To celebrate two decades of empowerment and our 20th Anniversary, The Weekly in partnership with PANDORA, zooms in on 20 fierce, focused and forward-looking women who and inspiring and encouraging others to reach their full potential. Welcome to 2020 Vision!
If there was ever an award for a hometown hero that produces tangible results on the ground to help those less fortunate than her, it’d go to Pamela.
Using coffee-making as an activity to incite social change, the 41-year-old is positively impacting lives with her business with a heart, Bettr Barista.
“At the heart of what we do is arming disadvantaged women and at-risk youth with vocational and life skills that pave the way for long-term careers in the specialty coffee industry,” she explains.
Pamela adds that Bettr Barista also works with a clinical psychologist as part of their six-month programme to provide resilience training to the women and teenagers to teach them to cope with negative emotions.
“You have to remember that these groups we cater to have been through hardships that the average person can’t even begin to fathom. So we want to, as far as possible, equip them with the tools they need to succeed.”
To date, the social enterprise has put close to 70 beneficiaries through the programme with over three-quarters of those graduating.
“One case that stood out to me was a 19-year-old single mother of two,” Pamela recalls. “Over the course of several years, she gained enough qualifications to teach internationally-certified coffee programmes. She’s now a retail cart supervisor, managing her own team, and was recently able to buy her own HDB flat.”
It’s wonderful being a woman because… we find ways to use our privilege to help other women.
Pamela took part in a photoshoot with us to showcase some of PANDORA’s latest offerings. Scroll through the gallery below to see what she’s wearing:
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