Born in Singapore, Year of the Fire Horse.
Mother passes away. Time, from that point, feels like something not to be wasted.
Age 17. Joins the first NJC Himalayan Expedition to Nepal. First encounter with deep poverty. Something is planted.
Graduates from the University of London with First Class Honours in Physics and Computer Science. Travels solo to Morocco and Kenya. Begins a lifelong curiosity about tribal cultures, wildlife and what a life well lived actually looks like.
Joins the Singapore Adventurers' Club. Meets Jin on a trekking trip to Endau Rompin.
Marries Jin. Earns MSc from Cranfield University. Travels West Africa together — Gambia, Senegal, Mali. Returns with more questions than answers.
Founds Stone Edge Experiential. Begins building rock climbing walls and running outdoor programmes.
As Vice-President of the Singapore Mountaineering Federation, launches the Singapore National Climbing Standards — later adopted across Southeast Asia.
Designs and leads the A-Day-in-a-Wheelchair project. 200 wheelchairs. Senior officials, architects and corporate leaders experience Singapore as wheelchair users for one day.
Discovers pottery. Launches Clay-Street.com — a small website for local potters that quietly becomes something more.
Founds essentiallyMERIDIAN, a meridian acupressure social enterprise, partnering with People's Association to offer courses nationwide.
Experienced rice planting and harvesting with the Watasittikul family in Chiang Rai. Founds TigerlandRiceFarm.
Launches Clay IN-SIGHT — a volunteer-led pottery workshop for the visually impaired, later evolved into social enterprise work.
Takes Jin and Robyn to Kenya and India for a full year of seva. This changes everything. The Tribal School Project in Jharkhand. Children's Garden Home in Nairobi. Hands Up For Kids in Lamu. Seva becomes a way of life, not an idea.
Returns to the Tribal School Project to follow up on the solar classroom initiative. Returns to Children's Garden Home to begin a classroom building initiative.
Returns to Children's Garden Home. Trains a pioneer team of youth in Meridian 101 — acupressure and guasha self-healing skills.
Returns to CGH. Ten community projects completed in eighteen days, all funded by a network of generous individuals back home.
Featured in A Magazine. A rare pause to reflect on the journey.
Returns to alma mater National Junior College as Guest-of-Honour for the 53rd College Day. Delivers a talk: "Social Entrepreneurship for a Better World." Returns to CGH. Raises funds for eleven projects — including a classroom block, a perimeter wall, sewing machines, an audio system, and the seeds of a social business. Initiates construction of a Special Education School Block.
Returns to CGH. Launches the Special Education School Block. Co-creates Tartfully Yours — a social business employing youth with special needs — with Victor, Snaida and Moses.
Walks the Tasman Glacier, New Zealand. Still chasing horizons.
Age 60. Initiates the first phase of solar electrification for CGH. Redesigns the CGH website. Prepares to return to Nairobi in June for the home's 25th anniversary. And begins, slowly and deliberately, to distil forty years into something that might be useful to others.
Stories told by others — on television, online and in print.
A portrait of Alvin's four decades of work — from Kenya to India to Thailand — and what it means to build a life around service rather than success.
Featured as one of five Singaporeans profiled for National Day 2022, each carrying a different vision of a brighter future — and a shared belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
A full-length feature and film by Our Better World — tracing Alvin's decades of work across Kenya, India, Thailand and Singapore, and asking what drives a person to keep giving.
Published in the SIF's impact media series — a reflection on how small, sustained acts of friendship across borders grow into something that neither party could have imagined alone.
Mediacorp follows Alvin to northern Thailand, where he plants and harvests rice alongside the Watasittikul family — a life lived at the pace of the seasons.
A short film portrait of Clay-Street, the pottery community and social enterprise Alvin founded — exploring how clay, craft and quiet togetherness can build something lasting.
A documentary capturing a year of seva in Kenya and India — the Tribal School Project in Jharkhand, Children's Garden Home in Nairobi, and what a family discovers when it gives a year away.
A pottery workshop for the visually impaired, featured on Suria Channel — an early look at the intersection of craft, community and care.
What I know now, at sixty, that I did not know at twenty: the journey does not end when you arrive somewhere. The journey is the thing. And the most important arrivals are not to places but to people — and to the moment when you finally stop rushing long enough to see what is already flowering in front of you.