Seow Shi Rui (MIC170042)

GIG1005 Social Engagement

Reflective Writing

Seow Shi Rui (MIC170042)                                                                                 Date: 29 April 2018

All memories begin with a journey, and mine starts with the introduction to a university course of mine, Social Engagement. This course guides university students to lead or involve in social activities that benefits the society. So, this is how the social engagement project organised by us, first year of University Malaya Biomedical Science student kicks start.

Our batch consists of 44 people, to distribute our man power well, we form a few bureaus. I am in Funding Bureau, which need to collect money for the activities. I was so excited when the programme firstly started, as I was never involved in this type of work before, and I really think that it would be fun to work together to make something success.

There are a few ways we listed out for our money income. Plan A was asking for sponsorship from companies. This is the quickest way to increase our funds, however, this is also the hardest plan to success as no one would like to sponsor for nothing. We tried and tried to contact and ask for sponsorship, sadly, no positive replies were received. Honestly, we had foreseen this outcome when we were contacting the companies because from the way they answer, they were obviously giving a perfunctory response. The trial that I remember the most is the call to a Chinese Newspaper company, Sin Chew Daily. I was trying to be as polite as possible when I gave the information of the project to the person who answered the phone, but she seemed to be very annoyed and ask me to end the conversation if there is nothing else important. It was nearly time to off work, and I assumed that is the reason why the worker that pick up my phone call spoke to me in such an unfriendly tone. Although the worker promised to forward our request for sponsorship to the department in charged, we eventually failed to get the sponsorship from Sin Chew Daily. From this experience I realised that the reason the big programmes I have seen in University Malaya can get so many sponsorships is that their event is at national level, which can help in promoting the companies as return if the companies sponsored.

Our bureau members were sad but we weren’t discouraged, if plan A failed, let us just proceed to plan B, life aren’t going to stop if you failed, we can only encounter a better scenery if you keep walking. We have thought of asking for donation from the public but I disagree with that plan. For me, asking for donation is not a long term plan, you can’t just ask for people’s help every time you want to start a project, this is not a right way to get money for me. So, our member eventually planned to sell something for profits. We initially intended to sell T-shirt to all University Malaya students, but we ended up selling to our own batch mates because we would need to consider for a lot of factors and risks. Earning from the profits alone gives us quite a good income, thanks a lot to Khairunnisa, our group member that tried hard to cut down the product cost. We also get a lot of financial and mental help from our lecturer, Dr. Puah and we are really grateful for that.

Besides all those plan, we had a car wash service. Car washing can offer a great amount of income based on our previous experience on our course activity, Annual Gathering of Biomedical Science. The fund raising starts at 6 am in the morning and proceeds until 10 am, with everyone working to the maximum to earn as much as we can. The members of my bureau also worked hard to invite customers, sometimes we met some people that complained about the damage to the car from last car wash, but we have to endured it. Everyone was exhausted but satisfied by the time it ended for we all knew that our hard work pays off! We have earned about RM800!

So the fund for our Social Engagement problem is ready for the activities. On the 29^th of April, we set off to Kampong Desa Temuan by bus. The event started with Zumba session from the students of Faculty of Law. After a good warming up, the Law students then join us for our Explorace activities as facilitators. The reason we collaborate with them is due to the crashing of events as the Law students were also holding activities at Kampong Desa Temuan, to solve this issue, both organiser have decide to collaborate, which I think is a good idea as we can know more about other course’s students and their curriculum.

I was one of the facilitators on that day to help for Activities Bureau. We were distributed into groups and my group was Group 6. The first difficulties I encountered was to memorise the children’s name and recognise them in a short time as I have to chase after them when they did not follow the group. We played the games together and I was as excited as the children, who were eager to win. I think the role as a facilitator is really tiring as we have to take care of the children’s safety and activities progression at the same time. Nevertheless, I am in love with the children, they are mischievous but they will still listen to the instruction when we needed them. A girl name Syuhada even brought us flavoured ice!

The event ended successfully in the afternoon and everyone has a big smile on their face. Even though we are super tired, we will never regret going there. Without this project, I wouldn’t have learnt so much and have great bonding with my batch mates. I have also learnt from the kids that we can have the simplest happiness if we appreciate the small things around us.

(991 words)