Our work with students is carried out within the three sections of the FES ministry namely:

• English Section
• Chinese Work
• Indonesian Ministry

Though the groups within each section organizes their own CF programme, all three sections also make effort to pool resources together to co-organise common events that would be of benefit to students from all sections.

The Military Christian Fellowship (MCF) is also an affiliate group of FES.

Work amongst the English-speaking students began in the early 1950s when Christian students of the then University of Malaya began to meet regularly for Bible Study and fellowship at Jubilee Church and also at the homes of fellow students. These meetings arose from "a common realization of the need for a truly evangelical witness by evangelicals within the University."

In 1951, the possibility of forming an evangelical group was discussed a few times. It was only on 9 August 1952 that an inaugural meeting for a Christian Students' Union was held. Three students were appointed to draw up the constitution and in October 1952, the Varsity Christian Fellowship (VCF) officially started with a membership of around 20 and a committee of five.

VCF became affiliated to FES in 1959 when FES was formed. This was followed by the Polytechnic Christian Fellowship (PCF), which was the first Christian group to be formed (also in 1959) amongst the Polytechnics. In the years that followed, similar groups were formed in other institutes, namely: Ngee Ann Technical College, now Ngee Ann Polytechnic (1971), Nanyang Technological University (1991), Singapore Institute of Management (1993) and Singapore Management University (2000).

In 1956, an island-wide curfew imposed during one of the worst riots in the history of Singapore forced students and staff at the former Nanyang University, the only Chinese university in South-East Asia, to remain within the Yunnan campus over the weekend. It was then that Christian students and staff decided to hold their own Sunday worship and fellowship, thus laying the foundation for the Nanyang University Christian Fellowship (NUCF).

With an increase in the intake of Chinese-speaking undergraduates at the then University of Singapore in the mid-sixties, it was found that integration was difficult in a campus dominated by English-speaking students. In 1967, a handful of deeply concerned Chinese-speaking Christian undergraduates decided to reach out in a corporate effort to other students from a similar background. A Chinese sub-committee was then set up within the framework of the VCF. A merger of the two universities in 1980 into the present National University of Singapore (NUS) saw the inevitable demise of the NUCF. With that, the Nanyang Technological Institute was formalized and a Chinese fellowship was also formed there.

The seventies, too, saw the birth of more Chinese Christian Fellowships at the Singapore Polytechnic and Ngee Ann Technical College (now Ngee Ann Polytechnic). As time went on, those involved in the ministry were convinced of the need to coordinate Chinese work at the various tertiary institutions. This led to the formation of the Chinese Work Committee in 1970.

For more information on the Chinese work ministry, please go to: http://www.fescw.org/index.html

The first Indonesian Students' Christian Fellowship (ISCF) started at the Nanyang Technological University campus in September 1998. At that time, there were at least 200 Indonesian undergraduates studying in NTU. Some of the Indonesian Christian students and graduates discussed with FES the possibility of initiating fellowship meetings amongst the Indonesian students to better meet the spiritual needs of the Indonesian Christian undergraduates and to reach out to those who are not yet Christians. On 4 September 1998, the first fellowship meeting was held. The NTU ISCF eventually became a sub-committee of the NTUCF.

Similar ISCFs were started in other institutes: NUS (Jan 2000), Singapore Polytechnic (July 2001), Nanyang Polytechnic (August 2001) and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (July 2003).

To better coordinate the work amongst the different ISCFs, the FES Indonesian Ministry (FESIM) was officially launched on 13 January 2003.

In January 1970, a group of Christian Officers led by LTC (Ret) Rev Patrick Tan Kang Ping gathered and founded a Christian fellowship (Fellowship of Christian Serviceman or FCS) within the Singapore Armed Forces.

In the following two years, attempts were made to formalise the group but these were not successful. Upon knowing this situation, FES decided to adopt it because National Service is an inevitable fact in the lives of male students: they either finish NS before joining a tertiary institution, or be enlisted after their Polytechnic education. FCS became the Armed Forces Committee (AFC) of FES on 8 July 1972, and thus became affiliated to FES.

In 1983, the AFC was renamed Military Christian Fellowship (MCF).

For more information on the MCF, visit their website at: http://www.mcf.org.sg