Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Busy Summer of Service Learning

This will be a busy summer for Service Learning at our university.  In addition to the hundreds of students serving in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland, we are sending 4 teams overseas.

The largest team of 50 students will go to Cambodia in June, for the 4th time in as many years.  They will be accompanied by 8 staff members.  In Cambodia, they will be joined by ~30 students from a local community college, and a number of volunteers from the Cambodia YMCA.  The 100-strong team will be working with a hospital for children with AIDS, an orphanage, a community center at Phnom Penh’s old garbage dump, a primary school outside Phnom Penh without running water nor electricity, a shelter for trafficked women, ...  We will be installing a mobile computer laboratory, a hand-operated water pump, solar-powered lamps and chargers, running computer lessons, robotics lessons, digital story telling lessons, ...

A team of 12 students and 3 staff members will be going to Rwanda, Africa for the first time, in July.  We will be working with African Enterprises, targeting youths living on the streets.  We will be building a computer laboratory from scratch, making documentaries of their lives and their work, training their staff to teach computer lessons to the youths, and helping to build mud-brick houses.

A team of 20 students will be going to Indonesia for the second time, in June-July.  They will stay in five villages for 3 weeks, exploring opportunities for sustainable development, together with the students from a local university.

Finally, a team of 20 students will be going to Vietnam for the first time in June.  They will explore opportunities in working with the youths and families in the rural areas.

I will be going with the teams to Cambodia and Rwanda, and in between, hope to visit the team in Indonesia for at least a couple of days.  I will not be able to find the time to go to Vietnam this year, but I do hope to go in the future.

All in all, a very busy summer for Service Learning.



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