Pride & Prejudice in Pasir Ris - Why Mathilda Cares About Saving Our Seas

Mathilda D'Silva's talk on "the yellow circle" at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2024 weaves a personal narrative of resilience, curiosity, and environmental advocacy. From her early passion for literature to founding the Ocean Purpose Project, Mathilda shares how moments of adversity fueled her mission to combat ocean pollution. Her journey highlights the interconnectedness of ocean health, human well-being, and entrepreneurship, urging the startup community to redefine success through collaboration and purpose-driven action.

Key highlights:

1. Transform Challenges into Purpose

• Adversity as Catalyst: Mathilda turned public humiliation and personal struggles into powerful motivators for change, channelling her experiences into advocacy and leadership.
• Support System: She emphasizes that having even one supporter, like her mother, can ignite impactful action and sustain resilience through challenges.

2. Innovation Begins with Passion

• Identify the Gap: Her journey to founding Ocean Purpose Project began by recognizing unaddressed issues like ocean pollution and envisioning actionable solutions.
• Iterative Growth: Starting small, with beach cleanups and educational outreach, her project evolved into award-winning innovations, including Singapore’s first ocean conservation office.
  
  

3. Build Solutions Beyond Yourself

• Collective Effort: Collaboration with communities, engineers, and volunteers turned her vision into reality, proving the importance of teamwork in scaling impact.
• Sustainable Practices: Her initiatives, such as converting ocean plastic into hydrogen and filtering seawater through mussels, demonstrate how startups can align profit with environmental responsibility.

Conclusion:

Mathilda's heartfelt and humorous talk underscores the urgent need for collective action to protect our oceans. By sharing her deeply personal story and the achievements of the Ocean Purpose Project, she inspires the audience to recognise that ocean health directly impacts human survival. She calls on everyone - entrepreneurs, families, and communities - to take tangible steps, from joining cleanups to supporting sustainable innovations. Her message is clear: small contributions can create monumental change when driven by purpose and collaboration. Together, we can turn adversity into opportunity and safeguard our planet's future.

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