Last week, my colleague, Dr. Lin, and myself went to the Philippines to run a workshop on research for a group of staff from Catholic universities. It is organised by De La Salle University for Uniservitate, a global organisation of Catholic Universities for Service-Learning.
So far, over the years, I have visited 4 major universities: University of Santo Tomas, University of Philippines Diliman, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University. All among top universities in the Philippines, one public and three Catholic, all active in service-learning in some form. I have also met the staff from many other universities, through conferences and workshops. I am getting a picture of a strong, pervasive culture of service across the universities in the Philippines. This probably has a strong correlation with the strong Catholic faith in the country. Service is a strong and distinctive feature of the Catholic faith. Hence Catholic educational institutions has a big competitive advantage in terms of the implementation of service-learning. The staff, from the most senior to the most junior, come convinced of the merits of service.
That is what we found among the 60 participants of the workshop. Everyone is so enthusiastic and passionate. They ask questions, answer questions and volunteer information, making it such a rewarding experience. The Philippines does not have a lot of extreme poverty such as exist in many sub-Sahara African countries. But it does have quite a bit of poverty similar to many developing countries. One distinctive feature is the extreme amount of typhoons, particularly during the summer months. Hence storm and flooding associated damages and sufferings. Another, which I was not very much aware of, is the large number of indigenous ethnic groups, in the mountainous areas and many thousands of islands. Some of the rather remote. But there are also many that are quite close to populous cities such as Cebu. Hence there is real need for basic necessities such as electricity (solar panels!) within an hour of large cities. Water is plentiful, but clean water is also an issue. Even the tap water in hotels is not suitable for drinking. These are some of the issues being tackled by service-learning. Many lessons from the projects being pursued.
It is perhaps fair to say the practice of service-learning is well entrenched. But there remains a need to strengthen the academic learning aspects of service-learning programs. Many service-learning programs are not integrated into the formal credit-bearing components of the academic programs. Some service-learning courses (subjects) are created by embedding a service-learning project into an existing academic course (subject). These projects can be of a wide range of type and rigour. Some require less than 10 hours of work from the student, including fact and requirement finding, proposal development and execution. This approach may meet with less resistance. However, it is unclear whether such light-weight programs can provide a transformative learning experience for the students.
On the research and scholarly activities related to service-learning, the experiences vary quite a lot. Some are looking into relatively rigorous studies. For example, one aims to study the reception, adoption and impact of the materials produced by the students involved in advocacy projects. Others are in a relatively early stage of development.
All in all, the enthusiasm demonstrated by the participants in the workshop is very encouraging. It is hope that workshops such as these, the conferences being organised, the Teacher Development Courses, the Asia-Pacific Community of Practice, and other concerted efforts can help to strengthen the quality of the SL programs. We are also hoping that the richness, diversity and innovation in the region can be brought to the front more, drawing the attention of and also contributing to the world-wide community. These are exciting times.
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