SAGE (Sharing And Gaining Experiences)

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FAQ

General

SAGE, short for “Sharing And Gaining Experiences”, is an online knowledge-sharing platform to seek personalised advice safely, and conveniently. SAGE is starting off by focusing on youths in need of career, higher educational, and personal development advice.

 

Ultimately, we imagine a world where every single person knows where to get the advice they need, whenever they need to.

We are currently in the midst of developing a webpage to improve your experience on SAGE. 🙂 However, within our Telegram bot, we currently have two ways for you to find Sages!

  1. Click "/start" followed by the button, ‘⭐️ Show Sages (Website) ⭐️‘
  2. Enter in the One-Time Password (OTP) sent to your Telegram
  3. Browse through our Sages 🙂

An “Ask Me Anything” session is designed to enable those with unique experiences, or pockets of spare time, to quickly help others by offering to answer anonymous questions from the public.

 

When these sessions expire, it means that nobody will be able to ask you any other questions! However, you may still answer questions at your convenience!

 

⚠️ Sessions without any answers within 24h will be deleted without prior notice

SAGE hopes to

  1. Broaden one’s perspectives
  2. Encourage more youths to start thinking about their career, and higher educational journey
    1. We are moderating the sessions to ensure that at least 75% of them are related to career or higher educational guidance
  3. Foster a more casual environment for sharing

Our platform is free.

  • Sages
    • Individuals who genuinely enjoy sharing their experiences for the sake of uplifting others
    • Past experience serving others (A mentor in a past mentorship programme, Certificate in providing peer-to-peer emotional support and etc)
    • At least 2 years of work experience
    • Sage Trainees may be promoted to Sages upon completion of at least 5 positive interactions (Users leaving a post-sharing score of 10 / 10) with 0 negative interactions (Users leaving a post-sharing score of 4/10 or less)
    • Sages must be at least 21 years old

 

  • Sage Trainees
    • Individuals who genuinely enjoy sharing their experiences for the sake of uplifting another
    • Minimal experience sharing with others OR may feel that they do not have sufficient experiences to share with another individual
    • Sage Trainees must be at least 18 years old

 

  • Apprentices
    • Individuals keen on learning from the experiences of our Sages and Sage Trainees
    • Apprentices must be at least 15 years old

Our Apprentices are mostly individuals in Upper Secondary, ITE, Polytechnic and University. We also have a huge proportion of NSFs (National Service Full-time). However, even if you do not currently fall within this group, please do not hesitate to join us as an Apprentice as we welcome any passionate individuals aged 15 and above to be a SAGE Apprentice! 🙂

 

Our Sage Trainees are mostly university undergraduates.

 

Finally, our Sages are mostly undergraduates with experience in sharing with others, graduate students and working professionals.

Here at SAGE, safety is of our utmost concern. Beyond our existing safety mechanisms, SAGE wants to take the extra step to prevent any unsavoury characters prowling the net (scammers, hackers sexual predators etc. ) from being a threat to our users. Furthermore, SAGE would like to eliminate the number of bots onboard our platform. Hence, we require all our users to verify their identity in such a manner.

SAGE takes things a step further when it comes to safety.

 

  1. Need for an identification document for all our users (As outlined in the question above)
  2. One tap reporting. Did you encounter a malicious user? Report your experience easily by typing /help and sharing your feedback with us!

 

  1. Presumption of guilt. We take all our user reports seriously. This means that while investigations are ongoing, the reported user will be suspended from all activities onboard our platform until proven to be innocent. Do read our house rules here to learn more.
  2. Privacy Assured. Still worried of malicious users? You may start by chatting anonymously! In other words, we allow you to talk to users without divulging any of your contact details. However, do continue to adhere to our house rules. If needed, the SAGE team will still be able to identify you.

You cannot request to chat with an Apprentice. However, if you are 18 years and above and are currently an Apprentice, you may become a ‘Sage Trainee’ / ‘Sage’ by clicking ‘Sage Trainee 🔁’ / ‘Sage 🔁’ accordingly!

 

⚠️ If you see ‘Apprentice 🔁’, it means you are already a ‘Sage Trainee’ / ‘Sage’

 

For Sages & Sage Trainees

SAGE is designed to organise sharing sessions around your schedule. By first inputting when you will be comfortable to share with others, Apprentices may thereafter find an available slot to connect with you over a 30min video call or face-to-face meeting. This 30min timeslot may be extended if both parties are agreeable.

 

Additionally, by default, SAGE limits the number of Apprentices that may reach out to our Sages and Sage Trainees to 2 Apprentices per month. In other words, only 2 Apprentices may book a session with you each month, equating to approximately 1h worth of commitment per month. This limit may be reduced or increased according to your preference.

No, you will not be paid for your service.

 

Our Sages and Sage Trainees are not paid as we are against the act of sharing for monetary purposes. SAGE strongly believes in fostering a community dedicated to uplifting and supporting one another.

However, we may be introducing a feature to allow our Apprentices to donate to a selected charity in order to schedule a session with you. This is not only aligned with our interest of serving society, but also helps to reaffirm our Apprentice’s commitment to learning from you.

If you have other suggestions on how we might best recognise our Sages’ time and social impact, do let us know here!

Currently, our users typically talk about career-related topics (What is the day-to-day life like as a Pharmacist? How do I ace XX Company’s job interview? How do I politely reject my boss at the workplace?) and educational-related topics (Why did you choose to study business? What is the biggest difference between university and JC life? How can I write a better personal statement?)

 

However, we encourage our users to talk about practically anything under the sun! In fact, the topics are so broad that we would rather inform you what are the topics you are not expected to engage in, and should not be engaging in. To find out more, do check out our house rules here!

If you are 18 years old and above, we warmly welcome you to join us as a Sage Trainee! 🙂 SAGE believes that everyone’s experiences are unique, valuable, and worthy of learning from. From your love of photography, to how you chose your university, and even to finding the best chicken rice in Singapore. You have plenty of interesting things that others would love to learn.

 

What’s more important to us is if you have the genuine desire / passion to share!

 

If you are 15-17, we are looking forward to celebrating your 18th birthday with you! 🎉 Meanwhile, you are warmly invited to join us as an Apprentice first to gain more experiences from the lives of others. 🙂

Absolutely!

  1. Nurture the next generation at your convenience. Apart from safety, SAGE strives to make the act of giving back as convenient as possible. We hope for these selfless conversations to fit into your pockets of free time so that even the busiest amongst us may give back!
  2. Widen your network. No man is an island. Regardless of how experienced you may already be, there is always something to be learnt from another individual! What’s more, SAGE hopes to be another community of support that you can rely on.
  3. Be recognised for your efforts. While there may be no monetary incentives, we can and will recognise your efforts by featuring our Sages onboard our various social media channels.

For Sage Apprentice

Chatting anonymously means that the Sage (Includes Sage Trainees) that you choose to speak to will have no way of identifying who you are.

 

We have implemented this feature as we understand the fear or even, inadequacy, one may experience when speaking to a far more established professional. We hope to alleviate such fears through this feature. So, ask away! Here at SAGE, there is truly no such thing as a foolish question!

 

Note: That being said, do continue to adhere to our house rules for the SAGE team can and will trace down any malicious activity that occurs on our platform.