SL@PolyU in Philippines

On Saturday, January 4, the University of Philippines Team welcomed the PolyU Service-Learning Team to their Diliman campus, kicking off our first large scale  Joint Winter Service-Learning Project.  The PolyU Team consists of 200+ students and their teachers.  Together, the Joint Team has 300+ members, including the UP President.  In the following week, three major projects were carried out. 

The largest project is itself split into three smaller teams, each with 40 PolyU students, plus their UP collaborators.  They do eye inspections for hundreds of children, for common problems such as short-sightedness, colour blindness, etc.  This is a much needed service in many developing countries, in which millions and millions of children who have never had their eyes inspected.  Many do need eye glasses to help them see properly, without realising it.  By the time they realise it, the situation has gotten so bad that not much can be done to alleviate the problem.  In fact, many adults have the same 

Another team will run workshops to train primary school children to develop AI  (Artificial Intelligence) applications for the visually impaired.  This project achieves multiple purposes.  The obvious is that these primary children learn about some hot, advanced technology - artificial intelligence.  At the same time, they also learn about the needs of a disadvantaged group - the visually impaired.  PolyU students had to the learn the AI first, in order to teach the primary school children.  They also learn about these primary school children, and how to be a teacher themselves.  In the process, all learn the power of AI, and the seriousness of being left behind. 

The smallest team go to a special school to try to teach special needs children: physically handicapped, autistic, etc., basic motor skills.  Such as colouring, and even as basic as paying attention, and following instructions.  What they try to do is very emotionally intense and draining.  Yet also satisfying.  The special school is well organised and staffed with professionals.  Yet like many of its kind, there is always a shortage of funds, space, manpower, and new ideas. Our Joint Team provide some much appreciated new initiatives.  Including an attractive LEGO wall.  

While our students serve the community, we are also running a Teacher Training Course, for 20 university teachers coming from Philippines, Hong Kong and Cambodia.  They learn the core concepts, numerous case studies, and get to observe the three real life projects in action.  They get to speak with the students, teachers, the clients, the parents, the NGO/school staff, …  How did three very diverse projects happen to take place nearby while the teachers take the Teacher Development Course?  Or does it actually happen the other way around?  Or perhaps everything was planned as one giant event?  However it is happening, it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of collaboration.  Pervading everything is the spirit of Service-Learning.  

The teachers actually have to propose their own Service-Learning subject, and associated project.  We, their teachers, provide them with feedback, and let them revise their proposals.  At the end, we are hoping some good new SL teachers and subjects will be born. 

All of these will not have happened without the great work from University of Philippines if not for the effort of our great friends Dennis, Therese, and ...   We are hoping this is just the begining of a great friendship between us. 

New Year Wishes

When 2025 dawned, we all sent each other messages such as “Happy New Year”, “Peace”, “Blessings”, “Prosperity”, “Wealth”, “Health”, …, or something of the sort, something good.  Seeing what is happening in the world, no wonder we wish the world is better.  

In Gaza, it is still occupied by the Israeli army, people continue to die and suffer, with no end in sight. 

In Ukraine, the Russian army continues to occupy a large part of the east, and in fact, is threatening to escalate the war. 

In Syria, one dictator is deposed; much uncertainty remains, at least the people seem to be happier than before. 

In Sudan, the civil war continues, with a large number of people facing the threat of famine. 

In Myanmar, civil war continues. In the mid-2010s, the country was opening up and prospects were promising.  Not anymore.  We took students there for service-learning projects several times in the 2010s; not anymore. 

In Iran, women in particular, are still facing an oppressive environment. My wife and I enjoyed visiting Iran years ago. We are not sure about going there now.  

In Afghanistan, a repressive environment continues, with women suffering the most, apparently. 

In Somalia, armed conflicts continue.  

Dictators and would-be dictators rule so many countries. 

Poverty, discrimination, injustice, oppression, hatred abound in so many places.  

…

 

But do we really believe that the world will get better? If wishes do come true, why do we have to make the same wishes every year?  

Looking at it from another angle, do we actually make serious efforts to make our wishes a reality?  For those of us who wish for “world peace”, do we make any serious efforts to bring peace any closer?  If we don’t, do we have the rights to wish that it will happen?  If we don’t, aren’t we not saying, in effect: “You people should go and make peace, I will just watch and hope to enjoy the fruits of your labour.”?

