Dear all,

Let's show come support for this NVAC-affiliated event yea? Contact them if you need to register for the concert! I'll be going going going! :)
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Come Aug 28 to Sep 1, DEW (affiliated to NUSSU Volunteer Action Committee) will organize Yellow Ribbon Project Week @ NUS 2006! We would like to invite YOU to join us for the following:

1) leave messages at our Hope Trees
2) buy ribbons at our booths in school
3) Sign up for a visit to Correction Institutions (For further details, please visit our boothsas indicated below)
4) Take a look at the Photo exhibition at NUS Central Library ( For the whole of next week, 28th Aug to 1st Sept.)
5) Come for the Yellow Ribbon Concert/Forum (1st Sep 2006 , Friday, NUS LT13 @ 6pm) with the theme: "Bridging Lives, Inspiring Change"

The finale, will be a concert and forum @ LT 13, NUS from 6 to 9 pm on 1st September (Fri) where ex-offenders will be sharing their experience and performing alongside NVAC volunteers, and invited panelists will discuss relevant issues pertaining to the Yellow Ribbon Project (YRP). Come and watch young ex-offenders showcase their talents in clowning and drama, as well as listen to their inspiring life journeys! Explore what it takes to be a prison volunteer.

So, do come down and support this NVAC event! Invite your friends along too! Kindly contact Wee May @ noeyebearbear@yahoo.com.sg / 98292356, with your full name, matric number (if applicable), handphone & email address to register!
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Wear-A-Yellow-Ribbon (Throughout the year)

The wearing of the Yellow Ribbon is an active display of community's willingness to help unlock the second prison and accept ex-offenders. Each Yellow Ribbon is handmade by an inmate, and symbolises his/her hope for acceptance. In the inaugural year, over 320,000 yellow ribbons were distributed to over 140 organisations. In 2005, over 179 organisations helped to distribute about 400,000 yellow ribbons. This year, we hope to widen our reach and distribute at least half a million yellow ribbons. The 2006-Special Edition features a copper tooling stylized oak tree handmade by inmates, in addition to a yellow ribbon.

The donations received for the ribbons are channeled towards the Yellow Ribbon Fund (YRF). Yellow Ribbon Packs at $2 each may be purchased from Liming @ qiu.liming@gmail.com / HP 91763525 and also at our booths at the various locations, Kent Ridge campus, on the following days from 10a.m. to 4p.m.:

Central Library walkway Bench 2 (ARTS) 28/08 (Mon) - 30/08 (Wed)
LT 26 foyer (SCIENCE) 31/08 (Thurs) - 01/09 (Fri)
Outside LT 6 Bench 1 (ENGINEERING ) 29/08 (Tues)

Posted on behalf of YRP

Hey everyone,

As mentioned in earlier emails, we will be having a handicraft session with the residents this coming saturday! Remember the Singtel ads which I have appealed to you all to collect? I hope you guys have been collecting!! Have YOU? Haha..

There will be a group of 30 sec students from various schools joining us in this activity. The students are part of some Presidents' Charity Programme which conducts home visits for them. Hopefully, we can make the session a meaningful one for them! :)

Here's the schedule:
1400 arrival of volunteers
1430 briefing / handicraft demonstration
1500 handicraft with the residents!
1600 end of session / informal interaction

Please do not be late as we do need the ads which you have collected for the activity. Furthermore, there will be a large group of students..so hmm..let's show them what is punctuality yea? Furthermore, I'll be needing some of you to be "mentors" to the students..perhaps they do not know how to approach a resident etc..so please help them break the ice k? Time to be big gorgors and jiejies! Hah!

We may also be having some new volunteers, so perhaps we will not have enuff of the ads to fold. Nonetheless, we'll make do with some colouring materials that we have, or you all can just teach them to fold simple handicrafts ya? We still have some construction paper in the cupboard. :)

That's abt it. Yea. hope to see you this sat!

Hey everyone!

It's the time of the year for Singtel Hearts again! Haha..for those of you who were with us last year, this will probably be deja vu for u all! :P

Yupyup..on 2 Sept we will be helping to host 30 secondary school students (from various schools). They will be down in the morn from 10am to either put up some performances for the residents, or play some games with them. They will then go for their lunch break and then join us for the afternoon programme, which will have to end at around 4pm for them.

