20
March
2019
|
15:56
Asia/Singapore

NUS Rotaract Club kicks off 50th year with fundraising carnival

NUS Rotaract Club committee members with their Donate-A-Lego fund-raising initiative

A festive atmosphere greeted visitors to University Town on 14 and 15 March as the Rotaract Club at NUS held a carnival to raise funds for their 12 groups of beneficiaries in conjunction with World Rotaract Week, as well as celebrate its 50th anniversary. The carnival featured games, a photo booth, vendor stalls run by NUS students and performances, including one by a group from the Movement of the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS), a beneficiary of the NUS Rotaract Club. A unique Donate-A-Lego fund-raising initiative encouraged students to purchase Lego bricks for $2, from which the proceeds would go towards the club’s fund-raising efforts, and the bricks donated to the club’s young beneficiaries.

The NUS Rotaract Club is one of the longest-running community service clubs in NUS. It currently supports seven local community projects, which include befriending the elderly at their homes, providing free tuition to underprivileged children and engaging with people with intellectual disabilities. It also has five overseas projects.

“We hope that these funds will provide more support to the projects’ budget so that our project directors will have the capacity to organise bigger and more activities that can better meet the needs of the groups that they are working with,” said Year 3 NUS Arts and Social Sciences student Chew Tai Wen, President of the Club.

The carnival also featured an educational panel of facts and photos to raise awareness within the NUS community about Rotary International’s key humanitarian priority of ending polio — a paralysing and potentially fatal disease that affects the nervous system. While Singapore has been certified polio-free since 2000, it remains at risk of outbreaks when afflicted individuals enter the country. The NUS Rotaract Club believes that the NUS community can make a difference by learning more about polio, spreading the word about the disease and by making donations that go towards vaccines, transport and other necessary materials needed in the fight to end polio.