This year’s Community Engagement (CE) Fair was like no other! For the first time ever, the annual CE Fair was held virtually from 21 – 25 September 2020 to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With this online fair, we hope to help students explore and broaden their choice of Community Engagement opportunities and pathways. The fair also provides an opportunity to connect our students with community partners and stakeholders, with an aim to raise awareness of various social issues and causes.
Thanks to our students - Andrea Lye, Year 2, Bachelor of Early Childhood Education; Yap Xin Hui, Year 3, Bachelor of Human Resource Management; Amirulhusnii Bin Mohamad, Year 4, Bachelor of Human Resource Management; Chellisa Goh, Year 3, Bachelor of Science in Marketing; and Fabian Chew, Year 2, Bachelor of Science in Finance - with support from the SUSS Office of Service-Learning & Community Engagement (OSLCE), Centre for Experiential Learning (CEL), the virtual fair has successfully attracted 1,025 attendees from 63 speakers representing 35 community organisations.
Throughout the one-week virtual fair, the attendees were treated to an exciting line-up of various talks, workshops and panel webinars such as:
- Appreciation & Dialogue Session for community partners
- Knowledge-Sharing Series made up of panel discussions on curated themes
- Awareness Talk Series focused on pertinent issues now on building inclusivity and mental health
- Stories from the Ground that capture the narratives, valuable learning and community experiences that our students, community partners and stakeholders encounter on the ground.
We are heartened to garner positive affirmation about the event from our community partners. Ms Jenny Liew from TOUCH Community Services shared her experience: “Heartfelt thanks for having us share with the SUSS students through this year’s virtual fair! Very glad and encouraged for TOUCH Young Arrows to be a partner of SUSS, and learning from the well-coordinated planning of this event. Great job to the team and the organising students!”
Ms Sharon Chan, YMCA of Singapore also said: “Thank you for the opportunity to be part of SUSS Virtual CE Fair, very interesting and great to see how everyone has adjusted to the “new normal”. It’s a great way for us to recruit volunteers!”
All SUSS students and staff can continue to visit the specially curated website for the 2020 Virtual CE Fair here.