Thus we have decided to hold a handicraft session with them, which is to fold the hearts tog w the residents! We'll need your help in collecting the Singtel advertisement starting on 21/8-4/9 on the TODAY paper, and the 24/8 issue of 8 days and i-weekly magazines. Singtel will donate $1 for every heart received in the postboxes by 4/9, and the money will go to the Singtel Touching Lives Fund, which benefits 5 organizations, namely

· APSN Tanglin School
· Autism Resource Centre – WeCan
· Fei Yue Community Services – eGen
· Singapore Children’s Society – Tinkle Friend
· Students Care Service

Please check out http://home.singtel.com/news_centre/news_releases/2006_08_11.asp for more information regarding the Singtel Touching Lives fund!

We have requested for the students to start collecting the advertisements too, so that we will have many many many hearts to fold on that day! Should we run out of papers to fold, we can always teach them to fold some handicrafts (crane, animals etc), or do some colouring (we still have some pictures to colour in the cupboard). By the way, a primary school was featured on 24/8's TODAY for folding 2000 hearts under this campaign! Wonder how they got all the adverts to fold! But anyway, we are not that ambitious, we are only seeking an afternoon of fun activity with the residents, so we'd just be happy with any no. of adverts we manage to collect! :)

So everyone, spread the word and start collecting now!!! :)

Hi all,

We will be having the coffeeshop outing this Saturday!
The schedule is stated below:

2:30pm - Arrival of Volunteers
3:00pm - Briefing and pairing up
3:30pm - Set off to the coffeeshop
4:30pm - Prepare to return to MWH
5:00pm - Debriefing on the outing
5:15pm - Free Interaction with the residents

We will be expecting new volunteers this sat, hence we do need our regulars to be around to guide the new voluntees in this outing. So hope to see u guys this sat...:p

As for the new volunteers...we welcome you to join us for a meaningful afternoon at MWH and thanks in advance for joining us in this outing! If you have any further
enquires, dun hesitate to send us a mail at mwhvolunteers@gmail.com or contact
us.. :p We can arrange to meet you all at 2pm at Harborfront MRT too.

Hope to hear from you all!

Posted on behalf of Simin

Hi again!

Another major NVAC event--the Inaugural National Student Action Conference! Some of you may have already read it from the IVLE annoucenements, this is just copied from the annoucement.

Date: Sat 26 August
Time: 9am-730pm
Venue: Saffron Room, at Office of Alumni Relations (OAR), NUS
Cost: Free

The inaugural National Student Action Conference (NSAC) is a new student-initiative, fronted by the NUS Students' Union Volunteer Action Committee (NVAC), and was founded with the intention for it to serve as an annual platform for tertiary students active in the community scene to network and develop their own community initiatives. By helping each volunteer to grow as individuals, and through encouraging the emergence of more bottom-up initiatives, NSAC hopes to help advance the community action scene as a whole .

The event will see 250 student volunteers benefiting from workshops on organisational development at the youth level by well known NPOs PromiseWorks and Thumbs Up. Participants will also have the opportunity to tap on the knowledge of experienced individuals, including the Guest of Honour RAdm (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Minister of State for Education, who will sit on the panel at the closing forum. Keeping with the theme of the conference: "Student Initiatives From Local Efforts to National Movements" NSAC will also be featuring presentations by resource providers and grantmakers, organisations that offer the resources and services that nascent initiatives may find useful in getting off the ground. As an added bonus, participants will be offered stage time to do plugs for their own projects and initiatives, while each organisation represented at the event will also be allocated space in the conference resource booklet to publicise their programmes.

Programme:
0830 - 0900 Arrival and Registration of Participants
0900 - 0915 Opening Segment, Opening Performance, Welcome by Project Director
0915 - 1000 Opening Segment, Opening Speech by Mr Raymond Huang, Founder of Heartware Network
1000 - 1100 Workshop I "Mentorship within Organisations" by PromiseWorks
1100 - 1130 Tea Break
1130 - 1300 Presentations by Resource Providers
1300 - 1400 Buffet Lunch
1400 - 1500 Workshop II "Organisational Leadership" by Thumbs Up
1500 - 1530 Stage Time for Participants
1530 - 1600 Arrival of Guest of Honour Keynote Speech by RADM(NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Minister of State (Education)
1600 - 1700 Forum "Student Initiatives
From Local Efforts to National Movements"
with panellists: RAdm(NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Minister of State (Education)
Mr Raymond Huang, Founder of Heartware Network
Ms Yeo Siew Mui, Student Volunteer Corps
Mr Terence Thaver, Manager of ISCOS Youth Wing
1700 - 1730 Closing Reception
1730 End

For more information, please contact Li Zongyin ( zongyin.li@nus.edu.sg )

Thanks!

