This IEx engages students in community-based service projects with marginalized groups such as migrant workers, at-risk youth, LGBTQ individuals, and those recovering from addiction. Students work in teams to design initiatives that build capabilities, foster inclusion, raise awareness, or expand access to resources—moving beyond charity toward ethical collaboration.
Throughout the course, students will critically examine structural inequalities and reflect on their own roles, assumptions, and ethical responsibilities. They will confront the complexities of power dynamics in community engagement and explore how their efforts can contribute to sustainable, just, and inclusive social change.
Grounding the course is the Capabilities Approach, a human development framework which focuses on what people are able to be and do in order to lead the life that they value. Developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, this approach provides an ethical foundation for understanding social inequality and achieving a more just and inclusive society. The course also draws on Iris Marion Young’s account of structural injustice and collective responsibility, which emphasizes how social processes and institutional norms perpetuate disadvantage, and how individuals, regardless of their role, can contribute meaningfully to change.
Possible partners include:
The Greenhouse
HOME
It’s Raining Raincoats
Gracehaven Children’s Home
Care Corner
Its Raining Raincoats (IRR) serves the migrant construction workers. It welcomes skills-based classed (e.g., English, Excel), though interested teams are welcome to organize other projects.
If you are able to procure supplies for IRR's second-hand store for the migrant workers, please welcome to propose, it too. The most hotly sought out items are: electronics (e.g., phones, powerbanks, laptops), electrical appliances (e.g., rice cooker, fans). Dry food (e.g., rice, noodles, cans) are also welcome.
If you are interested in serving the domestic workers instead, the Centre for Domestic Employees is another option.
The Greenhouse is a recovery centre for marginalised and vulnerable communities. It helps women, those who are LGBT, racial minorities or HIV positive to heal from trauma and outgrow addiction. Despite the meaningful work that it does, however, it has been challenging for this organization to raise funds. The founder is hoping that at least one of our IEX groups can put together a digital marketing plan that can help educate other stakeholders so that they understand what this organization does. Interested IEx groups need to do the following:
a. meet with the organization and its clients on a regular basis in the first phase of the project, so that you can understand the organization's work and the clients' stories
b. formulate a digital marketing plan and reach out to relevant stakeholders about what the organization does
c. bring in funds
d. find a way to make sure that the marketing and funding systems are sustainable
3. Care Corner
Care Corner provides support across various sectors of Singaporean society, with its greatest focus on the elderly and children. Apart from running its own service centres, it also connects volunteers with different organizations.
The interested IEx team is welcome to design sessions to engage the seniors (e.g., IT, games) or the children (e.g. enrichment programmes). Care Corner hopes that interested students can volunteer with the association (that they will work with) for a brief period in the initial phase of the partnership, so that they can understand the community before putting together a project.
4. Salvation Army Gracehave Children's Home
PERTAPIS is a residential home which helps children who are victims of abuse to re-integrate in society through positive learning. It welcomes IEx teams which offer enrichment programmes for its residents.
Questions? You can find me at wleung@nus.edu.sg