SLS-7d5 Offshore Bases

International service-learning is a top priority for PolyU.  On the one hand, it is one very effective way to create impactful projects.  There are many places in the world that are facing tremendous problems, which our students and staff can apply our knowledge and skills to help to tackle. On the other hand, the diverse culture, language, people, economic environment and so many other aspects offer great opportunities for our students and staff to learn.  Hence we have been very keen to find effective ways to do better in international service-learning. 

We learn from our own experience starting from early on a number of important lessons:

1. A good understanding of the community and the issue in question is required in order to develop and implement a good service-learning project.  This is particularly important for projects in a foreign country, obviously.  It generally takes a long time to truly get to know a community or country.  
2. It is tremendously helpful to have a strong local partner, who are stable, well connected, and experienced in supporting a team coming from a foreign country.  They can help us understand a country, identify pertinent issues, develop solutions, and connect us to other suitable partners. 
3. To create a significant impact, it is best to commit to a project for a number of years.  It is needed to build up understanding, correct mistakes, and develop suitable impactful solutions.  It is also critical to nature mutual understanding, respect and trust with local partners, for effective collaboration.  A one shot project is generally not preferable for these reasons.  
4. The needs of a community is usually multi-facetted. Poverty is often associated with poor sanitation and health, lack of clean water, lack of electricity supply, poor education infrastructure, lack of employment opportunities, … To tackle these problems, it may be better to have a team with multiple skills, or even multiple teams with different skills.  

For these and other practical considerations, we strongly discourage one-shot projects.  A lot of effort is required to set up an offshore project: identifying a community and an issue, finding a partner, arranging long range transportation, finding suitable accommodation (inexpensive but clean and safe), arranging local travelling, assuring safety and health, …  Such efforts can be amortised over a number of years if the team returns.  But may have to be repeated for a new country/community if the team jumps to a new site each year.   There might be exceptions for certain disciplines, such as tourism, for whom the initial investigation and setting up may actually be part of the core and desired challenges of the discipline.   

Beyond encoring long term projects, we have proactively invested a lot effort into developing offshore posts in countries where we have acquired good understanding, strong partners, impactful projects, and potential for expansion of efforts.  We leverage the knowledge and contacts that we have built up to bring in more teams and teams with diverse expertise, experiment with new projects and partnerships, train new teachers and staff, and create innovative practices.  

The first country that we have successfully developed into such as outpost is Cambodia, which we have served since 2010.  Cambodia has suffered from horrible wars, genocide and internal conflict, and severe poverty.  On the other hand, it has strong ties, past and present with China, and is only a reasonably inexpensive 2 hour flight from Hong Kong .  It is developing rapidly and impose few restrictions on international agencies.  We have since developed strong relations with their top university and a large number of NGOs, some of which have strong ties to Hong Kong.  

The second one is Rwanda.  It is almost 10,000 kilometres from Hong Kong.  It is spectacularly different from Hong Kong, in terms of ethnicity, the physical appearance of the people, language, history, economic development, livening conditions, culture, cuisine, climate, …  Hence offering tremendous learning opportunities in so many aspects.