University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) ranked 31 in the QS (2017), and is one of the most prestigious “young universities” in the world. The UCLA Center for Community Learning “promotes and supports community-engaged research, teaching and learning in partnership with communities and organisations throughout Los Angeles, regionally, nationally and globally. The centre facilitates faculty and student work that integrates sustained, reciprocal engagement with the public and helps transform UCLS’s mission to support the co-creation co-dissemination, co-preservation and co-application of knowledge for the betterment of society.”The vision of the centre is to make community-engaged research, teaching and learning a cornerstone of undergraduate education at UCLA.
In 1980, the Office of Field Studies was established to support academic engagement beyond the classroom. In 1987-90, UCLA Chancellor Charles Young and Stanford President Donald Kennedy created California Campus Compact to engage students in their communities and bring more resources to such efforts in California. In 1997, America Reads: LA JumpStart program was launched in partnership with Student Affairs BRUIN CORPS. In 1999, The Chancellor’s Service-Learning Task Force calls for the creation of a Center for Experiential Education and Service-Learning. In 2001, The Center for Experiential Education and Service-Learning was established. In 2003, the Center was renamed the Center for Community Learning. The Center spearheaded UCLA’s effort to create an ‘SL’ course suffix to designate Service-Learning courses. In 2006, the Civic Engagement Minor was launched. In 2007, UCLA received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, an elective designation that indicates institutional commitment to community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 2011, the Center launched the 195CE internship courses with the CE suffix signifying the students are working through the Center and receiving extensive supervision and mentoring from graduate student instructors. In 2017, the Center launched a community engaged pedagogy course to provide professional development for graduate students across the disciplines - Graduate Student Professional Development 495CE. In 2019, the Center launched a new Community Engagement and Social Change minor to provide undergraduates with the opportunity for sustained community-engaged work integrated within an academic social justice framework.
For Maryland and Brown, the SL internship program grew out of prior collaboration. UCLA, however, was a brand new partner. We approached them because of their reputation in service-learning and recommendations from trusted friends in the community. We were very pleasantly surprised when they received our emailed enquiry warmly. We then visited them at their campus twice before we arrived at a tentative agreement to develop a summer internship program for our students. Douglas Barrera of the Center designed a tailor-made program for our three students sent to UCLA. They attend seminars on non-profit organization management and community development, cultural events, as well as mandatory weekly reflection meetings while in the United States. They are then assigned each to an NGO in the Las Angeles area for the duration of their program.
Los Angeles is the second largest cities in the USA, after New York City. Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, Hollywood entertainment industry and its sprawling metropolis. LA is the sixth most competitive financial centre, the largest manufacturing centre and the busiest port in the USA. As of 2020, it also has 41,290 homeless people, and increase of 14% over the previous year.
Brown University is one of the 8 prestigious “Ivy League” universities, with a long history of social activism and social justice. In 1986, Brown President Howard Swearer was at the forefront of a revolution in higher education when he founded one of the first public service centers in USA, now named for him — the Swearer Center for Public Service. Swearer Center is a community of scholars, students, practitioners and community members that work together to build on community strengths and address community challenge. Their motto is to connect students, faculty and community partners through community engagement, engaged scholarship and social innovation. Today, Swearer Center works with more than 1,200 Brown students, through and with 80+ community partners — more than half of which are in the Greater Providence area.
The iProv Summer Fellowship Program is one of the programmes supervised by the Swearer Center. It aims to provide undergraduate students with valuable experience to work full-time in 8-10 week internships from June to August with NGOs based in the vicinity. Purpose-designed training is provided to enhance the educational experience of students and encourage them to make connections between their academic work and their career aspirations. iProv students participate in regular workshops and meetings with other fellows. The iProv workshops focus on topics such as critical reflection, cultural humility, civic engagement, and effective leadership and action.
We send a highly selective, very small number (2) of students to the iProv Summer Fellowship Program. Over there, PolyU students take part in the regular workshops and meetings with other Brown fellows. And work full-time in 8-10 week internships with NGOs in the local community. The workshops cover topics such as critical versus traditional SL, identifying social needs, social change model, field trip to study slavery in the state of Rhode Island (in which Providence is located), reflection, wrapping up the iProv experience. Exercises that the students have to undertake include (1) setting goals and a workplace for the internship, (2) interviewing the supervisor and learning about the NGO’s vision and drive, and purpose, and (3) explaining and sharing about a typical work day, in the format of writing a letter to someone special (a teacher, friend or family) as a way to share the internship experience.
