How does service-learning affect me as a participant? Particularly coming to Rwanda to install solar panels and other related projects? It is coming down to this.
It is seeing with my own eyes how people live in houses with walls of mud and sleeping on a straw matt on a floor of dirt. It is seeing how people are forced to stop all activities after the sun goes down because there is no light. It is seeing how a child goes to school in tattered clothes, hungry, and making little progress because the child has no books and exercise books and cannot study in the evening. It is seeing how people have to walk for hours to charge their mobile phones. It is seeing how people in the mountains just kilometres from the capital city are cut off from the outside world because there are no buses, no newspapers, no television, and no radio. It is seeing how people treasure a small transistor radio that costs only a few dollars.
We can read all about these things from the Internet from a great distance. But reading and hearing about it is very different from seeing it with your own eyes, and feeling it with your body. It is no longer a piece of information. It is now people connected to me, people that I meet, talk to, and actually part of me that are suffering.
It is also knowing that I can do something for them. I can help them install solar panels, that can provide them with a small amount of electricity, for lighting, for mobile phone charging, for news and entertainment on a radio, for study, for household, for fellowship. It is knowing that I can make their lives just a little easier, even only for a few years while the system remains operating.
I will feel miserable if I don’t do what I can do to help. Something like that is affecting, changing our students and staff, and all involved. That is why we keep coming back for more. It is about being human. One of my favourite teacher recently used the term “humanist”. It is not a term I commonly use. But aren’t we all humans? Shouldn’t we all to be humanists? Isn't it something God wants us to do?
Much of Rwanda is still off the national electrical power grid. The government is trying hard to electrify the country, building new power plants, including huge solar farms. We have been seeing power lines being installed along many country roads in the rural areas, where we have installed solar panels for electricity for some village households.
In fact, some households with our solar panels installed several years ago are now connected to the national power grid. We are happy for them. We are also happy that our solar panels had served them in the years before they could be connected to the power grid.
Does this mean that there is no need to install solar panels for the households in areas now covered by the power grid? Perhaps not even areas where the power grid is expected to teach in the coming years?
Far from it. It may still take many years for the grid to arrive, even if it is promised. In the mean time, the children cannot study at night, making it hard for them to do well at school, stunting their intellectual development. The lost is irreparable. Who can give people back their youth? Likewise, the house wife cannot do house work after dark, making it more difficult to maintain a house properly. Neighbours cannot meet after dinner conveniently, making human connections and fellowships that much more difficult.
Even for areas officially reached by the power grid, that is not the whole story. The fact that a power line crosses over your house does not mean that your house is automatically provided with electricity. A power line is installed typically on the main road. The house owner still has to pay the not insignificant cost for the wire and other material and the associated labour to connect you house to the power line. And if your house is far from the power line, the cost can be exorbitant. And then you have to continue to pay for the electricity that you actually use. The end result is that even in areas reached by the power grid, many households are not connected and do not actually have electricity.
The country is working hard to electrify, but it will take many years before the need for electricity is completely met. The need remains.
Many farmers here in Rwanda supplement their income from their produce by raising farm animals. For some of them, animals actually provide the bulk of their income.This is particularly true for those who can not handle the hard labour on the farm because they are old or infirm. Also single mothers with small children abandoned by their husbands - which is quite common, sadly.
Many of them cannot afford to buy the animals. Some are provided with the starting animals by various programs from the government or private organisations, such as Caring for Children - Rwanda that we are involved in.
Cows provide milk, a staple food in this country. Goats and rabbits provide kids quickly, making a fast turn around. Pigs take longer but higher value. All provide manure. Chicken and ducks give you eggs and the young. …
Animals can also be a lot of fun.
Young cows like to lick anything: hands, boots, pants. But their tongues are very rough. They also enjoy being patted on the head.
Pigs are always curious. Piglets will follow you around if you let them.
There is a hen which seems to be eyeing the rabbits. Whatever is she thinking?
Lambs are cute and playful. But difficult to catch.
But be ware of the ram, particularly those with big horns. They like to head butt and can cause serious damage.
About half a year ago, I helped to connect two of my favourite organisations. One is African Evangelical Enterprise Rwanda.The other is Jubilee Cares of Hong Kong. The result is the child-sponsorship program Caring for Children - Rwanda.
