The Philippines seems to be a fruitful place for PolyU Service-Learning. Since this past winter, we have already sent several teams here: STEM, youth development, nursing. Working with primary and secondary schools, nursing homes.
The needs are great, just like practically all developing countries. Lots of people can speak English. There are plenty of people, particularly the children, who don’t speak well. But it is not difficult to find young people who can work with us. It is the foreign country that is closest to Hong Kong, within one and a half hours of flying.
The biggest reason is the pervasive culture of service. The government promotes it through national programs, through a much broader sense of sense - including public and military service, etc. The Philippines is predominately Catholic, and the Catholic Church embraces service as fundamental to faith. The universities promote service, both the Catholic ones and government ones.
So far, we have been collaborating already with three universities. And more have expressed interest.
One way forward here is to institutionalise service-learning, to integrate it more into the core academic programs. To do that, SL has to be more academically rigorous. To deserve academic credit, to strengthen the teaching of academic content, to demonstrate more tangible impact to the community, to link up more strongly with strategic initiatives. We hope we can help with that.
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