20 and counting: NUS Computing’s CVWO celebrates proud student tradition of tech for social good

Computing for Voluntary Welfare Organisations (CVWO), a student volunteer initiative of the National University of Singapore (NUS) School of Computing (NUS Computing), commemorated its 20th anniversary today, having trained more than 300 students across 20 cohorts to develop and maintain software for social service and non-profit organisations. The celebration was graced by Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information, as the Guest-of-Honour.

Started in 2007 by Associate Professor Ben Leong from the Department of Computer Science at NUS Computing, CVWO gives students the opportunity to apply their computing skills to address real operational needs of local charities. Each summer, students spend three months working full-time to build, deploy and maintain computer systems for partner organisations, on a pro bono basis. They work with real users, evolving requirements and long-term maintenance needs, gaining valuable experience beyond the classroom.

Professor Tulika Mitra, Dean, NUS School of Computing, said, "For nearly two decades, CVWO has demonstrated what students can achieve when given real responsibility, for causes that truly matter. Their work has left a positive and lasting impact on the organisations and communities that they serve.”

Two decades, measured in impact

CVWO’s first project in 2007 was for the Geylang East Home for the Aged, where students developed a system to digitise resident records and daily operations. Over nearly two decades, CVWO's systems have gone on to serve partners across eldercare, family services, disability support and counselling, each maintained for as long as the partner needs it.

CVWO’s cohorts have now grown to around 20 students each summer. At its peak in 2024, its Active Ageing Centre (AAC) system, built on a shared multi-tenant platform called Cornerstone, was deployed across 13 Active Ageing Centres in four partner organisations, and was whitelisted by the Agency for Integrated Care as an approved AAC IT system in October 2024.

The programme has also contributed beyond its usual social service work when the need arose. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Assoc Prof Leong assembled a team of six CVWO students and alumni to build SwiftCobra, a web application which supported contact tracing operations for the Whole-of-Government Health Surveillance Task Force. The completed system, based on an initial concept developed by the Singapore Armed Forces, was a critical component of Singapore's national contact-tracing effort, and the team was recognised with the Tech Heroes From Crisis Pathfinder Team award in 2021.

Charting new ground in 2026

This year, CVWO expanded its work into new areas of social impact. One new initiative was Project UMA, a system developed for Punaravartan Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the repatriation and preservation of Cambodian and Nepalese cultural heritage. The Foundation manages more than 15,000 images, documents and records relating to artefacts, people, places, collections and investigative events. The information had previously beentoo fragmented to manage using conventional off-the-shelf software.

Project UMA is CVWO’s first project for an international client and the first to incorporate AI capabilities. The team built a system that Punaravartan Foundation uses to map relationships among records, and produce AI-assisted descriptions, transcriptions and semantic searches to help researchers locate relevant material even when their search terms differ from the original wording. Human researchers remain responsible for interpretation and judgement.

Historically, CVWO's projects were generally undertaken in partnership with larger charities, as developing a bespoke system takes a full summer to build. Signpost Collective was the first project in which CVWO tested a different approach. The volunteer-led non-profit supports more than 120 informal street sellers through around 70 active volunteers. Interactions, attendance and reporting were previously tracked using manual processes and across separate systems. Rather than building from scratch, CVWO students configured Cornerstone's existing components to fit Signpost Collective’s needs, and developed only a thin custom interface. This approach made such systems more scalable to maintain, and easier for CVWO to work with smaller organisations.

Together, the two projects capture what is distinctive about CVWO’s plans for 2026: a foray into new areas of social impact, and a shift from separate, bespoke systems towards a shared, configurable platform model.

“I joined the CVWO programme expecting to sharpen my technical skills. However, the biggest lesson I learnt was that great engineering is actually about understanding people and building solutions that truly meet their needs,” said Suvan Handa, a Year 2 Computer Science student who is part of the Project UMA team.

AI, applied deliberately

Over the next few years, CVWO will explore new areas where AI can add practical value to the workflows of its partner organisations. Potential applications include assisting with tasks such as rewriting or summarising case notes, subject to appropriate safeguards and human review.

Student training will remain central to the programme. CVWO also recognises the risk of cognitive offloading associated with the use of AI. Students in the programme will continue to write the code, understand the systems they build and develop strong engineering fundamentals, even as AI is increasingly used in the development process.

Assoc Prof Leong said, "AI gives our students powerful new capabilities. This means we can build better, more impactful systems for the organisations that need them most. As we mark CVWO’s 20th anniversary, our mission remains unchanged. AI simply gives us a new tool to work more effectively."

Marking the milestone

In conjunction with its 20th anniversary celebrations, CVWO has received a significant boost to its efforts. Mr Keith Chua, through the Mrs Lee Choon Guan Trust Fund, has pledged approximately S$1.5 million to the Centre for Computing for Social Good and Philanthropy. This is the second generous gift of S$1.5 million Mr Chua has made to the Centre. Part of the gift will support CVWO’s IT infrastructure costs.