Some Christians may say that we cannot do anything, but God can.  So all we can and should do is to pray.  However, consider this: Doesn’t Jesus teach us to love our neighbours, to feed the poor, to visit those in prison, to love justice, to be agents of peace? 

Some Christians seem to believe that the world is un-savage-able.  That the world is destined to get worse, no matter what we do. So it is futile to try to improve the world, as it is.  In fact, the worse the world gets, the better - because the faster will Jesus Christ return.  That is a very cynical world view.  That also goes against all we understand of justice and love.  

Assuming that we do mean what we say when we wish for world peace, what are we going to do about it?  If we don’t plan to do anything, what right do we have to wish for it?  

In the end, what do we do?  Stop making wishes that we do not intend to help to make happen?  Or to actually try to make these lofty wishes come true?  

Message of Christmas

Christmas is a good time to reflect on how we want to live our lives.  The messages we have been hearing from the world are as loud as they are disturbing:

We are the greatest, no one can be better than us. 

We have the most powerful weapons and the mightiest soldiers; you all must submit to us.   

No one is allowed to threaten our security; we will strike first and destroy you.  

We will do whatever we can to protect our vital interests; we don’t care about yours. 

Don’t bring your problems to us; we don’t care that you are starving, sick and dying.

It is your own fault that you are poor; we are not responsible and we don’t want to have anything to do with that. 

We only care that we are rich and comfortable; the rest of the world can go to hell.  

We are always right; don’t you dare badmouth us with your criticism. 

We can take this land because it is now un-occupied; it does not matter that it was us who killed the people living on it to begin with.

We own this place because our people live here now; it does not matter that we moved our people here to overwhelm the local population. 

Essentially, people adore power, and look after themselves only; all others be damned. It ignores the fact that one cannot prosper alone.  If others sharing this world continue to suffer, eventually the rich and powerful cannot avoid being affected.  A war-torn, poor, unstable country generates desperate refugees, who then de-stablize the rest of the world.  Walls cannot keep out people who are truly desperate.  If everyone fights to be number one, the defeated will not rest until they avenge their defeat; then the newly defeated will seek revenge, …, ad infinitum.  No one will get any rest. Christmas, on the other hand, sends a different message.  It is about kindness, compassion, faith, hope and joy.  

We love because we have been loved. 

Blessing others reminds ourselves that we are blessed. 

We share because it is rewarding. 

We help because it feels good to see others getting better.

Temporarily we may feel diminished, but in the long run we also benefit from a better world. 

Kindness rebounds even more than hatred.    

It is creative to he hopeful while cynicism destroys.  

Love attracts true friendship, the right kind of friends.

Joy comes from inside; it does not depend on putting other people down. 

Faith gives us the strength to persevere.  

Selfishness may be temporarily satisfying; but ultimately it destroys everyone, ourselves included.  Pray that God gives us the wisdom to choose wisely and the strength to persevere.  

Minority Stories

A few years ago we received donations to set up a capacity building program - to train secondary school teachers to teach service-learning in their schools.  As part of the program, we helped to set up projects through which the teachers can practice supervising their students carrying out community service.  One of these projects involve interviewing ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, to help them turn their experiences into stories. To help them express themselves and to educate the Hong Kong society about the ethnic minorities’ experiences living among the dominant majority Chinese.  

Noor is an ethnically Pakistani girl, born and raised in Hong Kong. She knows it is important to master Chinese to function well in Hong Kong like the local Chinese people.  Yet she struggle tremendously in her efforts to learn Chinese.  Her family cannot offer her much help.  The environment that she is living is not conducive to learning Chinese.  She has enough challenges learning Cantonese, the local dialect, for daily living and studies.  In form 1, however, she was put in a class which studies the Chinese classics using the dialect Putonghua, dominant in Mainland China.  She had to use English phonetics to learn to pronounce the Chinese characters, then to translate the words into her fist language to understand the meaning.  It continues to be an uphill struggle for her to learn Chinese, making it hugely challenging to try to get into a local university. 

