Putt Qi Yan (MIC170041)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
Reflective Writing
A Visit to Orang Asli at Desa Temuan

Putt Qi Yan (MIC170041)                                                                                             Date:6/5/2018

During Semester 1, Dr. Puah Suat Moi, who is our course coordinator, introduced a course named GIG1005 Social Engagement to us. She explained that social engagement is about organizing an activity which can contribute to the welfare of society or spread positive vibes within a community. She suggested several types of activities that we can carry out. Therefore, we are required to discuss and come up to an idea of a desired activity to have a good start in Semester 2. At first, I felt surprised and scared towards this course as this course involved holding an activity that is similar to community service, which brings me a whole new challenge. However, at the same time, I felt excited that I get to explore a new field, which is to be a volunteer.

            Time flies as we have started our Semester two, which means we ought to decide our activity for Social Engagement. Someone had brought up an idea of visiting the village of indigenous community as we thought that they might need our help to improve their life styles and everyone had agreed with that. In our first meeting, we had formed a high community for the event. Initially, we thought that we can directly contact the person-in-charge of the village, asking their permission to conduct our activity. However, what we expect did not turn up well, rendering us into a time-constrained condition. I was quite shock at that time as I assumed that we only need to communicate with the indigenous people through the website without involving a government department. Fortunately, we got to know that we should have contacted the officer of JAKOA first as the officer of JAKOA would help us to find an appropriate village, where we are able to carry out our activity there. Through the JAKOA, we got to connect with Encik Azman, who is the representative of an indigenous community, named Desa Temuan. I felt relieved that all things had started to proceed smoothly.

            After that, our high community had assigned several tasks to each bureau. I am from the Bureau of External Relations. For your information, my bureau is mainly responsible in establishing and ensuring good communications from us with the outsiders such as the officer from JAKOA and Encik Azman. For the following days, we received an invitation from Encik Azman to attend their village’s Sunday market on 25 March 2018, which is hold once a month. We accepted their invitation as we thought it might be a good opportunity to promote our upcoming event, which is on 29 April 2018, to the residents there. I volunteered myself to attend on 25 March 2018 as I was curious what an indigenous village would be as I never been to an indigenous village before, and I was keen to interact with the indigenous people. On 25 March 2018, Encik Azman had set up a booth for us. Surprisingly, we found out that UM’s third year Law students are also conducting their activity for Social Engagement at there for every Sunday continuously.

            Then, the Law students’ course coordinator proposed an event collaboration with us and she introduced their event’s deputy director to us, whom we can contact for further discussion about this collaboration. In Monday’s meeting, Dr. Puah and all of us are agreed to have collaboration with the Law students. Therefore, my head of bureau assigned me to contact and discuss with their event’s deputy director, Kimberly, regarding our collaboration. I felt the sense of responsibility to get this collaboration done well as if anything gone wrong, not only just our event might be get affected, but our image got spoiled also. I became the middle person of our collaboration with the Law students. I helped our Bureau of Activity to communicate with them regarding what kind of activities that they might carried out on our event day, which is on 29 April 2018. We discussed until we finally reached our consensus. Through the conversations with Kimberly, my communicating and interacting skills can be developed and enhanced, which is a good thing for me. Besides, I found myself that I am quite suitable and comfortable to be a member of Bureau of External Relations as I would like to talk and interact with people that I know or strangers.

            On the day of our event (29 April 2018), initially, everything had turned up quite well as we have anticipated including our collaboration with the Law students and every kid was enjoy playing our station games. Unfortunately, there was an accident happened. One eye of a kid was hit by the elbow of another kid while playing. Encik Azman and Dr. Puah reacted fast by sending the injured kid to a nearby clinic for further checking of his eye, alongside with that kid’s mom. Luckily, that kid’s eye had not being injured badly and can be recovered within few days. From this incident, I learned that, instead of arguing who is right or wrong, we should come up with a solution to solve the problem as our priority. Moreover, I truly felt that it is crucial to stay calm and rational as always whenever there is an emergency occurs. 

            Our activity for Social Engagement had finally came to an end. Conclusively, I felt very satisfied and sense of accomplishment that we have carried out our activity successfully in overall, which seems difficult to complete at the very first beginning. Every effort that we put in got to pay off. Everyone must give commitments and cooperation to get things done.

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