Organised by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC), the President’s Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards (PVPA) is the pinnacle award and platform to recognise individuals, organisations and leaders who have achieved excellence in giving.
The PVPA Leaders of Good award category recognise Individuals who are exceptional multiplier leaders, who have devoted their time, talent, treasure and voice to create a positive impact in society and to galvanise others to do good.
The PVPA 2021 Leaders of Good award winners are passionate leaders, who empower those they work with, and create new frontiers for underserved areas in Singapore.
Leaders of Good (Youth) Category – David Hoe
“I care about enabling social mobility through creating opportunities, especially for those that might not readily have access to it.”
Before becoming a full-time teacher, David’s stint as a relief teacher made him realise that Normal (Technical) stream students tend to be treated like a lost cause. As a Normal (Technical) student himself, this inspired him to establish I AM Talented (IAT). Together with the Central Singapore Community Development Council, the programme has encouraged more than 1,000 students to discover their talents through non-academic pathways for the past five years.
He also co-founded Project Stable Staples (PSS) to support large families living in rental communities, such as gifting supermarket vouchers to them or assisting them with their government financial applications.
Beyond his initiatives, David also volunteers weekly at Meet-The-People sessions as a writer to make appeals for Kampong Glam residents. At a national level, he is an active council member in the National Youth Council (NYC) where he helps NYC to make mentoring accessible to youths in Singapore. He is also an alumnus of NCSS 40-under-40 2020.
Image credit: Oheystudios
Leaders of Good (Adult) Category – Dr Chong Poh Heng
Dr Chong cleared all doubts of giving up his private GP practice to retrain in a different specialty after a home visit to a 5-year-old boy dying from terminal cancer. Having calmed the sobbing child who experienced excruciating pain, the boy smiled and handed Dr Chong a sticker that read “You’re the one”. This affirmed his conviction that no child should die suffering and no parent should feel helpless over it.
Since then, Dr Chong has worked tirelessly to improve the palliative care value chain, particularly in the care of seriously ill children. Upstream, he tackled issues on professional training and patients’ access to care. For instance, he introduced the Paediatric Palliative Screening Scale (PaPaS) to help paediatricians appreciate which children could benefit and gain support from palliative care.
Downstream, he conceived Singapore’s first community specialist paediatric palliative care service called Star PALS (Paediatric Advanced Life Support) for children with life-shortening conditions. A family-oriented day facility he just opened is receiving its first patients in Oasis@Outram by HCA Hospice Care. Both services look beyond the young patient to support all loved ones at home who are equally impacted. Since 2012, Dr Chong and his team have served 500 young patients and completed 25,895 home visits.
Interested to learn about our other PVPA 2021 winners? Click here to read about:
Winner of PVPA 2021 People of Good awards