Primary and Secondary education in Rwanda is free, meaning students do not have to pay a fee to attend school. However, students do have to buy a school uniform, buy school books and supplies, school bag, … When a child does not have these things, it makes it difficult for them to study. He or she may feel ashamed, get laughed at, or bullied. When the child is hungry, it is difficult to concentrate and do well. When the child gets sick, he or she may not be able to afford medical attention. A sick child mostly likely do not do well in school. He/she may be under pressure to work to help out the family financially. An effective child sponsorship program cannot focus only on the child. If the child is fed but the rest of the family is not, if the child has medical insurance but the rest of the family does not, …, it is still very difficult for the child to study. Hence a well-designed child sponsorship program has to cover many aspects.
After a series of discussions, AEE Rwanda and Jubilee Cares agreed on the Caring for Children - Rwanda program. In the first round, ~30 children are sponsored by donors from Hong Kong.
When I came to Rwanda with the PolyU team to work on the solar panel projects, it gives me an opportunity to visit some of the children to see how they, and the program, are doing.
Clementine is a 12 year old girl that my wife and I sponsor. Her mother, Cecile, has 3 children. Clementine’s father abandoned the family. Two of the children had to be given away because Cecile could not care for them. Cecile and Clementine rent a tiny 2-room unit in a 2 unit house. Now Clementine is happily attending school in her new uniform, carry her school supplies in her new school bar, eats lunch at the school, and is protected by medical insurance. Her family is provided with a goat and a pig, whose frequent babies provide income. At the same time, a government support program provide the family with a cow, whose milk provide additional income. Cecile buys and sells vegetables such as tomatoes and cabbage to make some money. She joins a savings-group to pull together small saving and take our small loans for starting a small business or some other need. Clementine is shy but obviously happy for he change of fortune. Cecile is unabashedly happy, thanking me and AEE effusively. It is heart-breaking to hear of their story. But, at least, their fortune is turning.
It takes only 200+ Hong Kong dollars (~30 USD) a month to make these changes in a child’s life. 30 children may be only a drop in a bucket against the thousands and thousands of such children in distress, in Rwanda alone. But, at least for the 30 children, it is life-changing. Wouldn’t you want to help change such a child’s life for the better? So that more children can enjoy such changes?
One of the most critical elements of this year’s project is the collaboration with the school Center for Champions. It is a vocational school where students learn practical skills such as plumbing, construction, electricity, hair-dressing, sewing, etc.
Because of covid-19, we can only bring 9 students and 6 staff this year. But we are working with 30 students and staff from Center for Champions (CFC), and several staff from African Evangelical Enterprise Rwanda (AEE Rwanda).
We spent 2 days training the CFC students on the installation of solar panels and the wiring of houses, at CFC in the city of Rwamagan. Then the team travel to a village south of Rwamagana, to install the solar panels. We are installing solar panels for 200 houses. Without the CFC students it would be impossible for our PolyU team to do that.
In fact, the CFC team had worked with us before. Last year, we couldn’t come because of covid-19. So we trained the CFC students online, shipped 2 tons of material here, and guided the CFC students to install the solar panels. It worked. But without us here to train them, we could not correct mistakes, trouble shoot problems, improve the workmanship, and can only use very basic and simple methods. This year, we are able to train them better, improve the overall quality of the work, try out new and better solutions.
The students learn an important skill, working with solar panels, which is important while the whole country is electrifying quickly. Some of them live around the area and are able to do small scale maintenance on the systems. In the process they can make a little money. Their skills may help them find employment in the future. The injection of the financial incentive may also stimulate more investment in solar energy.
In the mean time, the tow groups work together as a team, learning from each other and helping each other. The local youth are serving their own community. The local community is very grateful. Our partner AEE is very happy to see all these happening.
We flew in a Boeing 787 from Hong Kong to Addis Ababa. Then a Boeing 737-300 from Addis Ababa (not the MAX) to Kigali.
20+ hours after leaving Hong Kong, we arrived in Kigali and checked into the guest house of African Evangelical Enterprise Rwanda. From 2013 to 2019, we came here every summer. When we went home in 2019, we didn’t expect that it would be 3 three years before we could come again. When we meet our old friends again, some of whom we have known for 10 years, everyone was quite excited, even emotional.
Among the team of 15, 12 have never been to Rwanda before. In fact, this is the first time that they set foot in Africa. I had suggested that they watched out of the airplane when our plane crossed onto Africa. But it was dark outside when it happened.
