Charissa Ho Lixuan

Charissa is a third-year student in the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, having joined in 2020, and is studying in the Chemistry and Biological Chemistry programme.

Her love of volunteering has its roots in her family, many of whom are avid volunteers themselves. Charissa’s volunteering field involves working with and helping to raise awareness about children suffering from chronic illnesses. Together with other volunteers from the NTU Welfare Services Club Regular Service Project Operation Hope, Charissa has worked with organisations like Club Rainbow and the Children’s Cancer Foundation.

Her volunteering work has galvanised her to develop a project that targets child beneficiaries of Club Rainbow, along with their siblings. The objective of her project, Project SCIFUN, aims to one: develop and foster a sense of curiosity towards the sciences amongst the children and in the process create fond memories for them; two: promote the spirit of volunteerism amongst NTU students. The children will be taken on a trip to Science Centre Singapore by NTU student volunteers and will be provided with activity sheets. The student volunteers will help to guide the children through the activities on the activity sheets, and upon completion, the children will receive prizes.

Charissa has also envisioned the project going beyond just a one-off trip to Science Centre Singapore. She plans to develop science corners for the children in their respective charity centres or hospitals with the aid of student volunteers and centre staff. Volunteers can help with the donation or purchase of resources and materials for these science corners and guide the children in the use of these resources. These science corners can help alleviate the boredom of long waiting times for appointments and provide an opportunity for these children to learn more about science.

Ng Wan Zhen Janice

Janice joined the School of Biological Sciences in 2019, enrolling in the Biological Sciences and Psychology Double Major programme, and is now a fourth-year student. 

Ever since she started volunteering in hospitals in 2017, Janice has always had a strong passion for it. Her volunteering experiences with children suffering from chronic illnesses have inspired her to develop a project aimed at helping these children and their caregivers. Janice saw how lonely these children were in hospital, having to spend long periods away from their loved ones during their treatments, often having to do so in unfamiliar and unnerving environments. She also witnessed the physical, mental, and emotional toll that the children’s caregivers often suffered, noting that the relationships between the child patients and their caregivers had often become centred around illnesses.

Her project Care2Connect, has two goals, to Care and to Connect. As part of the project’s Care goals to educate and enable caregivers to begin practicing self-care, they will be given packages containing self-care items and reading materials that contain tips and other suggested activities. They will also be provided with journaling resources and will be encouraged to keep journals in an effort to manage stress and burnout and to develop better self-expression and awareness of their emotions and thoughts. Child patients and their caregivers will be given scrapbooking kits as part of the project’s Connect goals. Scrapbooking will provide a collaborative activity that helps the children and their caregivers to realign and redefine their relationships with one another and establish connections that go beyond the illnesses.

Janice hopes that her efforts can encourage similar projects in the future, extending to relevant care and support centres and other organisations.

Click here to view the report of the completed project.

​Click here to view the poster.