Service Learning - FaithActs
Background info:FaithActs is a non-profit voluntary welfare agency serving the needs of children, youths and families in Singapore. They have been around for 6 years, and they help "youths at risk". The age group of these youths are 10 to 18 years old.
Youths at risk - Commonwealth is a poorer community, as in their family might be poor, might have bad influences, and some of their family members might even be involved in illegal stuff such as drug-trafficking. For us, our parents will kill us if we consider dropping out of school, but for them, it is the norm.
They also work with primary & secondary schools, most of the time with normal academic/technical streams, though it does not mean that these people are always 'bad' or express stream students have no troubles.
Some of their programmes teach them on self-esteem, anger management, etc. They also provide tuition for the students.
The people who met us today:Jean is a senior volunteer with FaithActs and she is one of the people in charge of the project below. There are also 4 other volunteers in charge (thought i did not catch their names).
What we will probably be doing:They will be conducting a needs assesment in September. It is a survey of the entire community on for example, who lives there, what do they need. A normal needs assesment covers around 4 to 5 blocks of flats, while this time they are surveying over 20 blocks of flats.Their objective is to find out what exactly the community needs so that they can fine-tune their programmes & services, and also find out the trend. For example, there might be an increasing number of elderly in the community, so maybe they should also help the elderly.What we need to do is to help them with the pre-work.
-
Geographical Mapping Find out what kind of blocks are there (e.g 4-room 3-room)
What kind of residents live there (e.g there may be more malays, or more elderly)
No. of units (some might be vacant or something)
-
Needs MappingFind out what other resources they might need to help these people.
-
Pilot Survey (May)It is something like a practice for the actual needs assesment conducted on a minimum of 40 families, which is 1% of the actual no. of families for the needs assesment.
-
ResourcesWe also have to find our what resources are out there as it will affect how they can help.
For the more formal part, there might be clinics or community centres, for informal, maybe there might be a group of aunties chit-chatting at the market every now and then.
In general, we will have to
observe the neighbourhood and help with the
geographical stuff.
Take note:1.There will be a briefing for the whole class held on 17/18 may after school, exact time and date will be arranged later.2.We will be broken into groups.3.There will be another briefing & familiarise session4.We will have to take a walk in the community to observe, like maybe see if those aunties are really chit-chatting at the market, count the number of units, ask the shop owner questions like how long they have been here and what do they observe, and there will also be some set questions we need to find out.5.Each group might have to present to the class as we are broken into groups and are supposed to know what we are doing.6.There will be a debriefing session so that we can analyse what we have learnt.Basically, there will be around 5 sessions and it will be over the June holidays.
Expectations:-
Basic Responsibility (e.g be punctual; cannot come, inform; cannot do, tell.)
-
Mindful of attire (No revealing clothes as in bottom cannot be more than five fingers above knee and no tank tops or such, No flip-flops or slippers (whatever you like to call it), most probably wearing
class tee.)
-
No negative influences (no smoking etc.)
-
Know that you are representing FaithActs-
If we take any photos, it's okay if there are volunteers in them, but if there are their youths, they have to be cleared by Jean before we can publicise them or something.So yeah, that's all i think (:
If you have any questions you can ask those who went today. And for those who went today, if i missed out anything or wrote something wrong, please help me edit (: Thanks :DYours Sincerely,
Your very nice process group member who is not the leader of the group and yet helped the leaders, BUSHY YUNTING & BUSHY ZOEYING copy down everything,
PrisC.
