News & Stories

Interview of Ansh NASTA, Green Team member

The Green Society Promotion Awards aimed at rewarding student societies who demonstrated outperforming sustainable actions during the promotion period.

Same as previous years, the Student Housing and Residential Life Office organized the recycling activity during student hall check out period. But their new Green Trekkers program has redesigned the "Give and Take Campaign" to minimize the amount of waste and facilitate the exchange of items.

HKUST students’ innovative solutions seek to improve healthcare services for the impoverished in Cambodia. An innovative and internationally oriented community service program at HKUST is enabling undergraduates across the University to bring their knowledge and skills together to places where they are needed, and create effective, practical solutions that assist non-profit organizations in providing healthcare services. The Student Innovation for Global Health Technology (SIGHT) Program, led by Prof Ying Chau, Division of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, recently partnered with One-2-One Cambodia, a New Zealand NGO which operates mobile clinics in the slums of Phnom Penh, Cambodia with limited resources.

As a staunch supporter of sustainable living, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) community organizes numerous green activities. A summer garage sale with around 190 stalls of new and secondhand goods was held last Saturday and there will be another sale this Saturday (6 June), supporting the 5Rs (Recycle-Reuse-Reduce-Replace-Rethink) campaign and sustainability.

Coinciding with Global Youth Service Day, HKUST Service Learning Day is a joint effort of all University members to engage with the community. Students, faculty, staff and alumni fan out into the local community over the weekend to engage in various meaningful community service opportunities. Ultimately, HKUST Service Learning Day is meant to be a door which opens up to many more exciting opportunities of community engagement for HKUST. Over the weekend of 16 – 19 April, 900 HKUST volunteers attended to the needs of different communities through 47 projects that involved food collection, family visits, English and science workshop, organ donation promotion, community outreach, etc. A wide variety of recipients were served – from the elderly to young immigrant children from East Asia or the Mainland, from the physically challenged to mentally challenged people, and from organizations specializing in caring for abandoned animals to the food bank in Hong Kong.

HKUST Connect is a community engagement initiative that aims to raise civic awareness and develop sustainable partnerships with the wider community. Through participating in community services and programs, as well as service learning trips, students gain an opportunity to develop deep learning of issues about the world and contribute to those in need. Rita Law and Synix Sun have both taken part in service learning trips last year. The experiences have been insightful and transformational for them. “In June, I visited a local primary school with children from the ethnic minority of Yi living in the Mabian Yi Autonomous Region in the Southern Sichuan. I joined because I wanted to serve the children in the rural villages and help them find their dreams. I wanted to give them courage to keep chasing their dreams no matter what,” said Rita, a Year 3 student in the School of Humanities and Social Science.

The HKUST Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) Sub-team, which consists of 14 HKUST students from different disciplines, won championship in Explorer Class in the 9th Hong Kong/Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge in April. This is the fourth time that HKUST has won the championship. Other than participating in the competition, HKUST students also integrate their engineering knowledge in community projects. This year, the ROV Sub-team provided training workshops for children in the Ebenezer School and Home for the Visually Impaired in Hong Kong to promote engineering knowledge to all levels of society.