One student, Christie, worked as an intern at a community organization, where she worked with a group of children in a public park. Another student, Cherie, interned at an organization promoting organic food in the local community. In July, Dr. Grace Ngai and Dr. Stephen Chan were able to visit Christie and Cherie and observe their service. Both of them were active in community service upon returning from abroad. Christie actually worked for the OSL/SLLO in two separate stints, using her design skills on a wide range of projects communicating and supporting SL projects.
Providence, founded in 1636, is one of the oldest cities in the USA. Providence was one of the first cities in the country to industrialise and became noted form its textile manufacturing and subsequent machine tool, jewellery, and silverware industries. By the early 1900s, Providence was one of the wealthiest cities in the USA. Manufacturing, however, declined throughout the century. By the early 21st century, poverty remains an entrenched problem. Approximately 27.9% of the city population is living below the poverty line.
The University of Maryland has a long history, vast experience and strong organisation in service-learning and leadership education. In 1993 President Bill Clinton visited the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland to launch the Summer of Service program that was the prototype for AmeriCorps, the domestic USA version of the Peace Corps.In 1995, UMD began its America Reads program as one of the 20 pilot programs in USA.In 2005, Community Service-Learning merged with Leadership, forming Leadership and Community Service-Learning (LCSL) Office.In 2009, 2010, UMD was recognized by inclusion in the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.Dr. Barbara Jacoby, Faculty Associate for Leadership and Community Service-Learning at the University of Maryland, is a pioneer in SL in USA and author of several books on SL. She was a member of the Advisory Committee on SL of PolyU. With her help, PolyU had successfully sent one student for SL exchange at UMD in 2016.
By 2016, PolyU have already collaborated with the LCSL Office at the University of Maryland (UMD) in a number of projects, including the Global Virtual Classroom, the joint service-learning project in Rwanda, and the planning for the then upcoming joint project in Cambodia in summer 2017. Having developed mutual understanding and respect through successful collaboration, OSL at PolyU and LCSL at UMD were able to jointly develop an internship program for a small team of 4 students from PolyU for summer 2018. The program includes getting to know the University of Maryland, and Washington, DC, panel discussion on homelessness, study at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, reflection on leadership, etc. The students participate in the program “A Wider Circle”, in which each of the students are assigned a topic to research on, such as US poverty compared to other developed nations, racism and poverty, mass incarceration and poverty, and unique approaches to addressing poverty by NGOs.
The students were assigned to a number of community organisations including community kitchens, etc., in and around Washington, D.C., the capital city of USA. The three branches of the US federal government are located in the district: Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. The city hosts 177 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organisations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Yet a third of the residents in 2007 are functionally illiterate, compared to a national rate of one in five. In 2017, residents has a personal income per capita of USD50,832, higher than any of the 52 states. However, 15% of the residents are below the poverty level in 2019. Part of the city is very affluent, while poverty and crime are concentrated in some areas.
When piggy-backing SL Exchange on regular academic exchange proved to be difficult, we reviewed what we have learned from the failure and regrouped. We realised we need a more targeted strategy and took the opportunity to redesign and enrich the program. The result was a revised program to cultivate devoted and passionate students to become service-learning leaders by providing a purpose-designed platform for them to serve in NGOs in international setting and multicultural environment.This is not just an internship, this is a fellowship program with an internship and an exchange.
In 2016, we changed our strategy accordingly. We identify a small number of universities as potential partners and propose to them the setting up of a suitable program that takes advantage of the partner university’s strengthens and the needs of our students. We visited a number of these potential partners in 2017 to broach the project with them. This resulted in 3 related but different programs that were executed for the first time in the summer of 2018. Two of these programs build on our existing collaborations, with one completely new one, developed from a surprisingly successful cold call.
