At CAPT, we recognise that every community and individual have strengths to share. Community Engagement (CE) at CAPT seeks to create opportunities for individuals from different communities to interact, learn and build meaningful relationships. The goal is to build empathy among CAPT students so that they develop informed perspectives on the issues which diverse communities face. We believe that the range of opportunities provided, complemented by the learning inside and outside the classroom, builds a sense of personal and social responsibility, ethical reasoning and intercultural knowledge foundational to living as thinking, active citizens.

At CAPT, we place significant importance on CE as a key component of our living and learning programme. We are delighted to report an impressive 98% student participation rate in our CE programmes during a single academic year. Over the years, we continuously expanded our range of CE programmes and forged partnerships with over 50 communities, now providing more than 35 events and programmes.

Our CE programmes are designed to achieve specific intended learning outcomes for our CAPT students. These outcomes are central to enhancing awareness of marginalised communities, building empathy, deepening their understanding of the issues and challenges of the community, and equipping them with skills.

CAPT’s CE programmes are made possible with the generous support of the Mrs Lee Choon Guan Trust Fund and our commitment to the educational mission. CAPT strives to create a comprehensive, enriching CE experience that fosters student learning. We achieve this by giving depth and breadth to our engagement efforts. Our CE initiatives focus on two primary areas, sustained and standalone programmes.

• Sustained Programmes – These are long-term initiatives that typically span an academic year. A student executive committee along with regularly recruited students will run the programme for the year. While the programmes are varied, the structure typically involves pre-engagement, training and engagements sessions, collaborating with community partners to scope the engagement activities and following-up with post-engagement reflection activities. These sustained programmes are specifically designed to enable students to achieve critical and in-depth understanding of the communities they engage with as well as develop various skills.
• Standalone Events – We recognise the significance of fostering depth and breadth in CE, therefore, we also curate programmes spanning a few days, exposing students to diverse communities. Our flagship CE programme events are the Freshmen Orientation Camp Community Engagement (FOC CE) Day and the Community Engagement Festival (CE Fest). These standalone events are designed to increase students’ awareness and understanding of various communities while honing our student leaders’ planning and leadership skills.