Outgoing Students

Tan Mingwei Global Community Service Grant

Students participating in their respective community service projects.

This Grant is created in memory of the late Ms Tan Mingwei, who was a medical student at Cambridge University.

During her university and school holidays, Mingwei went on several volunteer trips overseas. She completed a medical attachment at a HIV-AIDS clinic in Botswana, and volunteered with mobile and neurosurgery clinics in Nepal under the Cambridge Mountain Trust. When she was a student at Raffles Girls’ School, she taught English to underprivileged children in Taiwan. She also taught handicapped archers when she was schooling in Raffles Junior College. She was greatly inspired by the overseas volunteer trips that she undertook.

In the spirit of promoting volunteerism, this Grant is set up for the purpose of awarding students who carry out meaningful community work in developing countries just like what Mingwei actively pursued, and was transformed by the experience gained from the projects. It aims to encourage students to take on projects that help communities sustain themselves over a longer term.

Be inspired by the community service project undertaken by Sharifah Nabilah Syed Omar, one of our past recipients of the Grant, published in NUS News.

Quantum

Each grant is valued up to S$2,000 each. The actual amount will be decided based on the nature and merit of the project and the applicant’s financial needs

Eligibility Criteria

Full-time NUS undergraduate students who will be carrying out community service or participate in internships with community service providers in developing countries. Students must impart a skill or service which is both lacking in and needed by the community in these developing countries.

The skill or service could be directly related to the student’s field of study (such as medicine, engineering, IT, science, and environmental studies), or it could be a more generalised skill such as teaching.

Projects which would be suitable for the Grant include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Medical/dental care and education;
• Engineering and other technical projects;
• Teaching of English language and other subjects;
• Computer, web and media skills;
• Children’s education;
• Work in human rights (Rights of Women and Children, United Nations Human Rights Declaration, UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples);
• Business/social enterprise education and capacity building; and
• Conservation and the environment.

The project may be organised under a pre-existing programme and/or organisation. This may include, but is not necessarily restricted to the following:

• Doctors without Borders;
• Lawyers without Borders;
• Engineers without Borders;
• Scientists without Borders.

Note: This Grant will be preferentially given to individuals with initiative in seeking out projects, rather than to members of organised groups of students.

Terms & Conditions

• The Grant can be given in conjunction with other awards.
• There will be no special criteria for students in terms of their grades or year of study; the Grant will be given based on the potential value of the proposed project, in terms of skills imparted to the community and/or learned by the student, and the student’s financial needs
• The project must be at least two consecutive weeks’ long.
• A report of 1,000 to 1,500 words on the student’s experience in the project, supplemented with 3 to 4 photographs, should be submitted to NUS within four weeks upon the completion of the project.

Application Period

• 15 April, for projects between May and October
• 15 October, for projects between November and April

Application Procedure

Download Application Form

Please submit your application form and supporting documents to razali@nus.edu.sg, with the subject “Tan Mingwei Global Community Service Grant Application”

Result

Applicants will be notified of their application via their NUS email addresses.

Disbursement

Awardees will be informed of the disbursement date during the announcement of the result.