Initially, we thought we could piggy-back the Service-Learning Exchange Program on top of the existing out-bound academic exchange program that PolyU has been running for many years. If we can identify an outbound student who (1) is committed to service-learning and have demonstrated a solid preparation by doing well in the compulsory SL subject, (2) is exchanging at a prestigious university with a strong SL program, and (3) is planning to, or happy to integrate into their exchange a suitable SL course or project at the exchange university, then we can fund the student’s exchange trip.
The SL Exchange program opened for applications from November 2015. One student, Li Qiang Gabriel, was then sent in Spring 2016 to Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy League school with a long and illustrious program in service learning. Gabriel joined the GALLOP program in New York City, through which he supported children and adults who were participating in a therapeutic horsemanship program. Another student, Li Luoqi Erin, went to the University of Maryland at College Park. Erin participated in the “Terps for Change” program and served the elderly in Washington DC, including conducting maintenance around their residences. Having thus gained valuable experience in the established and comprehensive community engagement scene in the USA, when they return to Hong Kong, they participated in a number of post-exchange activities such as modifying assistive technology games for the elderly in nursing homes to reinforce their memory and encouraging their body movement, and disseminating their experience to other PolyU students via different media.
In the following year, Paul Szeto went to Lund University in Sweden, where he joined two programs. The Greenhouse Educational Ecosystem focuses on implementing a sustainable and ecological Naturalistic Design in open spaces in Sweden, while Lund Food Saving aims to reduce food waste, share food, educate food production, raise awareness about food waste, revaluation of food. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Paul set up an online platform for redirecting unsold food from restaurants to people who need them. His community service and entrepreneurial spirit was a key reason for his receiving an outstanding student award from the Faculty of Business.
We have successfully sent several students on service-learning exchange through the regular academic exchange route, and they have made an impact with their service-learning experience overseas. Unfortunately, the reality is much harsher than we anticipated originally. Each of the 3 conditions required is not overly difficult to meet. But the intersection of the 3 conditions together turns out to be quite small. Many of the students who apply for overseas exchange may not have service-learning as their original purpose, and they may not choose their university with service-learning in mind. Even if the student is keen and the university is strong in service-learning, it may not be easy to find a program that meets the needs of our student, and the program will certainly not be purposely-designed for our students. This serendipity-based approach is just not working in the scale that we anticipated.
By 2016, we have developed a number of ways for our students to gain international experience in service-learning.
There are many international service-learning projects through which PolyU students are immersed in a foreign country for an intensive but relatively short 7-14 days with their service projects. Most of the time they collaborate with local students and youths. Such as the youth volunteers from many organisations in Cambodia, students from the University of Rwanda and youths from the villages in Rwanda, youth volunteers from Eco Vietnam in Vietnam, etc.
There are opportunities PolyU students to serve in a foreign country alongside international students from a third country. Such as the Global Service-Learning Scheme that we offered to students from member universities in the University Social University Network, such as those from Haifa university of Israel, Washington University at St. Louis in USA, etc. They may serve together in a country like Cambodia.
There are the Global Classrooms through which PolyU and students from a foreign country learn together through classes online. PolyU and University of Maryland students learn the complementary topics service-learning and global leadership together in credit-bearing courses.
There are join university teams, such as PolyU-Maryland in Rwanda, PolyU-U Pennsylvania in Rwanda, PolyU-Maryland in Cambodia, PolyU-U Pennsylvania in Mainland China, PolyU-Duta Wacana in Indonesia, PolyU-Dagon university in Myanmar, etc. These are joint projects where the teachers from the partner universities work together to design the projects for both sets of students.
Beyond these programs, we want to give our best students the opportunity to be immersed in a strong foreign program in service-learning for a longer period of time, say one to three months. This is to give them sufficient opportunities to immerse themselves in social engagement in a foreign culture with sufficient time to reflect deeply, experiment, and internalise that learning. Some prestigious universities in the world have been running very strong academic service-learning programs for many years, with their specific philosophy, context and culture. The largest number of them are in the USA. We wish to provide our students with a more immersive way to learn about service-learning from these programs - as exchange students or internships.
