COMMUNITY SERVICE INITIATIVE'S REFLECTIVE JOURNAL

 

Week 1

On 1ST April 2015, we began with our first lecture of this module, and that was the first time that I got to meet both of my lecturers, Ms. Sarah Abdullah and Ms. Pauline Teo. Firstly, they introduced themselves and the overview of this module in detail, along with its forms of assessments to my fellow course mates and I, and that was also when we got to know that this module would be based wholly on coursework only, which really scares us because it might affect our grades significantly, either negatively or positively. The coursework includes an on-going project throughout the whole semester, where we are needed to help a non-profit organisation called The FUGEE School by either teaching their students on how to paint shoes or make posters and presentations using Microsoft Word and PowerPoint respectively. As for me, I have decided to teach them on how to make posters and presentations instead of painting shoes because I am not an artistic person and I am more towards of being an IT-savvy person. Lastly, I have also volunteered myself to be one of the four program committees to help plan and conduct the upcoming events on a weekly basis because I really like being a leader and help achieve our plans and objectives successfully.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 2

On 8TH April 2015, we had an info-sharing forum with a few special guests, which is the co-founder of The FUGEE School, Ms. Deborah Henry, who is also a past Miss Malaysia, along with three student representatives from The FUGEE School, Ahmed Abdi Dirie, Ahmed Bashir Mohamed, and Nawal Hassan Haile. For the purpose of this event, my partner and I had to plan out the whole event, and take up the emceeing duties. The whole event was a success and goes as planned. Apart from that, I have also learnt to be grateful after listening to all the hardships that they had to go through to survive, while I am here living in such a comfortable and luxurious life compared to them. As soon as the event ended, my friends and I had to send the three student representatives to the nearest LRT station, which is in Kelana Jaya, so that they could go back to their school that is located in Gombak. It was truly a fun and interesting experience to have the power to plan the whole event, and to be the emcees. I am really looking forward to the upcoming weeks’ events, where we will be mentoring our mentees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 3

On 15TH April 2015, we officially began our project with the students from The FUGEE School. Before starting the weekly activity, we provided some light savouries for the students to eat, whilst waiting for us to prepare the event. We then started by inviting Ms. Deborah Henry to give all of us a speech that was very motivational as it boost our excitement even more so that we it can help us progress with this project the best we possibly could to make it a success. Her speech made me realise that there are so many unfortunate people out there, especially children that had lost their families, and that we have to do something about it and it does not matter if it is a small amount of contribution, but by having a large number of people contributing the least they possibly could, it will still make a large impact on these unfortunate people. For that reason, I had promised myself that I would try my best to help any unfortunate people with whatever and however I could.

 

After her speech, we invited Ms. Rose to give a speech on how she became a shoe-painter, and share with us with the knowledge and skills that she has to help the students in the shoe-painting group to proceed with their duties and responsibilities in painting shoes creatively. It was really interesting for me as I learnt something new about painting shoes, even though I do not really fancy art and design as I am more into IT instead. Next, our lecturers assigned us to our mentees, and partners. So, I was working with my best friend, Beverly, to lead a mentee named Nur Abukar Zen. My first impression on Nur was that he looks like a good student that loves learning new things. So, Beverly and me went to introduce ourselves to Nur and asked him regarding his IT knowledge and skills, and the good thing about him was that he already had basic knowledge and skills about using Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, so it was really a plus-point for us as it would be easier for us to teach him on how to create a poster and a marketing presentation on the shoes created by our shoe-painting group that we will be starting next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 4

