The Youth Stewards for Nature (YSN) is an annual youth development programme that invites youths aged 18 to 25 to explore and co-develop various City in Nature initiatives with NParks. With the support of NParks mentors, youths will work in teams to plan and implement a range of projects across the fields of community animal management and animal health, biodiversity and wildlife, and urban greenery. Projects span 6 to 9 months, with some exceptions.
Youths can look forward to gain industry-relevant experience in skillsets of their interest, including research and fieldwork, survey design and study, design and prototyping, and community events and outreach, while honing soft skills in communication, teamwork and leadership.
Youths who complete the programme will be recognised as a Youth Steward for Nature at the programme's closing event and awarded a certificate and YSN t-shirt. They can also qualify for accreditation under the National Youth Achievement Awards (NYAA) programme.
Programme Timeline
Youth participants must be able to commit to the full duration of the programme and attend the key milestone events listed below.
Date: 7 to 26 January 2025 Duration: 1 to 1.5 hours (multiple timings on weekdays/weekends) Mode: Virtual (for project mentors and fellow youth applicants to get to know each other better and improve project matching)
Date: 15 February 2025 Duration: 1 day Mode: Physical (venue to be confirmed; induction programme with project teambuilding and cohort bonding activities)
Development of projects with mentors over 6 to 9 months (duration varies with some exceptions, depending on timeline of chosen projects)
Date: May/ June 2025 Duration: 2 to 4 hours Mode: Physical/ Virtual (physical check-in with project mentors and planning for closing event showcase)
Date: September 2025 Duration: 1 day Mode: Physical (cohort closing ceremony, reflections and project showcase)
YSN 2025 Projects
There are 12 projects to choose from for YSN 2025. Read the project details to find out more about each project.
Registration
Registration for YSN 2025 is now closed. Successful applicants will be informed via email.
"2025 marks our fifth year of YSN! We are grateful for the support and active participation in YSN thus far. In 2024, we conducted a review of youth volunteer development in NParks, engaging more than 100 participants consisting of youths from past iterations of YSN and the nature community, as well as staff mentors from across the years. From the insights gathered, we will be introducing some changes to YSN 2025 including:
Enhanced publicity and communication efforts, with greater clarity on the scope and requirements of each YSN project
Introduction of a pre-YSN selection exercise involving a virtual hangout with project mentors and fellow youth applicants to facilitate project matching
Enhanced opening and closing events with cohort-bonding and cross-learning activities
As we embark on a new chapter for YSN, we hope that more youths will join us to shape it together."
Past YSN Projects
Click to view the different YSN projects since 2021!
"I feel that World Wildlife Day as an event was an incubator of ideas on how to bring youths together to celebrate biodiversity. There was a lot of flexibility to decide how I wanted to execute the tasks delegated to me and my team and a lot of support from the mentors and peers to try bold new ideas and experiment with skills I hadn't thought to explore before in a safe learning space."
- Saloni Swaminathan (YSN 2023, 2024)
“As YSN participants, the projects were mostly helmed by youths, with NParks staff acting as mentors to provide guidance as opposed to setting the direction. This gave more room for me to explore and experiment with different ideas put forth by the youth team, creating an environment where opinions from each individual do matter and can create an impact.”
- Sow Jeng Wei (YSN 2022, 2023, 2024)
“I was involved in the landscape design of Villa Verde Park Extension in 2022. A pivotal learning point was a site visit to HortPark, a Nature Playgarden one of my mentors helped design. While youth participants were mostly involved in the conceptual stage, rather than implementation or post-construction management, the HortPark visit helped ground our proposals in reality. A survey of the site's design features and current usage patterns revealed how landscape designs evolve, deteriorate, or are used in unexpected ways. This emphasised that landscape designs are dynamic and subject to the passage of time, rather than a static product frozen in time upon construction—a concept I found especially intriguing as a then-Architecture undergraduate. The insights from HortPark and conversations with mentors about their field experiences were the most meaningful parts of my YSN experience. These takeaways continue to shape my thinking well into my first full-time role, where I assist with research on urban greening and climate resilience.”
- Phoebe Chua Lin’er (YSN 2022)
Download the NEAR mobile app to find a route via our park connectors or trails.
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