We broached this idea with the Lee Hysan Foundation of Hong Kong and received a favourable reply. The Lee Hysan Foundation is a local private family foundation established since 1973 which supports impactful charity initiatives in Hong Kong. They are keen to provide the best and most motivated students to learn the best practices overseas and being that experience back to Hong Kong. In 2015, they accepted our proposal and agreed to fund the necessary expenses for the duration of the stay of a number of students at the foreign university and the project that they carry out upon returning to Hong Kong.
I love meat.Steak, roasted beef, roasted pork belly, cha siu, roasted duck, roasted goose, roasted pigeon, braised mutton, soy sauce chicken, white chopped chicken, drunken chicken, beef hot pot, …These are my favourites.
Our daughter A has, however, introduced me to very tasty vegetarian dishes and restaurants.
Today, my wife found our way to a vegetarian buffet in Yaumatei which is not only tasty but also very good value for money. At HKD 70 per person, it is an excellent deal.
The vegetables are cooked just right. There are some of my favourites: beetroot, lotus root, bitter gourd, …
They have excellent vegetarian white radish cake (蘿蔔糕).
Made with organic white radish grown in Hong Kong. Full of flavour, with just the right balance between radish and rice flour.
We even bought two extra cakes home to enjoy later.
They also have water chestnut cake (馬蹄糕), brown Chinese new Year cake (年糕), red bean cake (紅豆糕), and sesame ball (煎堆).
You are expected to put away the utensils afterwards. It is an excellent idea. This is a place that I can come back to.
On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, the Guanyin Temple in Hung Hom (紅磡觀音廟) is very busy.
The shops outside selling worship-related materials and instruments are also doing brisk business. For those who are not sure about the proper etiquette, the shop keepers offer instructions patiently.
It is very crowded inside. Many people complain on the way out. Today I just wish to watch the people coming to worship at the temple. So I stay outside.
Some carry hugh sticks of incense.
Some take incense outside to offer to the spirits in the open.
Some take home pinwheels, hoping for a better spin of their fortune.
For some, it is important to seek their fortune from the oracle (kau chim, 求籤). Some seem not to be satisfied with just one chim.
The chim (籤) is often quite difficult to interpret. Some seek help from the professionals. There is apparently one right inside the shop。
As people exit from the temple, they are offered a piece of red paper on which is written “nobleman (貴人)”, accompanied by auspicious wishes. People who receive them are expected to give the offerer lai see (利是) for good fortune.
I was struck by how young the worshippers are. There are a few elderlies. But mostly they seem to be people in their 20s or 30s. Some teenagers come on their own.
The faithful at the temples seem to be getting younger and younger over the years that I have been watching. Religious fervour does not seem to be dying down. Rather, it may even be strengthening. Perhaps it is a consequence of the anxiety due to the pandemic? Social unrest? Worsening political situation? Reaction to the increasingly materialistic and even dehumanising culture? All of the above?
Is worshipping at the temple the answer? Isn’t the answer actually the true God and Creator of the universe?
The concept of volunteer work is a familiar one. In fact, a large number of people have some volunteering experience, donating their time for a good cause without compensation.Learning in an academic setting, of course, is something that we all have to go through to receive any kind of formal academic credential.Service-Learning, however, is something quite different.What does that really mean?What does it look like?How do you learn to serve, and how do you learn through service?What exactly are you learning?And to top it all, to do it in a foreign country, where you don’t know the people, the language and the culture?The best way to understand it is to participate in person.But that is not feasible for a lot of people, in a lot of circumstances.Yet how does a student decide whether it is something that they would like to do, when they have no idea what it is? Understanding is also crucial for administrators to decide whether it is of sufficient benefit to incorporate into an academic program, for donors to decide whether it merits their support, for the financial office to figure out how they can facilitate the financing of such projects, for doctors and nurses to develop procedures and guidelines to support the students, …
To aid in such understand, we started writing up our service-learning experience in the form of a book illustrated with photographs with our project at an orphanage / primary school in Gansu in Mainland China in 2008. It was very well received. We have subsequently written other similar reports / books. Yet we found that effort quite taxing: figuring out what stories are worth telling, taking detailed notes, interviewing the relevant parties, taking appropriate photographs or videos, writing, editing, selecting photographs, designing the layout, designing the cover, etc. All of these without proper training and squeezing time from our own busy schedules to do the job. We had considered asking some of the students in the class to do that. Some subject teachers actually do exactly that. But that will take them away from the service and learning that they sign up for the class for.
