Team Cahaya

Apart from the main team of individuals on this page, Cahaya Community is blessed to have the support of a community of passionate and dedicated volunteers who are all crucial for us to achieve our goal of unlocking the potential of children.

Directors

Featured

Sheriff is a research coordinator at the National Cancer Centre Singapore after graduating Biomedical Science with Honors from NUS. He has a deep interest in healthcare and community growth, has done multiple attachments and volunteering stints across local hospitals, and has served Singapore Red Cross through their disaster surveillance and deployment missions.

Joel Long

Joel is passionate about facilitating community-driven social change, especially in overcoming poverty and inequality. He loves getting to know others beyond mutual passions, and conveys our fundamental belief that every person matters and has the limitless potential to do so much more. Such important conversations must clearly be had over a good cuppa.

Gregory Tham

Greg graduated with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Economics (First Class Honours) and a Master in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He is deeply passionate about economic research, international development, and social policy; and has won awards for his policy analysis of socio-economic issues. Having successfully pioneered a mentorship program at Casa Clementi, he contributed to the birth of Cahaya Community and now leads as our Director of Social Development.

Heads

Featured

Head of Character Development

Celester Gonh

Head of Character Development

Celester is an adjunct lecturer at the London School of Business and Finance, where he teaches English as a Foreign Language to international students. He’s also an active facilitator in outdoor camps, including WOW Kampung. He firmly believes that learning should be engaging and go beyond the classroom, so he’s actively looking into activities that front meaningful experiential learning. Our resident urban gardener, Cel is an advocate and a lover of the environment.

Head of Character Development

Head of Social Development

Laura Goh

Head of Social Development

Laura is a first-year undergraduate at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. At Cahaya, she takes on a variety of roles: From being a piggyback monster, a horrendous soccer player (hitting down cones as she goes), to being a friend and a role model, Laura shows love for children through small intangible actions, and strives to make every experience with them an enjoyable and memorable one.

Head of Social Development

Projects Manager (Sports)

Jerome Lee

Projects Manager (Sports)

Jerome is an undergraduate from NUS, where he is pursuing a Bachelor in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Social Sciences in Economics. He started his volunteering journey in primary school and his interest and passion in community development has been growing throughout the years. Jerome is fluent in dialects such as Hokkien and this might be a reason for his high popularity among the senior citizen community. His endless supply of jokes also provides countless hours of joy for the people around him.

Projects Manager (Sports)

Tan Si Yun

Tan Si Yun is a third-year student majoring in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. She aims to enable and empower those around her, to be a source of positive energy as they discover and achieve their potential. With each volunteering experience, she hopes to plant a (small) seed of change and make a positive difference.

Ace Ng

Ace is someone who aspires to make great change in the world. With a perspective on issues that may be consider different from the norm, he tries to make change in the most unique way possible.

Presently, he is pursuing a degree in Philosophy at NTU. He enjoys a variety of sports and games, particularly basketball and FPS games. In his free time, he also enjoys scrolling through memes with the occasional cute cat photo thrown in.

Volunteer Leaders

Featured

Volunteer Leader

Cleo Chan

Volunteer Leader

Cleo Chan is a passionate educator, a loving wife and mother, and an incredible carer of animals. She was instrumental in the piloting and subsequent development of the INSPIRE mentorship program in Kebun Baru. An NTU-NIE Teaching Scholar with years in the Gifted Education program, Cleo not just has the necessary experience, pedagogy mastery, and curriculum understanding, but also a deep understanding of what it takes to mentor and groom a child/ youth holistically.

Volunteer Leader

Kok Leong

Volunteer Leader

Kok Leong is a passionate educator, a loving husband and father, a published author and a dedicated lawyer. He worked with many stakeholders to pull off the pilot and the holiday programs in collaboration with schools. He believes that the young people of today should lead the way to shape the world they want to live in tomorrow.

Volunteer Leader

Advisors

Prof Ng Kok Hoe

Prof Ng is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he was a UK Commonwealth Scholar and won the Titmuss Prize.

Since leaving the Singapore civil service, he has consulted for the government and NGOs on social policies and social services. His research is concerned with retirement income security, minimum income standards, public housing policy, and homelessness. Apart from publishing papers, he contributes press commentaries and gives public lectures on these topics regularly. He led the first nationwide street count of homelessness in Singapore in 2019, and is co-editor of the book They told us to move: Dakota—Cassia (Ethos Books, 2019), which examines the impact of housing relocation on a social housing community.

Eugenia Koh

Eugenia is a co-founder of the Ground-Up Movement, Playvocates In Action and is currently pursuing her doctoral research in education in Australia. She also holds a Master’s degree in Inclusive and Special Education and has worked in Singapore polytechnics for more than ten years.

Eugenia is passionate about inclusive playwork and education. From professional development workshops to pop-up adventure playgrounds, Eugenia has extensive experience working with children, youths, parents and teachers as a lecturer, play advocate and parent. Her published work focuses on issues in play- based learning, parental involvement in young children’s education and tiger parenting.

Our Past Interns

Featured

Ace Ng

Ace is someone who aspires to make great change in the world. With a perspective on issues that may be consider different from the norm, he tries to make change in the most unique way possible.

Alison Chang

Alison is passionate about social causes, and hope to work in field that deals with community engagement when she graduates. She believes strongly in understanding systemic inequality and playing a role in changing it. She also hopes to understand the difficulties communities face in overcoming inequality, and what possible solutions are.

David Boo Koh

David only began volunteering recently but finds it incredibly meaningful to be contributing towards the cause of making society a better, more inclusive and equitable place. He primarily does research but occasionally helps out with mentorship to the horror of his mentees.

Loh Hui Wen

Hui Wen describes herself as a potato. She’s humble, kind and sincere; and does a lot for the people around her, in her own little way.

Rachel Tang

Rachel is a jovial girl with lots of love for the world. Through volunteering, Rachel met people from different walks of life; autism spectrum disorder, visually handicapped, elderly and homeless community. She enjoys taking time to understand each of them with their unique and diverse experiences.

Simrita

Simrita is a student at NUS Law and while initially she started her internship at Cahaya to counteract quarantine boredom, she’s come to enjoy working with the families and other members of the team.

Tan Si Yun

Si Yun aims to enable and empower those around her, to be a source of positive energy as they discover and achieve their potential. With each volunteering experience, she hopes to plant a (small) seed of change and make a positive difference.

Want to join us?