On 22ND April 2015, the IT group started going to the IT lab that was located at Block C, Level 7, Room 7, to start mentoring our mentees on how to use Microsoft Word so that they can start doing their posters. My partner and I let our mentee, Nur, to explore Microsoft Word for 15 minutes so that he would be more comfortable to use it for doing the poster later. After that, we asked him to find a template of a poster online that is suitable to promote our hand-painted shoes, but the problem at that time was that we have not know what design of shoes we will be getting yet, so we just asked him to fill in the basic information regarding the shoes on the template that he had chosen online. We asked our mentee to give the shoes a temporary name since we do not know the design yet, and we also helped him create brief information about the shoes in order to promote them to the public. Other than that, we also asked him to give the “unknown shoes” a suitable price for the public to buy, and put up temporary pictures of random shoes that we found online. Once the poster is almost finished, we asked him to choose the font and its sizes and colours, the document layout and others according to what he likes to finish it up. Overall, we really think he did a great job, and we are grateful to have him as our mentee since he is the type that is willing to learn and accept the knowledge and skills that we are willing to teach him with. Lastly, they are supposed to saved their work in the pen drives that I have bought for them using the module’s money online, but unfortunately it was still in delivery process, so they had to save their work in their email for this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5

On 29TH April 2015, we continued with out duties and responsibilities as mentors for the mentees. Beverly and I planned to finish up the marketing plan presentation this week. Therefore, we straight away started our weekly activity by letting Nur explore Microsoft Words and browse through some samples online, but most of the online samples are very detailed, so we just suggested Nur to include the 4 marketing mixes that we have learnt in Semester 2, which were product, price, place, and promotion. We explained to him what each of the marketing mix meant; we told him to introduce what his product is, state how much the price of his product is, tell where he is selling his product at, and how is he promoting his product, which in this case is by creating posters/flyers. After helping him with all these information, we asked him to format the theme of his presentation, along with the font, its sizes and colours too, and the layout of his presentation by including photos of the shoes since we already confirmed our shoes design this week. That is not all, we also taught him on how to add the transition and animation effect of his presentation so that it will look more attractive and interesting. After completing the presentation, we played the slides repeatedly to check for mistakes and to see what else we could improvise on. But overall, we were really surprised that he could do such a great job, which made us really proud of him as we know that he has been learning while we were teaching him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 6

On 6TH May 2015, we continued with our project, but as we had finished with both our posters and presentation, we decided to use the time to improvise on our posters and presentation to make sure it had no mistakes at all. We also use to extra time to brush up his presentation skills for next week. We taught him how he should start the presentation, which is by introducing himself and his mentees; Beverly and I, and what he should be including and explaining for each of his slides, which was product, price, place, and promotion. Apart from that, we also suggested him to write small notes that could help him with his presentation in case if he forgot on what to say. We gave him time to go through the slides and try preparing on what he has to say for it. After that, we asked him to present in front of us and tell him what he could improvise on so that he could be one of the best presenters next week, which will definitely make us proud of him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 7

On 13TH May 2015, we were almost done with our projects, expect for our presentations, so our mentees have presented on their part for this week, and in my case, Nur had to present his marketing plan to the judges, which was Ms. Deborah, Ms. Pauling and Ms. Sarah. Nur looked really prepared for the presentation as he wore really formally, which is definitely a good initiative of him as we did not asked him to. Nur’s presentation were considered good in my point of view as he didn’t read from the notes he wrote and just explain on what he could remember, although he missed out some points, he still did a great job as he did not want to be just reading from the notes he wrote and take the initiative to explain on what he could remember instead. The judges also gave some feedback on all of the presentations and they had also selected a few top presenters as everything went well, and most of the presentations were also good, but some looks like they were unprepared. Without expecting Nur to win as everyone did more or less as good as Nur, Nur managed to won the top 3 presenter from the IT group, I was really happy when I heard about it as I really think he deserved it as he was really a good mentee of ours. So, Nur received a present that was prepared by Beverly and me as we were in charge of the awards and certifications.

 

Being in this module is really one of the best experience I have ever encounter so far in Taylor’s University because to be honest, I was not really interested in this module, but it was compulsory, but I started liking it because the lecturers were really nice and cool, which made me more interested in the module and the project that we had to do. I will definitely miss this module and the lecturers, not to forget the students from The FUGEE School as well. I really hope that I could keep contributing whatever I could to the less unfortunate because we might think our contribution is meaningless, but it could actually mean the whole world to them. So, we always have to remember this and remember that not everything we have belongs to us because sometimes god gives those benefits to us so that we could help the less unfortunate.