In June, some 150 PolyU students and staff applied their professional knowledge in serving over 1,000 underprivileged villagers in Cambodia, northern Guangdong and Guangxi.The PolyU service team was largely made up of computing, hotel and tourism management, optometry and biomedical engineering students and staff. Among them was PolyU President Prof. Timothy W. Tong who supported service-learning projects in person through teaching underprivileged children and conducting eye checks for orphans in Cambodia.

In Cambodia, the PolyU community served from developing e-Learning labs for school children, building solar lights for rural villages, providing eye screening service for orphans, visiting lonely elders in the slum community, conducting healthcare workshops, performing census surveys for slum villagers to training guesthouse staff in hospitality, food services, marketing and management.

Another group of students, staff and alumni from the Interdisciplinary Division of Biomedical Engineering teamed up with students from the Washington University and University of Pennsylvania to provide orthotic services to the physically disabled patients of the Leprosy Rehabilitating Village in Shaoguang, northern Guangdong.

Also, a group of optometry students and staff participated in a project initiated by PolyU Council Chairman Ms Marjorie Yang Mun-tak and sponsored by the Esquel-Y.L.Yang Education Foundation in Guangxi and Community Service Fund of the University. In Baise city, Guangxi, the group offered free vision screening services and prescribed spectacles to children with amblyopia or other eye problems.