Lai Yong is a Medical Doctor who gave up the comfort and security of life in Singapore to commit himself and his medical expertise towards improving healthcare of children in the villages of Yunnan, China. As Clinical Lecturer at Kunming Medical Centre, his training and leadership is well regarded by the local people and the government. He has worked tirelessly to overcome cultural and other challenging obstacles to train over 500 village doctors. His efforts also include mobilising surgeons from Kunming and Singapore on a regular basis to provide subsidised/free surgery (cleft palate, burns and bone deformities) for over 100 children. This has also been extended to facilitating meaningful ways to link volunteers to needy situations in China and mentoring Singapore youths to look beyond their own needs.

Lai Yong has worked with Singapore schools, churches, NUS medical students, doctors, nurses and physiotherapists to volunteer in the villages. He has written 2 books about his experiences in Yunnan (Biting the Bamboo and Waiting for Growth). All proceeds from the sales of his books were donated to the ITE and St Luke’s Hospital respectively.

Poh Kiang is a family physician whose belief in “Preferential Option for the Poor” led him to set up his clinic in the low income estate of Bukit Ho Swee. He offers subsidised medical consultations for low income patients and donates medicines to a kindergarten run by the Franciscan Sisters for low income children, as well as during health education workshops for low income parents.

Poh Kiang leads teams of volunteer healthcare trainers (doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists and nutritionists) to educate low income parents in healthcare, nutrition, home safety for children, etc. He contributes articles regularly, championing the common person. He also leads medical missions to Cambodia every year and mentors and inspires young people to volunteer.

Child At Street 11 is a VWO committed to providing disadvantaged children with opportunities and community support to begin a learning journey that turns the negative forces to positive, the destructive to creative, “can’t do” to “can do”, hopeless to hopeful, ordinary to extraordinary, and potential lost to potential tapped.

They run a 12-hour childcare programme for low income children aged 18 months to 6 years, and a Before and After school care for primary school children in Ang Mo Kio. Children from low income families are given the awareness that other possibilities exist, and are exposed t an environment of love, cleanliness and civility, where learning is fun, honesty and frugality are encouraged, and intelligent and hard work valued. The children can then bring about changes in their own homes. Based loosely on the Reggio Emilia technique of pre-school learning, Child At Street 11 has developed strong parent-teacher-community partnerships.

David has a long list of accolades to his credit, in recognition of his life’s work of transforming communities and helping the vulnerable. In 2005, he was given the Conrad Hilton Award for Entrepreneurship and the Gusi Award for Humanitarianism. In early 2004, he was named Australia’s Entrepreneur of the Year, in 2003 given the Queen’s Honors of the Order of Australia, and in the year before that, he was voted one of Australia’s Ten Most Creative Minds.

David is the man behind the Maranatha Trust, which was established in 1975 as a private, non-profit trust that has, over the past 30 years, established or co-founded 12 global organisations that address social issues. He is also the founder and visionary of Opportunity International Australia, a microenterprise development organization that creates a new job every 35 seconds in 27 countries.

From helping out at, and living in, disaster-hit areas like earthquake-struck Indonesia in 1976, David realized that even the construction of schools, dams, hospitals and other facilities did not help people get out of poverty. Thus, Microenterprise Development was born. David used his entrepreneurial skills to help the poor work their way out of poverty – he offered business loans which provided finance for small businesses and addressed the basic needs of families, giving people confidence, dignity and self-respect.

The wife of the first President of the independent nation of Timor Leste, Kirsty fulfils the role expected of her by the people and government of Timor-Leste, largely through the Alola Foundation.

In a country where they are accorded little acknowledgement and granted very little power in public and political life, tremendous expectations exist of Timorese women and their abilities to contribute to the social and economic lives of their families and communities. Kirsty set up the Alola Foundation in response to the great needs of these women and their families. The Alola Foundation is able to mobilize, from amongst the international community, much needed assistance for vulnerable groups within the community, particularly the women and children. To tackle the high infant and maternal mortality rates, Kirsty is working with the MILK (Mainly I Love Kids) Fund to improve health care provision through their women support groups.

Born and raised in Australia, Kirsty now lives in Timor-Leste with her husband, President Xanana Guamão and their three sons.