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Service
LEARNING PROGRAMME: SERVICE
UWCSEA believes in the transformative nature of the experience of serving others and in the responsibility we have to one another and the planet. Our Service learning programme fosters empathy and helps students to recognise that part of being human is seeking opportunities to put yourself aside in the service of others. While the context of each service interaction is different across our campuses, regardless of campus, grade, classroom or activity, all students are striving for learning in each of the three identified Service curriculum standards: 1. Awareness: by developing, skills and qualities individuals can become determined global citizens who recognise their ability to enact positive change 2.Sustainable Development – Systems Thinking: individuals and groups can plan to engage effectively in the sustainable development of local and global communities 3.Taking Action – Being Changemakers: by taking informed, purposeful action, individuals and groups can act as changemakers, contributing to the sustainable development of local and global communities
LOCAL SERVICE BY THE NUMBERS
Note that these numbers reflect the service activities offered at lunchtime, after school and on the weekends for all students K–12. In addition to this, all students in Infant, Junior and Middle School students also take part in service learning in the school timetable throughout the school year.
2,196
Dover students participated in Service Activity
Average hours volunteered weekly
1.2hrs 1,145
East students participated in Service Activity
Average hours volunteered weekly
1.4hrs 3,341
UWCSEA students participated in Service Activity
Average hours volunteered weekly
1.3hrs
Average number service programmes per Dover student each year (lunchtime, after school, weekend)
4.0 Average number service programmes per East student each year (lunchtime, after school, weekend)
4.2
228 210 113
Fundraising for Service All money raised at the College is independently audited annually.
$700,000
$600,000
$500,000
$400,000
$300,000
$200,000
$100,000
0
Total S$ collected by College for Service Programme
$625 $624
2018/2019 2019/2020
OPERATIONAL RESPONSE: COMMUNITY #UNITEDINDISTANCE
Off-campus service learning opportunities were curtailed in February and cancelled from March 2020. However, students continued to work with their partner organisations in Singapore and further afield remotely, using the service learning model to guide their response to the needs of our partner organisations. The UWCSEA student, staff and parent community also galvanised in support of those Singapore-based community members whose need for support became evident during the circuit breaker period. While COVID-19 impacted the Singapore community in various ways, particularly affected were the migrant workers who faced unprecedented conditions and hardship due to the rapid infection rate in migrant worker dormitories. Together with our Singapore-based Local Service partner organisations including It’s Raining Raincoats, Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) and H.O.M.E., the UWCSEA community kickstarted initiatives to support migrant workers in various ways, working around the limitations of the circuit breaker. Most visibly, the community pulled together to create a video with a message that strengthened our support for affected migrant workers. Keeping true to being united in distance, the community also created platforms to others, connecting with partner organisations to support their work. Initiatives included: • Phoenix 5K 4 Migrant Workers, in collaboration with Its Raining Raincoats, Ray of Hope and Giving SG, was a Dover community fundraiser which encouraged the community to stay active in circuit breaker. • Hopebound, launched by East Campus Grade 12 student Ayesha and her sister Nishka Menon ’17, focused on providing connections, companionship and mentorship for groups who were severely impacted when Singapore went into a lockdown: young adults, victims of domestic abuse, the unemployed (or those who were retrenched), and senior citizens by providing a space for their audiences to engage anonymously, with over 40 volunteer mentors in various occupational fields. • Can Mah! app was created by Class of 2020 graduates Atishay Dikshit, Logan Sethu, Rohan Punamiya, Gitansh Arora and Vivek
Venkatra in partnership with goodhood.sg and with support of Temasek Trust. With difficulties faced by many Singaporeans in vulnerable groups acquiring goods, with full delivery slots and extra delivery charges, the group created a non-monetised, accessible voluntary network, connected the elderly with those who were able to help them. • Calm During COVID-19 was kickstarted by Samiha Singh ’20 with the aim of providing comfort and emotional support to peers by lending both a helping hand and a listening ear. Samiha and her team organised book clubs, pen pals and other resources to support their peers via their website calmduringcovid19.com • Yellowship community initiative, started by Grade 10 student Vihaan, repurposes used tennis balls into tripod supports for film crews and toys for shelter dogs. During circuit breaker he refocused on distributing the balls as physiotherapy aids.
