SLS-7c The Student Journalists

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.