Service-Learning

As part of my civic internship, I was a marketing intern with Soap Cycling Singapore, an organisation that focuses on recycling soap and educating the community on sanitation, hygiene and soap wastage. I’m grateful that I could apply the skills and knowledge learnt from my Business Studies diploma for a good cause and I’ve learnt not to take something as simple as soap for granted!

During my civic internship, I found myself using my engineering knowledge and skills to help people. It was so rewarding to see the faces of the elderly light up in understanding when I explained engineering concepts to them in a simple way or when I helped to get their faulty electrical devices working again. I also gained other skills such as in programme content development and implementation as well as networking.

NP's Civic Internship has opened up our organisation to great interns who want to make a difference in the community, and in turn has given NP students great insight into a career in the social sector. In fact, one of the NP interns has joined us full-time! We hope this programme can be rolled out to other institutes of higher learning as well to promote empathy and selflessness amongst the youths who are the future of our country.

Having the NP civic interns work on their Civic Challenge projects with HIM saved me much time and effort. And they did a great job! I have partners and other contacts keen to hire NP students as interns or to have them work on similar projects, after seeing what was done for HIM.

Thanks to my Service-Learning module, I have learnt how to better understand a target audience and its needs. I got to see that it is important to do this before we go into ideation. Otherwise, we may design solutions that may not be relevant or useful to our target group.

Unlike a vacation, YEP allows you to really get on the ground and understand the lives of the locals. YEP made me realize that we take things for granted in Singapore and that we have a lot of opportunities, unlike the youths we met who had to drop out of school, despite having aptitude. I also gained a group of tight-knit friends!

The NP students were very open to feedback and adjusting their plans. Through verbal and visual cues, they actively engaged our clients who really enjoyed the games and dance sessions that were organised. It has been a good experience and we would love to continue this partnership with NP!

The Social Leadership Personalised Learning Pathway (PLP) opened my eyes to communities I had not known much about before. For example, I wasn’t aware of homelessness in Singapore! I have learnt that homeless people, like most humans, seek respect and dignity. I also got exposure to migrant workers. After this PLP experience, I am certain that service will remain an integral part of my life.

For PLP, I volunteered with the elderly, befriending them and conducting online activities to engage them. It made me realise that I had stereotyped the elderly as grumpy people. They had such interesting stories to share and enthusiastically participated in our activities!