After learning basic techniques from physiotherapist Ruchira Gupta, such as how to use the balls to relieve stiff neck and back muscles, Vihaan filmed a video demonstration and collected more than 9,000 balls from donors. More than half were then distributed to migrant workers in quarantine together, with the details on the ‘how to’ video. • Baking for others was an initiative by Grade 5 student Maira who turned her hobby of baking into a project inspired by the current pandemic, “During the lockdown, I wanted to keep myself positively engaged and also challenge myself. I decided to put my passion for baking to good use to make a positive impact by supporting charities which were having a hard time coping with COVID-19. The initiative also enabled me to learn a bit about the various aspects of a business!”
STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT: SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES ENCOURAGING LONG-TERM LEARNING
Inspired by a Grade 5 expo student project in 2013, the UWCSEA Solar initiative has blossomed today into a communitysupported programme that aims to offset the College’s energy use, while helping to cut carbon emissions. With installations in 2019/2020, the tally across both campuses grew to 1,662 solar panels. Collectively, these solar panels generate 1,600kWh of clean energy per day. This equates to diversion of nearly 240 tonnes of CO2 annually.
After three years of hard work and dedication, the founding members of the Solar for East initiative passed the baton to the next class of leaders. The student leaders hosted a virtual presentation to the East Parents’ Association in March 2020 to share their learnings and achievements. Similarly, after an exciting year of activities and a focus on expanding the academic understanding of solar technology and building partnerships, the Solar for Dover team also passed the mantle of leadership to a new group of students, who held a virtual presentation to the Dover Parents’ Association in June 2020.
Peace is at the heart of the UWC mission; we educate for peace through our K–12 curriculum and with a special focus in Grade 11, through our dedicated Initiative for Peace (IfP) programme. Supported by donations from the UWCSEA Annual Fund, an online peace education toolkit, sharing 20 years of knowledge and learning from IfP was drafted during the 2019/2020 school year. The IfP is one of UWCSEA’s most successful student initiatives. Since it was founded in 2001, it has grown from a small studentled conference to be one of our most successful and impactful student development opportunities. IfP is a year-long activity for Grade 11s, where students explore concepts of peace and how to promote harmony between different groups from either side of a conflict. A student-led Peace One Day conference in Singapore on the International Day of Peace is followed by conferences held in Timor Leste and Mae Sot in Thailand at the end of the school year. The learning and empowerment that comes from participating in the IfP is transformational for both UWCSEA students and conference participants and their communities. While the 2020 conferences were cancelled due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, we hope the launch of this toolkit will mean that we will continue to spread peace, not only through alumni-run IfP events but through a network of aligned schools, colleges, universities and other youth-focused organisations that believe in the power of personal agency and connection.
UWCSEA STORIES
Service in action
In 2019/2020, our Service programme embedded a systems-based five-stage service learning model, influenced by the work of Catherine Berger Kaye, across the College. Illustrated by this case study, learning emerges through the five-stage cycle of: initial investigation, intentional preparation, considered and purposeful action, reflection and, finally, demonstration.
