Asia-Pacific Sustainability Action Awards-Sustainability Action Awards SDG04:Silver
Fu Jen Catholic University
FuJen India Horizon: Seventeen Years of Care-Centered Service-Learning for Inclusive Growth
For seventeen summers across nearly two decades, students from Fu Jen Catholic University have returned to India — not as tourists, but as companions to people the world tends to forget. Since 2006 the program has grown into a long-term service-learning platform; after a pandemic pause it was rebuilt in 2023 and fully resumed in 2025, when a 13-member team from nine departments served in Kolkata and Delhi. Working with the Missionaries of Charity, Stars Welfare Society, FGS Kolkata Buddhist Centre, Durbar (Rahul Vidya Niketan), V Support Foundation, and Tibetan Children's Village, students offered dignity-centered care, health and nutrition education, emotional and digital literacy, and cultural exchange. They directly engaged at least 334 children and reached about 231 more through exchanges. Anchored in SDG 3, 4, 5, 10 and 17 and a spirit of Care, Concern and Compassion, the project's deepest result is a repeatable, trust-based model — and a generation of students who learned that dignity is built through presence.