(refer to the photo album here for more highlights)
Date: 2-8 Jan 2023
Destination: Singapore
A group of 20 Honours Academy (HA) first- and second-cohort students spent a meaningful and fruitful week in our Global Immersion Programme (GIP), with the very first destination being Singapore, at the beginning of 2023!
After a three-year break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the HA students were all eager and geared to flex their well-trained muscles and showcase to the world how our HSUHK young leaders could make and shake the world. On top of HA’s many other other experiential overseas learning opportunities, in 2023, the HA proudly launched the Global Immersion Programme (GIP), from 2 to 8 January 2023. It was our absolute honour to be collaborating with the Residential College 4 of The National University of Singapore (NUS).
Complementing the HA’s vision to transform a league of finely-selected students into smart lifelong learners and responsible global citizens who are able to create positive impacts on local and international communities, this year’s GIP granted our HA students the precious chance to experience Singapore, this Asian hub of multicultural, environmental and economic exuberance, up close and personal, for a whole week.
Working on four different themes in teams, this 20-student troop collectively, actively and critically immersed themselves in a wide variety of visits and activities, with a bespoke itinerary. For example, their understanding of the basic fundamentals of housing, healthcare, finance, transport infrastructure and many other social policies was deepened through the visits to the Housing and Development Board (HDB) Hub and Livingspace Gallery, and the Keat Hong Community Club. Visiting the Central Business District, our HA students managed to gain insights into the key industries and economic drivers in Singapore. The intricate relationships between technology and economy were also presented to our HA students through their enjoying the Light and Water Show at Marina Bay Sands, the entertaining and educational tour at the NEWater Visitor Centre and the enlightening seminar given by the senior management of the Aura Group. Enjoying enchanting stories by visiting the National Gallery of Singapore, Chinatown, Little India, and exercising in the colonial district walking tour, our HA students had a deep reflection about the past, the present and the future of their culturally-diverse home region: Southeast Asia.
One of the highlights of our GIP 2023 was the cultural, entrepreneurial and recreational exchanges with our host, Residential College 4 of The National University of Singapore (NUS). Thanks to their thoughtful arrangement and extensive network, the HA students were being tremendously enlightened by a series of budding and successful startup creators, during the visits to the NUS Enterprise, and NUS’s Block 71. Close bonding took place between the NUS students and our HA leaders through an afternoon of dodgeball games and an evening of good food and karaoke singing.
After this GIP, our HA students all came back home with a newfound sense of independence and cultural acceptance. Through different ways of creative, multimedia presentations, this year’s GIP participants also got together again and shared with the whole HA family their unshakeable sense of confidence and their new perspectives on themselves as a global citizen, on their homecity, and on their unlimited potential to impact the world in the future.
The HA management and secretariat teams also got to know every individual HA student in a deeper manner, throughout the programme, building strong, unbreakable bonds with them. The personal connections built among our HA students, our team and the HA family are lifelong benefits to reap and to treasure.
If you haven’t visited this landmark “Merlion Park”, how can you say you have been to Singapore
Group photos with NUS staff and startupers