We did ask them to keep their eyes open when we got out of the airport in Kigali, on our way to the AEE guesthouse. Rwanda can be quite different from many people’ conception of Africa.
For the coming 2 weeks, this is our home away from home.
Then we had early dinner - beans, vegetables a few pieces of beef, sauce and fruit. The team seem to be having a good appetite - a good start.
Afterwards, we started checking the material we left behind from the last time we were here: solar panels, cables, tools, … At the same time, we sat down with our partner to map out what we are going to do, starting from tomorrow, Sunday.
We have been sending teams to work on various projects in Rwanda from 2013, until 2019 before it was interrupted by Covid-19. If God is willing, we will be flying there again on July 15, arriving on July 16, and stay there for 2 weeks on a variety of project.
We will continue to install solar panels to generate electricity for village households where they do not have electricity. This time we will be working in the villages around Rwamagana, to the east of Kigali, instead of Gikomero, in the north-east of Kigali.
We will try to improve the design of the solar panel power-generating system, for better efficiency, and more conveniency for the villagers. We will provide systematic training for local youths to work with solar panels, so that they can work with us; in the mean time, to improve their skills and better employability for the future. We will work with a local vocational school to set up a longer term training program that they can run on their own after we have left. We will also install programs on the solar panel power generating systems to monitor the operation of the systems, remotely. We have already developed the programs. Success depends on continued access to the Internet from the systems that we install, which is not a certainty given the relatively under-developed network infrastructure in the rural areas.
In addition, we helped to set up a children-support program between Hong Kong-based Christian NGO and a Rwanda-based Christian NGO. Donors in Hong Kong are supporting a number of children in poverty to help them to stay in school, The donations support some schools fees, insurance, meals, etc., that help to keep the children in school, for a better future. We hope to visit some of these children to see how they are doing.
Hence we are attempting some new projects that require technical solutions, as well as the collaboration of many parties, including the local villagers, our partner organisation, the vocational school, the youths in the community, … Of course, we need everyone to stay healthy amid the pandemic. And something completely out of our control - that the various governments do not suddenly change the rules of control measures in the name of tackling the pandemic.
We have come to feel that the teacher is the most important element in a successful service-learning program. The outsider usually sees the student as the core element.They are the ones delivering the service and doing the learning, aren’t they?That is certainly true.Without the students, there is no service, and there is no learning. For that reason, students are the necessary ingredient.
But, for a SL program to succeed, the teacher is really the key driver. The teacher has to lay the foundation and do the design of the program, for the students to participate. Students come and go, what they learn goes with the student when they leave. It is the teacher, who use the lessons learned to further develop the program, to sustain the program in the long run. It is the teachers who embody the service-learning culture of the university.
It is for this reason that we have invested into teacher development from the beginning. We organise workshops, develop e-Learning material, and institute a kind of internship whereby aspiring teachers participate in existing classes and projects to gain first hand experience. We take teachers with us to Cambodia, to let them observe the teachers and students at work, meet with the partner organisations, propose and develop their own courses and projects. We started with our own teachers, then we expand to include teachers from other universities in Hong Kong, and eventually expand to include teachers from foreign countries.
Because of the pandemic, we have to offer the teacher development course in recent years online. This year we have 40+ teachers from Hong Kong, mainland China, Vietnam, Philippines, India, … The Vietnamese community translated our material into Vietnamese and provide simultaneous translation into Vietnamese for the classes. This year we have three sections. The participants start with a self-study using a e-Learning module on the basic concepts: what is service-learning, how to achieve the balance between service and learning, major misconceptions, reflection, … Then we go through 4 lecture/workshops on the major components: course design, reflection, assessment, evaluation, research. We just finished the first two sections. Next week they will hear from and talk with experienced teachers, and observe a number of actually service projects in progress.
The teachers are very enthusiastic. They participate in the class discussions, in-class exercises, case studies, … actively. They ask very intelligent questions. In the past, we have seen many teachers who graduated from our courses to teach and propose new service-learning courses. Many have remain good friends and allies. Some are now partners in collaborative projects. We look forward to another fruitful class this year. Some of the participants are already asking for a way to stay connected, as a group. It looks promising. We are also seeing growing interest in this type of training. Good signs for the region.
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