Hence we decided to recruit a team of student journalists to tag along the SL teams to report on the projects. The team of journalists is responsible for documenting the projects and collect enough data and photographs to produce a book that can enable interest parties to understand what international service-learning at PolyU is about. In the spirit of internationalisation, we decided to recruit students from both PolyU and a foreign university to form the team. At the time, we found an opportunity to recruit a number of students with relevant journalism experience from Brown University, Dr. Grace Ngai’s alma mater. The following is how we advertised the position.
“Service Learning Journalists and Writers
Opportunity Description: Do you like to write? Do you like to travel? Do you care about social justice?
The Office of Service Learning at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is accepting applications for student journalist positions for our summer 2016 internship positions. We organise a number of overseas service projects every year for our students, and we are looking for student writers, photographers and videographers to help us to collect documentation and draft articles for a book publication.
During the course of the internship, you may have opportunities to travel along with our student teams as they serve in countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Myanmar and/or Vietnam. Your job will be to document, through photos, videos and/or interviews, the work performed by our students and the impact on the community. With this documentation, you will then collate it into a series of articles that will eventually be bound into a published book.
This job may involve travelling to overseas sites in developing countries. Some of these sites will be in rural areas. Projects that our students will be working on (and will be expected to be covered in the documentation) include engineering/renewable energy, health care, eye care, nutrition, hotel and hospitality training.”
We ended up with 3 students from Brown and 3 from PolyU. We brought them all to our office, gave them briefings on our SL program and their assigned tasks, and then send them into the field. By summer 2016, PolyU has developed many teams in the field in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Rwanda, … Several of these projects are collaborations between the SL teacher and our office (Office of Service-Learning, OSL). The SL teacher is in a foreign country dealing with many complicated issues already. We didn’t want to burden the teacher with having to deal with yet another person (the student journalist) not directly involved in the service. At the same time, the student journalist is likely to be unfamiliar with the country and the site. Hence, in principle, we only send a journalist to projects where we have an OSL staff on the ground who can provide support to the journalist.
With all these precautions and preparations in place, the reporting went well. As much as possible, we pair up a PolyU journalist with a Brown one. This is so that they can complement each other and learn from each other. Brown University has a long and illustrious tradition in service-learning. Their Swearer Center for public service was established in 1986, while PolyU’s Office of Service-Learning was established only in 2011. Swearer values ethical and engaged student leadership; reciprocity and respect; diversity, equity and inclusion; social justice and intellectual rigour. PolyU also buys into these values; yet we also have to operate in our own specific cultural, historical and political environment, and we have developed distinctive characteristics in our SL program due to this environment. We are hoping that the cross fertilisation between Brown and PolyU brings good results. We have not been appointed. The collaboration started in 2016 has continued and deepened. It also led to another program whereby we send our students to join Brown’s iProv summer internship program. More on that later.
In the mean time, each year the student journalists produce publications that tell the stories of PolyU’s many international Service-Learning projects in Rwanda, Cambodia, Vietnam, … The stories cover the projects themselves. They also introduce the country, the community and the issues tackled. They tell the stories of the students: what they do, how they interact with the community, how they feel and change. They tell the stories of the teachers: how they plan, teach, and are in turn impacted. They, of course, tell the stories of the community and the partners, how they are affected by the interactions. The journalists also produce short videos and other media which make the international SL experience come to live.
The efforts of the student journalists make international service-learning accessible to so many interested parties who cannot travel to these far away places to experience it first hand. These publications and videos play an important role in informing the campus and many stake holders what service-learning really is, what kind of impact is it making among our students as well as the communities. They help us generate support, financial and otherwise, for the program. They help us embrace social engagement and global citizenship as core values at PolyU.
The 2016 UGC Teaching Award includes a grant of HKD $450,000 that the Ngai-Chan team used to develop and run a staff development program for the community of university academics across Hong Kong, and not just for PolyU. What was proposed was a Service-Learning Development Program (SLDP) to share the PolyU SL experience with the wider higher education community in Hong Kong. The target recipients are the community of university academics across Hong Kong’s eight UGC-funded institutions.The objectives were to (1) increase the number of staff with the expertise required to design, lead and assess SL courses, and (2) to establish an SL community of practice among Hong Kong education faculty and staff.
