The Start of the Service Learning: Group Formation, Procurement, Individual Responsibilities

Since we were comfortable with each other following our Jalan Kukoh trip, we decided that we should stick as a group and continue with the next part of the deliverables in AED38G, the service learning project. Our group comprised of 9 members (including myself) and I will finally be including their names since I actually remember them now.

Team for Project Gracehaven:
Danial
Clara
Rachelle
Constance
Nancy
Vid
Kada
Syakurah
Syafiqah

I definitely felt anxious working in a group for this service learning project primarily because 1) I have never worked in such a big group before and 2) To this point, I was only really aware of Clara's work ethic and none of the others since we are in the same major but I digress. Our first meeting was to decide on our topic and we had a few ideas and we realised we tended to focus on social issues where we could make a change.

Topics we were interested in:
- Poverty
- Youths-at-risk
- Elderly

However, we faced another major hurdle and that was in having an organisation that was willing to work with us. Our group members went back and forth with a few organisations but we either had them ghost us or were unwilling for students to conduct a project under them. This was understandable but we were definitely getting more nervous because we needed to make this work. We were very fortunate in the end, Clara managed to contact her mentor from her previous internship to hook us up with Gracehaven and a point of contact that was working with them. Point to note however, this organisation has ignored our previous emails and would have continued to ignore our emails if it were not for Clara having a personal contact within the organisation. At this point, I learnt that social capital through social networks were important, although it is not an idea entirely novel within the realm of sociology, this was the first time I have actually experienced it myself. If Clara did not have that amount of social capital, we would possibly never have had an organisation we could work with.

Once we got the approval from Gracehaven that they did want to work with us and wanted us to conduct an anger management workshop, we stumbled across another hurdle along the way. This time, it was formulating our learning objectives from the workshop. Prof Liu mentions time and time again that its not so much about the service but more importantly the learning that you get from your service. I think for the students majoring in Humanities and SocSci, it was easy; we wanted to relate what we have been constantly reading about in our literature to the real world. To others, we could see a certain struggle in conceptualising what they wanted out of this. This was no fault of their own since each major does have a different focus on what they want their students to critically think about. However, I did think that it helped them discover themselves in some way, to decide what they truly care about when it comes to the social problems that beset society today. For myself, my personal learning objective was to learn from the residents in Gracehaven itself. Personal, raw, lived experiences play a very important role in the way I think, act and feel; the lessons I could learn from the residents in Gracehaven would no doubt benefit me in that aspect as well.

The last hurdle we encountered was actually carrying out our work on our own ends. The first Gracehaven workshop session was a few weeks away from when we received approval for our proposal. We struggled to get our session plans ironed out, being familiar with the flow of the project and on top of that, getting our logistics ready for the actual workshop. It did worry me that we were going to be completing all of this at the eleventh hour but I was also part of the problem since I had so many other responsibilities to deal with; within academia and without. On hindsight, I felt that we could have been more vocal with the challenges that each of us were facing to complete our assigned responsibilities on time but this issue was compounded by the fact that we were unfamiliar enough with each other to the point that that would not be an option. I also held a personal worry working with Gracehaven because I was fearful of how the residents would act during the workshop. During our meetings with Gracehaven prior to the actual workshop delivery, we got to see the residents that we will be working with and it did not help that the Communications Manager, S, of Gracehaven pre-empted us with anticipatory fear of what would happen if we did screw up the workshop. My fears did not resonate with my group however, and that frustrated me because my worries were cast aside as 'overcomplicating the problem' even when I tried to argue about the sensitivities that we should employ when dealing with them. Going forward, I learnt that in future group work, there needs to be explicit roles and responsibilities undertaken by each member and we should constantly give updates by a set deadline of where we are at. I think being clear with each other does alleviate a lot of the stress that comes with doing last minute work and that we could help each other if need be. For myself, I feel like I should have been clearer and why those specific worries worried me in order for my teammates to empathise with me to a greater degree. I felt hat I could not frame my worries in a more lucid manner and that meant that my group mates could not take my perspective on the matter simply because it was not possible for them to at all.