Beh Yen Yee (MIC 170007)

GIG 1005 Social Engagement

Reflective Writing

Visit to Orang Asli Village at Desa Temuan

Beh Yen Yee (MIC 170007)                                                                                      Date: 6 May 2018

                As Brendon Burchard said, challenge is the pathway to engagement and progress in our lives. But not all challenges are created equal. Some challenges make us feel alive, engaged, connected, and fulfilled. Others simply overwhelm us. We always have the best for everything; however, when we met some challenges, we often tend to complain about that life and try to escape from facing them. Before this, I never have a chance to involve in social work during my past school life, thus I had no idea how is the world outside my comfort zone looks like, what struggles do they face. It is Social Engagement that made me see just how fortunate my life is compared to others.

            During the end of our first semester, Dr Puah approached us and introduced the course Social Engagement. We were told that there would be an amend regarding the way to conduct Social Engagement. It was totally a new experience not only for us, even Dr Puah too. Therefore, we already met challenges at our first step – we could not contact any of the villages. But then we realized that we approached the wrong party, so we quickly fixed the mistake and contacted JAKOA to propose our activity. It was a relief when we heard that our activity is permitted. Although it was not a good start, we still learnt a lot from the experience and started to feel excited of the activity.

I felt a bit indecisive when we were choosing the Heads of Bureau. Since my old schooling days, I had not been a leader of a team due to the lack of confidence. However, I stepped out my first step and volunteered to be the leader of Technical Bureau, which is quite important and difficult to manage. At first, I was worried and felt uncertainty – Am I able to be a good leader? Is it possible that I can lead the team well just like others? – I questioned myself for many times. Fortunately, I had my teammates who are always believing in me and support me from the back. We discussed and distributed the work together. My teammates were self-motivated and willing to volunteer to take the tasks when I asked. They made me to be more confident when I need to report our bureau progress to the high committees. I also realized how important is the role of teamwork in completing a task.

At the actual day of our activity, I could see that everyone was very enthusiastic. We started off our activity with Zumba conducted by the Law students from our university. I was in charge of controlling PA system and assist my teammates if they need any help. As the person-in-charge of the village, Encik Azman owns a set of PA system, thus it made our job easier. He assigned a villager to teach me using the PA system but then we faced a problem at that time. The playlist we prepared was saved in our pendrive, which the PA system was unable to connect. Fortunately, I brought along my laptop as backup and so we solved our problem instantly. From this incident, I learnt that backup plan should be prepared for any incident as everything might not occur based on what we think. And because of the backup, I could prepare a backdrop on the spot for the closing ceremony which was suddenly requested by Encik Azman.

We played a lot with the children there and this brought us closer to them. We seldom knew about Orang Asli as they often isolated themselves from the others due to the geographical, culture and language. Thus, we worked hard to bring happiness and knowledge to the children, making them feel that they are not the abandoned one. It was a big challenge to us as the children were too excited and active until we were unable to control the situation well during our start. However, the children remained sensible and obedient when we talked to them nicely and patiently. Their friendliness made us feeling warm and were being encouraged to contribute to them more – not only happiness but knowledge that is beneficial to improve their life.

Throughout the activity, the experience of being a leader made me to face up my shortcomings such as poor time management and planning. The task of updating Blog and Instagram was not assigned properly to specific members, causing the social media was always not updated punctually. For example, my biggest mistake was during our first approach to the community at Desa Temuan, which I forgot to assign anyone to update the social media. I was not being very thoughtful when arranging the duties to my teammates, causing the duty list looked disorder and was changed over time especially during the actual day. As most of us were photographer, we took a lot of same photos, causing some of us finished our job earlier than estimated. Besides that, during the closing ceremony, I suddenly need to be one of the photographer, so I had to assign another teammate to control the PA system, which was not in the duty list I prepared previously. After this incident, I learnt from the other leaders to think about a bigger picture when planning things orderly or make important decisions. I also learnt from my team members who own good leadership and they were willing to give me advise or comment whenever I needed.

Although our activity ended for many days, I still remember the children at Desa Temuan and the joy we enjoyed together that day. I felt appreciated to join this meaningful activity and the experience is fruitful. The bonding between our batchmates is strengthen too after the activity. With the feeling of blessed, I hope that there will be more people concerning the underprivileged as we were born on the same earth regardless the colour of the skin or language. All they need is a chance to change their life differently.

(997 words)