Guidelines for student queries and personal projects

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AWARE’s expansion of our advocacy and services has led to a heartening growth in student and young people’s interest and involvement in gender issues. 

We receive a great deal of emails and requests for collaborations, research projects, interviews, and queries from students, and we are extremely appreciative of the effort and thought that young people have put in to take on the difficult work of combating gender inequality together with us.

While we try our best to get back to everyone, there are certain limitations to the number of projects and requests we can take up at any given moment. Here are some good-to-know tips for all students who are keen to work with us or hear our perspectives:

1. Our website is rich with archived material on AWARE’s past, present and future work. Information about AWARE, its history, research, services and perspectives can be found on our website. The search engine on our website is a good place to start if you know the topic that you’d like to find out more about. You’ll find articles, press releases and research reports that we’ve published on it. There are also tools on the website that allow you to select articles according to “theme” (e.g. caregiving, sexual violence), or by “type” (e.g. press releases, events). Lastly, find all of our published research reports here. Feel free to quote us (with credit, of course) in your projects/papers!

2. Understand the work we do at AWARE, and where we stand on gender-related issues. It’s always useful to learn about our mission and values, and the scope of women’s issues that we work on through the About AWARE page before sending us your questions. That way, when you do craft your questions for us, you’d be digging a little deeper into the issue you’re exploring! 

3. Be specific about proposed projects. If you are looking to organise a project on gender equality, you might want to formulate what you are specifically working on and how you can help. This may include the target group, current issues faced, existing interventions and your ideas for solving a particular problem. However, while some theories or solutions may sound good on paper, lived realities of people always have to drive your motivations. 

4. We do our best to answer your queries. However, it will be subject to availability of relevant staff and their capacity. We seek your understanding on this matter. Again, do read through the AWARE website carefully first, as most of our perspectives that you are free to quote from can be found there.

5. We may require some time to respond to your requests. Our staff are typically working on multiple projects and commitments all year round. While we aim to respond as soon as possible, please allow up to 2 weeks for us to get back to you.

6. For interview requests, unless there is a wide scope of outreach for your project, we are rarely able to accomodate face-to-face or video interviews for students. For most cases, email interviews would be ideal.  

7. Please arrange an appointment in advance should you wish to discuss with our staff in person. We do not recommend you to drop-in without an appointment as the relevant staff may not be around or available. 

8. Besides the AWARE website, here are some useful links for issue-specific campaigns we have run:

  • AWARE Women’s Action page: A comprehensive history of the women’s movement in Singapore
  • Sexual Assault Care Centre website : SACC is the only one-stop support centre for survivors of sexual violence. You’ll also find information on sexual violence and laws relating to it. 
  • Catalyse website: AWARE’s corporate training arm runs workplace harassment and Diversity & Inclusion training. 
  • #asinglelove website : Our #asinglelove campaign aims to empower and support single-parent families. 
  • Aim For Zero website: This campaign (2018-2020) spread awareness about sexual violence and support for its survivors.

Thank you and we look forward to working with you!