BEING OF SERVICE: UWCSEA’S PARTNERSHIP WITH SUN-DAC
For the last eight years, East Campus students have worked in partnership with SUN-DAC, a non-profit social service agency that supports people with disabilities in three locations across Singapore. Most of the clients have moderate to severe disabilities and many receive financial assistance. Partnering with SUN-DAC allows UWCSEA to help build inclusive communities in Singapore, addressing issues of social isolation and making a difference in many lives. At the start of every academic year, students who have committed to this Service, investigate the partner’s needs by interviewing the programme director and learning how they can support the beneficiaries in the most appropriate ways. Students set joint goals and plan actions to meet those needs, and develop indicators to demonstrate how the goals are met. Students then present these plans to the organisation for feedback and approval before they start their service interactions. In this way, the students ensure that the service they provide is informed, needed and appropriate. In conversation with SUN-DAC at the beginning of the 2019/2020 year, two needs emerged: fitness and social inclusion. As a result, during the weekly student-led activity, SUN-DAC clients were invited to campus once a week for an exercise session and lunch, either on campus or at a nearby hawker centre. Many of the clients have physical disabilities and the fitness helps to improve their fine and gross motor skills. The lunch improves social visibility for people with disabilities and also allows the clients an opportunity to exercise their autonomy of choice over what they eat, which is often not possible in institutional settings. Once Singapore’s circuit breaker started in April, students were challenged to think of how they could continue to be ‘of service’ to those in need. They opted to spend their weekly Service hours researching intellectual disabilities in local and international contexts and exploring issues related to employment, caregiving and legal ordinances. Although both the clients and students missed their weekly activity sessions, students used this opportunity to learn more about their clients and to reflect more deeply about how they can be of Service to the local community. Blanca Gonzalez, Class of 2021 reflected,
Although the second half of 2019/2020 was a challenging time to offer in person, direct, service, students deepened their understanding of existing problems and issues. They grew to understand how they can play a part in taking informed, purposeful action; all essential qualities to becoming action orientated global citizens.
OUR COMMUNITY
OUR COMMUNITY
The UWCSEA community is a vibrant, truly international group of students, boarders, scholars, staff, alumni and parents who are united in a common purpose. This section of the report provides some statistics and information about our community.
The UWC mission compels the College to assess the ways in which the organisation, including our community, supports diversity, equity and inclusion. This also requires questioning the role of the College within systems that perpetuate inequities in the community and both the culture and the teaching and learning in the school, and the role of the College. UWCSEA began a journey to create a more equitable and inclusive school through the development of the College Strategy in 2018, and initial strategic work within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), through ‘Diversity Cafés’ was reported in 2018/2019. This work provided important insights into the many ways the College community (students, staff, parents, alumni) understands the concept of diversity. The ‘Values in Action’ project, outlined below, further highlighted the important place that diversity and inclusion has within the UWCSEA community and how living the UWC mission must include authentic action within DEI. Following global outcries against racial injustice, the College committed to addressing structural racism and inequity by focusing on Anti-Racism which would extend through the 2020/2021 school year. DEI efforts are now specifically focused on becoming an anti-racist organisation, while recognising our long-term commitment to all facets of DEI while continuing our work in alignment with the UWCSEA Strategy: Action for Diversity strand.
A Values in Action consultation, launched at the start of the 2019/2020 school year, invited contributions from multiple stakeholder groups across both campuses. The purpose was to review the existing list of values for relevance in our current context, and to realign their expression into a set of values and descriptions that could be used to guide behaviours expected of all community members: students, staff, parents, alumni and governors. The initial outcomes, which were the result of a series of extensive workshops with all stakeholder groups, were presented to the Board of Governors in June 2020 for review, and identified that the College values could be redefined using the following concepts: • Commitment embracing challenge | engagement | dedication to the mission | perseverance | resilience | purpose | grit | diligence | passion | autonomy • Compassion empathy | kindness | help | compassionate | caring | support | forgiveness | encouragement | generosity | balance | happiness | gratitude • Inclusion diversity- belonging | acceptance | equity | equality | collaboration | teamwork | multicultural | avoid prejudice | fairness | unity | intercultural competence | identity | community | friendship | local community | harmony • Integrity principled | honesty | accountability | being your best self | maximising your potential | challenging status quo | courage | idealism | independence | self management | authenticity | evidence-based | critical thinking • Openness willingness to listen | withholding judgement | humility | openness to other ways of being | changing one’s perspective based on new evidence | perspectives | tolerance | curiosity | flexibility • Responsibility
To one another, to the planet and to future generations | action orientation | moral and ethical service obligation | minimising harmful impacts | agency | empowerment | morally responsible | leadership for positive change | duty • Trust
Presumption of positive intent | building and maintaining relationships | do no harm | connection | self awareness | loyalty | respect Further opportunities for feedback with mixed stakeholder groups in 2020/2021 will explore the link between these values (what we expect from ourselves and each other) and the behaviours (actions) that will demonstrate they are being lived on campus. Importantly, these newly revised values will be incorporated into the guiding statements, which are undergoing a concurrent review process, outlined earlier in this report.
