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Sign up for YSN 2025!
Registration for YSN 2025 is now open till 23 Dec 2024. Click here to read up more about the projects offered and scroll down to access the different project registration links.
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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 staff 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 around 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.
Participants 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. YSN participants 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.
Selection Exercise (NEW!)
7 - 26 January 2025 (1 - 1.5 hours),
multiple timings offered on a weekday or weekend
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Virtual chat for project mentors and fellow youth applicants to get to know each other better and improve project matching
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Induction programme with project teambuilding and cohort bonding activities
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Development of projects with mentors over 6-9 months (duration varies with some exceptions, depending on timeline of chosen projects)
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May/ June 2025 (2 - 4 hours)
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Physical check-in with project mentors and planning for closing event showcase
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Cohort closing ceremony, reflections and project showcase
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YSN 2025 Projects
There are 12 projects to choose from for YSN 2025. Read the Project Details deck to find out more about each project and make your selection!
Registration
(Registration for YSN 2025 is now open till 3 December 2024. Please click on your preferred project below to register).
Research & Fieldwork / Survey Design & Study / Design & Prototyping / Community Events & Outreach
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Registration for this project has closed. An earlier open call was held in Aug 2024 to meet its event planning timeline. You can still click to find out more about WWD.
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Frequently Asked Questions
For more information on the registration process and selection criteria, click here to download the FAQ or email us at YSN@nparks.gov.sg for further enquiries.
Message from YSN Secretariat:
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.
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Past YSN Projects
Click to view the different YSN projects since 2021!
Our YSN Experience
YSN 2023 Projects Exhibition Highlight video link
"I feel that World Wildlife Day as an event was an incubator of ideas on how to bring youth 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)