As an ethnic South Asian boy, Shah didn’t like to study.  He was a naughty student in the eyes of his teachers.  As he grew up, he was surrounded by many different people and issues, which caused him to think about what he really wanted to do.  Eventually he decided to be a teacher.  Now he teaches Chinese to fellow South Asian students.  His struggles and live experiences help him understand and relate to his students.  He is able to teach according to his students’ needs, which makes him a popular teacher.  He also loves food, which helps him relate to other people. 

Shehzad is ethnically Pakistani. Yet he has been able to master Chinese very early.  He is curious and pursues many interests.  He feels the education system in Hong Kong rely on rote learning too much.   He also feels that Hong Kong is too fast paced, and lacking in human relationships.  He does not feel prejudiced against.  Yet he feels the majority Chinese may not understand his community too well.  He is now teaching English, and hopes to help change these perceptions gradually through education.  

These stories are told creatively through words, photographs, and drawings.  They are attractive as well as informative.  These efforts can contribute to better understanding between ethnic groups in Hong Kong.  Yet such efforts in advocacy often find it difficult too reach the intended audience.  Popular channels of distribution are exhibitions on campuses and community centers, social media, etc.  Yet venues for exhibitions are not easy to find.  Social media are choke full of content.  How does one stand out and attract attention?  More creative efforts in distribution are needed.  Otherwise much effort in collecting these stories will just go to waste. 

Lessons from QS Reimagine Education Awards

Over the process of participation in this year’s QS Reimagine Education Awards, I learned a number of things.  The biggest of which, perhaps, is the power of a good story.  Particularly in a competition of this type, where many many entries (said to be in the thousands) compete for a comparatively small number (dozens?) of awards.  

Each entry probably submits hundreds to thousands of words. This is just in the submission document itself.  Add to that supporting documents, web sites, etc.  Multiply that by the number of entries. How many words are there to be processed? In these circumstances, having a solid project involving a large amount of effort which makes lasting impact may not be enough.  How much can the judges  even scan, read in detail, let alone verify, fact check?  

Hence the importance of being able to tell a good story, in a quick way.  A compelling story.  A story that matches the expectations of the specific category of award. High concepts. Sympathetic characters.  Touching moments.  In just a few hundred words.  Or fewer.  

Yet if this business is considered not as a competition, but a case of information extraction, it is actually quite a common problem.  How does one find useful information from an enormous amount of data?  One way is to look for pools of data that are relatively simple to understand, yet which tells a coherent, compelling story.  The method makes sense as a solution to information extraction.

Billingsgate Fish Market

On a cold morning, I went to the Billingsgate Fish Market.  It is, naturally, in the Canary Wharf, which, ironically, is now all posh high-rises housing multi-national corporations. 

Yet, I could smell the fish before I could see the actual market. 

I arrived towards the tail end of their business day., when the market closes around 8:30 am.   Trucks were moving the fish out.  Vendors were cleaning out their stores, and hosing down everything.  It was wet and slippery everywhere.  But there were still lots of fish lying around.  I wasn’t totally disappointed.  

They have the red snappers, sea breams, mackerels, hake, tilapia, …

Eviscerated sharks. 

Big fat carps. 

Big fat fish liver. 

Regular size and big Atlantic lobsters. They look like cousins of Boston/Canadian lobsters on the east coast of North America.  They share the same northern Atlantic ocean, of course.  

Crabs of all sorts. 

Shrimps of all sizes.  Some do look quite fresh, even though they were not swimming anymore.  

At a corner of the market, there is a cafe.  The foods and drinks available look like other cafes found around London.  Unlike eateries in fish markets in Asia, it does not serve seafood. But the walls are covered with photographs of people and scenes from the market, mostly in black and white.  It is also here that I heard that the market is being moved to a new site.  Perhaps the land is being too expensive, too attractive to corporations, to leave them for the fish.  That is sad, because it is a part of the history and culture, that is being lost.  The same thing happened to the fish market in Tokyo, and other places.  

Outside, seagulls cried and circled the market.  Seemingly trying to catch the flying fish which is the wind vane.  

Visiting wet markets, particularly fish markets, is one of my favourite activities. In Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Rangoon, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Manila, Taipei, Rochester, Toronto, Turin, Greece, Dakar, Tunis, and across the world.  It gives me a glimpse of how people live, what they eat, and how.  

It was seemingly a cold and miserable morning,  But it was so much fun.