Dear all,

Thanks to everyone who helped out one way or another during the botanical gardens outing--be it the reccee, booking of bus, preparing/buying the food, taking pictures, logistics and well, just being ard! :) The weather was great and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!

As mentioned during the debrief, the NVAC Volunteers' Welcome Tea 2006 will be held on the 22nd of August, Tuesday at LT 16, School of Business, 6.30pm - 7.30pm.

Proposed format:
1830h - Arrival of people
1845h - Start of presentation (Showcasing NVAC as an overview featuring the diverse no of projects involved)
1905h - Showcasing of Videos
1920h - Breakout & Interaction Session
Light refreshments will be provided.

Our volunteers will be in yellow! Look out for us! Haha!

Looking forward to a fruitful welcome tea, and also, a gathering of all NVAC volunteers too :)

Hi all,

This week, we are bringing 15 residents (10 amublant, 5 non-ambulant) to Botanical Gardens!

Here's the schedule:

2:00pm - Arrival of Volunteers

2:30pm - Briefing, getting ready and pairing up

3:00pm - Set off to the Botanical Gardens (City Link for wet weather programme)

3:30pm - Arrival at Botanical Gardens

5:00pm - Departure from Botanical Gardens

5:30pm - Back to MWH

Attire: White top. (for some unity/identification purposes)

This is going to be crucial, so please turn up! We really need volunteers! Please reply to me (loyyong@yahoo.com) ASAP on whether you can make it.

Warmest regards,
loyyong
91597149
(please please reply asap)

*addition by Esther:
We are having volunteers from an expedition team to India, and also some other new volunteers..if you see this and are interested in joining us, pls contact Loyyong as above!

Debrief to cover updates on the upcoming NVAC events:
welcome tea (22/8), volunteer conference (26/8), yellow ribbon project (28/8-1/9), exposition/volunteer awareness fair (3/9-11/9), nvac AGM (6/9), general elections (18/9) after the outing in the volunteers' room..so yea..keep those dates in mind--tho that's really quite a lot! haha!

See you all tmr!

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to share this with all of you out there!

Friday 4 August may seem just like any other day to all of us, but for a few residents at Moral Welfare Home, it was a special day—It was a day where they were brought out on a yacht ride around Singapore’s southern islands, a rare opportunity indeed for them!

In line with a youth project called "Charity Fiesta 06 @ South West", where a particular segment called “Wish Upon A Star” collated wishes of beneficiaries and tried to find donors to fulfill these wishes, six residents from Moral Welfare Home got to go on a yacht ride—all thanks to the kind sponsorship from Singapore Maritime Academy (SMA) at Singapore Polytechnic (SP) and South West Community Development Council (SW CDC) as the facilitator!

Despite the short notice time that SMA and SW CDC were given to know about this wish, (they were only given 3 days’ notification!) Mr Roland Tan and his team from SMA managed to organize a yacht ride—and more! SMA also arranged for the residents to tour the Integrated Simulation Centre where they “sailed” and “steered” the centre’s very own Maritime Simulator, under the supervision of Captain Gopal. After that, they were off to the real ride to the Southern Islands on board SP@Dover. 14 people, including Mdm Elizabeth and five other friends from MWH, SP staff, the ship crew, MWH staff and myself went on board the ship. The residents were happily enjoying the scenery, taking pictures and some of them even got a chance to steer the boat, this time under the supervision of Captain Sahwan from SMA.

the yacht!

It was really heartwarming watching the residents enjoy themselves during the whole trip. It happens each time that we bring them out, be it just the neighbourhood coffee shop or even big events like these. It makes them feel that society has not forgotten about them—you can tell it from their excited faces each time someone new visits them!

To quote Mother Teresa, we ourselves may feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. Thanks SMA and SW CDC, for adding into the residents’ oceans! :)

Dear all,

We will be having a session of Games this coming Saturday 12/8! Here’s the schedule:

1400-1430 Arrival of volunteers
1430-1445 setting up of game stations
1445-1545 games with the residents!
1545-1630 interaction

And the following week (19/8) we’ll bring them out to botanical gardens! Haha! I keep publicizing this! Heh. Oh yes, btw if u r coming along, do wear a white top for that outing k! It’ll be good to have some form of unity/identification when we are out in public! Yea. See you all then!

Cheerios,
Esther