Project Kura
Providing sustainable healthcare services
Project Kura is a nursing-led community involvement project that aims to conduct medical missions beyond and within local shores. Prior to our current partnership with West Timor, Project Kura was first started by the Alice Lee School of Nursing Centre (NUS Nursing) Nursing Alumni in Batam, Indonesia. KURA means ‘Turtle’ in Bahasa Indonesia.
Project Kura’s mission is to conduct medical consultation and screening for the villages with poor access to medical facilities in Batam. We also aim to provide basic health education and also identify individuals who require long term treatment follow ups. We intend to apply the principles of sustainable healthcare in Project Kura by providing services to our Batam beneficiaries high quality care without damaging the environment, and at the same time delivering positive social impact to the community. We will then use the knowledge we gained from our work from our overseas medical missions and apply it in the local context.
For AY22/23 our team conducted a Medical Mission Recee in West Timor. The purpose for the recce was to understand the locals living conditions as well as their medical needs. The trip also helped to re-establish connections with the local doctor who would be working alongside us to conduct free medical screening. In that trip, we also visited some schools to understand the health concerns raised by the Principal and Teachers so that we could design, develop and prepare a suitable health education programme for the students.
The team carried out a mission In January 2023 to five different rural regions in West Timor to conduct basic health screening and medical consultation alongside the local doctors there. Our goal for the trip is to extend healthcare accessibility to the five rural regions there as some villages in the region could take up to two hours to reach the nearest clinic. An example will be the small town of Oinlasi, where it is situated one hour away from the basecamp in Niki-Niki. Accessibility to Oinlasi is challenging as the journey requires crossing mountainous terrains to reach the village.
In 2022, Project Kura partnered with My Brother’s SG to reach out to over 200 migrant workers at the Cochrane Recreation Centre. Our volunteers conducted basic health screenings where they also educated the migrant workers on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle to prevent conditions such as hypertension and hyperlipidaemia. The event enabled the migrant workers to be more mindful of their health and it also raised awareness on the importance of health screenings among them.
Project Kura’s partnership with My Brother is an example of how our overseas services have enabled our teams to apply our hands-on experiences gained from our missions to our local context.
Follow Project Kura on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kurawesttimor/?hl=en and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/KuraWestTimor/
List of Overseas Projects
I joined Project Kura when I was a Year 1 student in NUS. Project Kura stood out to me because their vision and mission resonated with me the most. As a nursing student, I have always wanted to empower migrant workers and the less-privileged through health education. I was intrigued at how our past Kura seniors worked tirelessly to provide quality healthcare to the villagers in West Timor while ensuring continuity of care. This year, I decided to remain on Project Kura as an EXCO, in hopes of continuing to serve wider groups of people locally and abroad. As our borders reopen, I am excited to embark on a journey to West Timor with my fellow Kura members. I look forward to bringing our healing hands beyond local shores and imparting our nursing knowledge to the local communities.
-Nurfaizah Binte Hassan
