the support of Rare Disorders Society (Singapore), the ezine also acts as a bridge between the special needs community and rest of society through honest conversations, shared stories, outreach and alliances with different segments of the Singapore community. Special Seeds aims to engage and collaborate with multiple stakeholder groups: disability and special needs support groups across diagnosis, members of public, schools and policy makers through better engaged conversations, shared experiences and perspectives to effect positive change as One Voice and seed a truly enabling and inclusive environment for the special needs population and their caregivers in Singapore.

We seek to inform, connect, demystify and inspire parents through well researched, locally relevant content, professional viewpoints, shared experiences and accessibility to subject matter experts in the industry. We actively seek opportunities for alliances to bridge knowledge gaps, capability gaps and employment opportunity gaps of persons with disability in Singapore.

Ultimately, we also hope to develop an Enabling Writers and Freelancers fund which we hope can be used to pay our columnists, Photographers, videographers, graphic artists who are also caregivers or persons with disabilities. We believe that paid work will help build a healthy self esteem , provide another means of supplementing their income, motivate them to produce their best work and fairly compensate them for their opportunity cost of undertaking the projects. By offering paid work to this group of talented people, we hope to embody the spirit of inclusivity and advocate for their equity in the workplace. This is an important form of our affirmation of their contributions.

As Special Seeds is a non profit initiative, a lot of the operational costs are absorbed by the team themselves because RDSS does not employ full time staffs at the moment. This limits the team in terms of scalability. Hence we welcome community partners who are supportive of our cause in lending us a hand either through volunteering their expertise or helping to funds raise .

Read about Special Seeds by clicking on the image below.