A non-profit in Singapore working on AI education, literacy and development. We started in 2026 with one question: who gets shown how to build with these tools, and who gets left to watch?
The room in week one. Sembawang, 23 August 2026.
Our story
Plenty of people understand a problem worth solving. Far fewer have been shown that they could build the fix themselves. OpenSkills exists to close that gap in two ways, and we keep them apart on purpose.
University student teams build agentic AI systems for Singapore businesses and charities that have slow, manual workflows and no budget for a software team. Volunteer engineers support each team, and the partner keeps the code, the accounts and a one-page runbook. The first build cycle starts later this year.
Separately, we teach free, in-person applied AI courses for migrant workers, referred through our partner charity It’s Raining Raincoats. The first cohort of 20 learners began on 23 August 2026 in Sembawang: five Sundays, an hour and a half each, with every laptop provided. The course learners are not members of the student build teams.
Where the money goes
Nobody at OpenSkills takes a salary. The founder and individual supporters pay for laptops, venue hire, materials, hosting and AI costs, and anything left over goes to the next cohort. OpenSkills is an unregistered non-profit initiative based in Singapore.
Introducing Claude to the first cohort from the projector, week one.
A question from the room, week two.
The hall in Sembawang, week three.
Yibo Yang, founder of OpenSkills.
Yibo Yang
A student in Singapore who kept noticing the same thing: the moment someone realises they can make the tool themselves, everything else opens up.
Most of Yibo’s work sits between two interests, widening access to education and building software that people pick up and use. Neither came from a job title. Yibo is not a teacher by trade or a developer by training, and started both projects below by noticing a gap and doing something about it.
The first was ForAnother, a fundraising project for students that has raised more than S$5,700 for students in South Africa and Singapore. The money paid for school essentials.
The second was Snapiq, a Chrome extension that merges screenshots so people can get past AI upload limits. It is used by over 100 people.
OpenSkills joins those two threads. On Sunday mornings in Sembawang, Yibo teaches the first cohort in person, and each learner finishes by publishing an app they built themselves.
A website Yibo built for the student-run service club at Singapore American School, and the organisation ForAnother supported.
The SAS Gawad Kalinga Club is a high school service club at Singapore American School, running since 2010. It supports the club’s GK village in Dalaguete, Cebu, Philippines, mainly through its annual Zombie Run, a fun run across the campus where high school students play the zombies.
ForAnother’s school kit handover was run with Gawad Kalinga. Yibo built the club’s website to tell the story of the club, the village and the run, and to help it raise funds and recruit members.
A website Yibo created through OpenSkills for a Philippine non-profit serving children of incarcerated mothers and their families.
Yibo already knew the foundation’s founder personally, and gathered information directly from her about the organisation, the families it serves, its programmes and the support it provides, then organised that material into a clear structure for the website.
Yibo scoped the project, planned the pages, wrote and edited the content, designed the experience and developed the finished site. The website explains four programmes covering education, psychosocial care, livelihood and reintegration, and legal assistance. It also publishes field reports, provides support application pathways and includes a scholar portal for academic reporting.
The result is Kidfinity and Beyond’s first public website, giving families, partners and supporters one place to understand the foundation’s work and find the relevant support pathway.
School kits distributed to child beneficiaries in August 2026.Staff supporting a family during the beneficiary briefing.
ForAnother
Before OpenSkills there was ForAnother, a fundraising project Yibo founded. It has raised more than S$5,700 for students in South Africa and Singapore, and the money paid for school essentials.
These photos and the clip are from a school kit handover run with Gawad Kalinga. More of the project is on Instagram at @for_another16_.
