SINGAPORE
Jerome Ong
Multilingual policy researcher, social-impact founder and youth advocate.
I study how communication barriers prevent people from accessing education, economic opportunity and public institutions, and I build programmes designed to close those gaps across Southeast Asia.
Communication is not a soft skill. It functions as infrastructure. People lose access to education, government services and employment when they cannot navigate the language, communication norms, or institutional expectations of a system. I work where that gap opens: in classrooms, in a constituency office and in refugee education. The question underneath all of it is who gets to be understood, and who is left explaining themselves to a system that is not listening.
Learners, residents and villagers reached through language-access work across four initiatives since November 2024.
Cases I wrote at the constituency office and sessions delivered by the programmes I helped build, where language or communication was the obstacle.
Trained or working alongside me at Project Flare and Project Reperio. Separate teams, no overlap.
A special education school, refugee education online, a constituency office and an overseas community project.
People reached: 100 students at Project Flare, 80 at Project Reperio, 230 in Cambodia and residents across 150 casework cases. No one is counted in more than one initiative. Access cases: 150 casework cases, plus 20+ Flare sessions, 50+ Reperio sessions and six days of lessons in Cambodia, delivered by the programme teams. Figures as at August 2026; casework continues weekly. Each project page says what its own figures do and do not show.
What access adds up to
Flagship initiatives removing barriers
Project Flare:
Communication and disability inclusion
A volunteer-built communication curriculum delivered with Grace Orchard School, designed so that neurodiverse students can advocate for themselves.
MY ROLE
Co-founder, curriculum design, volunteer training, partnership management
IMPACT
100 students directly reached
Explore →
Weekly constituency casework in Singapore, roughly half of it conducted in Mandarin, turning residents' spoken concerns into written cases that government agencies can act on.
MY ROLE
Casework volunteer, Mandarin translation and case writing
IMPACT
More than 100 cases handled
Explore →
Meet-the-People Sessions:
Mandarin, policy and civic access
Project Reperio:
Refugee education and sustainable access
Education for refugee students in Johor Bahru, delivered on Zoom, where the cost of mobile data decides who can attend.
MY ROLE
Tutor (academic track), executive committee, publicity
IMPACT
80 young people aged 14 to 18 reached
Explore →
Research and ideas on inclusive policy
PEER-REVIEWED
A Weapon of Mass Distraction
International Journal of High School Research, June 2026
COMMENTARY
The Language of Exclusion: When Policy Speaks and You Cannot Follow
Policy Commentary, March 2026
What access costs
A free lesson is not free. Project Reperio runs on Zoom, so the first thing our fundraiser bought was not books or school fees but mobile data: SGD 3,000 over two years. Nobody is paid to sit at a Meet-the-People table, and nothing guarantees the next volunteer speaks Mandarin. Every barrier I have worked on has a price attached, and someone is either paying it or not paying it. Working out who, and on what terms, is what took me into private equity, corporate law and consulting. The Unspoken Policy is the name I gave that enquiry, once the four initiatives turned out to be one.
Impact →
Language as access to institutions
I have volunteered at the weekly Meet-the-People Session in my own ward, Telok Blangah, since November 2024. About half the cases I help with are in Mandarin. Not classroom Mandarin: an elderly resident describing a housing problem, and the work of turning that into something an agency will act on. Mandarin is how I reach the problem at all.
Weekly Meet-the-People Session, Telok Blangah, 2025.
Funding this work for a year has not been the hard part. Keeping it going has. Across Southeast Asia, who is made responsible for communication access: government, business or the institutions people walk into?