President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards 2022 winners, Nazmul Khan and Cho Ming Xiu

In this edition of Groundup Features: we extend our heartiest congratulations to our friends from Groundup Central who won the President's Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards 2022, Nazmul, founder of 24asia and winner of the People of Good (Open) Category, and Ming Xiu, founder of Campus PSY and winner of the Leaders of Good (Youth) Category.

(PHOTO: 24ASIA)

Mohamad Nazmul Hoque Khan

[People of Good - Open category]
 

Nazmul is the founder of 24asia, a migrant volunteer group that believes in empowerment, community collaboration, and mental wellness in the migrant community in Singapore. He has been living in Singapore for over 15 years and saw a need to bridge the gap between local and migrant communities in order for migrants to feel more at home while working in Singapore.

Over the last 10 years, he has supported the migrant worker community in numerous ways. One such effort was the creation and execution of over 129 weekend live online shows, that was co-created with the migrant community. The shows comprise of cultural and musical concerts, and discussion on community issues, to provide migrant workers with an avenue to share their feelings and thoughts during the circuit breaker period. Nazmul also stepped forward to provide food to the migrant communities through the distribution of 3000 packets of food while also promoting local hawkers through food blogs. Helping the migrant community in their progress and growth, Nazmul organised training and empowerment workshops such as MS office, Graphics Design, Video Editing, and even TV Hosting online classes. He also initiated online mental health counselling sessions via Zoom. A believer in collaboration, Nazmul led 24asia’s community initiatives in blood donation drives and voluntary beach clean-ups.

Nazmul has undoubtedly helped the migrant community in Singapore to feel more connected to one another and the local community. He has created ways for migrant workers to improve their soft skills as well as their technical skills, ultimately aiding in their personal and career growth.
 

(PHOTO: CAMPUS PSY)

Cho Ming Xiu

[Leader of Good - Youth Category]
 

Ming Xiu is motivated to be part of youths’ mental health recovery journey and does so by empowering youths as a mentor and being an active collaborator in the ecosystem. Ming Xiu understands that many youths lack the self-efficacy to support their peers in distress. Thus, he started Campus PSY to equip youths with peer helping skills. Campus Psy started as a groundup but has now grown into a registered charity.

The impact Ming Xiu has made on the youth mental health scene can be described by 5 pillars. Firstly, through advocacy, he was involved in over 70 mental health outreach & advocacy events, such as the Beyond the Label Festival and World Mental Health Day, and conducted over 100 awareness talks & workshops to promote awareness & help-seeking behaviour among youths. Secondly, he also provides training to 50 to 100 youths annually, under his work at Campus PSY, to equip them with mental health literacy and peer support skills. Once trained, they then move on to the third pillar to provide online peer support, which has received feedback that the support has been helpful and given the beneficiaries hope in their recovery journey. Fourth, Campus PSY also provides volunteering opportunities at IMH, where they interact with elderly patients, and the last pillar is intervention, which Ming Xiu is currently working on, to build a team of Allied Health professionals to provide counselling and case management to help youths and caregivers in their recovery. Ming Xiu hopes to expand E-PSY to become a one-stop 24-hour "by youths, for youths" peer support ecosystem, and rally different service providers to incorporate more preventive upstream measures through Beyond the Label 2.0.

Ming Xiu has a wide influence in the ecosystem, having over 40 partners across the Youth, Social Service, Healthcare, and Education sectors and key stakeholders in the 3P Sectors. One of his contributions is his partnership with TikTok Singapore for Youth for Good, where he collaborated with MCCY, MOE, NYC, and various NPOs to train youths who are passionate in mental health to be content creators.

Overall, Ming Xiu is a strong advocate who leads societal change in the youth mental health landscape, and who continues to inspire youths and encourage volunteers to look beyond labels and limitations attached to their own mental health.

We would like to congratulate our winners again.

* This feature has been edited for clarity

About the authors:

Hazel is currently an intern at Groundup Central. She hopes to be able to make sense of and tackle the existing inequalities that vulnerable communities face.