The SLDP consists of two levels of training. The course was modelled on our own staff development program offered through 2012-15. The course was conducted in the summer in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The course itself has three components. The first is a 3-hour eLearning module that covers the theory and pedagogy of SL. The second component is a multi-day workshop series at PolyU, covering the three major components of academic SL: (a) teaching of academic concepts underpinning the SL subject, (b) the execution of service projects fir a target community with the appropriate academic content, and (c) learning through reflection on the SL experience. It will also involve preparation for the field work to be carried out subsequently, such as the provision of information on the cultural background of the target community, the technical content and risk management.
The Third component is the field work in Cambodia, where PolyU maintains a large presence and several team works on a variety of projects each summer, from information technology installation and training to vision screening, health promotion, language teaching and hospitality education. This is arguably the most valuable, where participants can experience SL first hand, try out what they have learned through reading and discussions, and design new projects. The SLDP participants observe the students carrying our their SL projects in the field. They meet with the SL subject teachers to better understand how frontline teachers plan and supervise the projects. They are offered the opportunity to sit in selected reflection sessions to observe how these delicate interactions unfold. They will visit NGO partners with experience working with higher education institutions. To give the participants a first hand experience of some of the complexities of real-life SL and the support needed for the students, they carry out their own projects with guidance from our teaching team. Thought out the whole process, each of the participants is asked to develop a proposal for a new SL course or project. As they go through the field work, observing the students, meeting with the teachers and NGOs, and carry out their own projects, they flesh our their own proposal. By the end of the field work component, they have developed a proposal that they can present to the rest of the class, and collect feedback from the class as well as the course teachers.
After running three cohorts, each of roughly 15-20 participants, we have built up a sizeable community of SL practitioners. We are also very pleased to have witnessed a number of SL courses and projects produced by the participants themselves at their own institutions. The community has kept in touch through social media, attendance at workshops and conferences organised at some of the institutions, etc. Some have even gathered together to bid successfully for a major grant from the University grants Community to further strengthen the capacity of university academics in Hong Kong to teach and research on SL. The SL movement is gathering speed in Hong Kong.
One of the pleasant surprises through tis project is that we have been able to accommodate a number of participants from outside Hong Kong. Since this program was designed for academics from Hong Kong, we did not promote it beyond Hong Kong. Nevertheless we have a lot of partners in relevant SL projects in various parts of Asia and many of them displayed interest in this course when they hear of it. We ended up taking in a few people from Mainland China, Philippines and Vietnam to the course. They have enjoyed the course and we have been in communication ever since.
In the old days, Lunar New Year is the biggest and longest festival of the year.We spend many days visiting family, relatives and friends, greeting each other, eating drinking, playing mahjong, playing cards, …Practically all shops and businesses are closed for 7 to 14 days.
Many shop owners and workers take the opportunity to go back to their home towns which can be hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. It is practically impossible to eat outside. The few dim sum restaurants that remain open would charge a 10, 20 even 30% premium over the regular prices.
Nowadays it seems to be very different. Many shops are indeed closed. Yet there are also many businesses of all types that remain open. Some say it is at least partly because retail businesses and restaurants have lost a lot of money during the pandemic. Some stay open during the Lunar New Year Festival to compensate for, at least a little, the money they have lost. In order to service a little longer, and hopefully for the social distancing to ease.
During a quick tour of our neighbourhood, my wife and I found that you can buy snacks such as fish balls. egg waffles, …
Newspapers and magazines.
Fruits as gifts for visiting relatives and friends.
Vegetables for dinner
Even fancy seafood such as garoupers, lobsters, crabs, scallops, …
Ready to eat roasted pork, Cha Siu, roasted duck, soy sauce chicken, white chopped chicken, …
A new apartment.
Braised mutton.
Street vendors selling clothing and other household needs are doing a brisk business.
Of course you can worship at the local shrine of the gods who are supposed to look after the neighbourhood.
There are, however, also many lonely people even on the street. How many more are there inside?
Such is the way we spend the first day of the new year. What is the rest of the year going to look like?
