Category: Service

By bhatn54327@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg on Service - Leave a comment

HOUGANG CARE CENTRE

In our service, Dance and Zumba with Hougang Care Centre, I am able to work with my peers and run the service. We have established a system in which a different pair of people lead every week, making sure we all get a chance to lead the service. I personally feel that working together to form that system is very helpful and ensures active participation as we share ideas on what activities to run which can help other groups.  By working with our peers to lead a service, collaboration is key as we should agree on what exactly we wanted to do that day. Furthermore, working with the people from the Care Centre, allows us to build relationships with them by talking to them and knowing their names. However, we have faced many challenges- one of them being that the people from the Care Centre are very conservative. Our school is a very open environment which contrasts with their constricted environment, causing them to have a very different mindset than us which places both groups in very different ethical positions. Although we wear full-length bottoms and full-sleeved jackets for service, the participants get uncomfortable. To solve this, we had a session where we focused on their needs and how to overcome this challenge in a thorough refection as a group. Through this reflection, I was able to understand that one of my strengths is understanding my surroundings because during the session I felt that I was very observant during our sessions with them by noticing that we can sometimes talk to them differently as compared to how we talk to each other which sets a barrier between us. By eliminating little things like this, we were able to continue working with them and making sure they enjoy our sessions by persevering through the challenge.

 

 

By bhatn54327@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg on Service - Leave a comment

Dance and Zumba Season 2

We have been working with the Hougang Care Centre for 2 seasons now and have learnt a lot more about them, regarding their interests and needs. As mentioned in my season 1 reflection, we planned to rely on Zumba videos on youtube for the members to follow. However, we found that Zumba was a very high energy activity which relies on more physical capacity. The members of the care centre, on the other hand, are not very physically active so it was very difficult for them to keep up. As they weren’t able to keep up, they wouldn’t participate which forced us to plan activities for those who didn’t want to dance. Some examples were drawing or playing Jenga. However, this required alot of pre planned planning as we had to contant the service department for the resources for that session like food and

By bhatn54327@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg on Service tagged , , , - Leave a comment

Dance and Zumba Season 1 reflection

In this service, we work with people who have had issues in the past that have to watched under careful supervision in confined environments.  We went to Hougang Care Centre and onto their website (link attached) to learn more about the centre and about the members that will be joining us. Although it wasn’t extremely specific information, we were able to understand that they require time to do things they enjoy and meet people outside the confines of the centre as they are not allowed to go out very often or on their own. By giving them an opportunity to learn dance and Zumba with UWC is a way for them to express themselves and relax. We have to keep this in mind for the future when we plan out dances for them. We have to make sure that they are able to keep up with the pace and instructions. We also learnt that not all of them speak English so we expect there to be a language barrier. However, we plan to overcome this by being conscious about our word choice, to ensure we don’t use complicated words, and by speaking slow, in order to make ourselves more understandable to them. We have planned to divide up into pairs or threes and alternate every session, this way everyone has a chance to lead the service and have a chance to plan and arrange the activities. Initially, we decided to choreograph simple dances as we could alter steps when we feel that they are getting confused or tired. However, after trying this, we realised that a lot of us don’t have experience with dancing and choreographing, we just have a passion for it. Because of this, many of us couldn’t choreograph dances. We then had to find another way to get them to dance, so we decided on using Zumba videos online and play them on the projector for them to follow.

 

Furthermore, we made a doc in which we put in what activities we were planning to do, including links of the videos we want to use and the names of the people leading. We chose to make this very detailed by including when there would be breaks and for how long, as well as the extra resources that are needed so that we can make arrangements before the session.

By bhatn54327@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg on Service tagged , - Leave a comment

Hougang Care Centre Initial Reflection

I have signed up for a service with the Hougang Care Centre and we visited it to receive an outline of their mission as well as the reason they need our aid. This really allowed us all to have a much better understanding of their environment as we will be able to keep that in mind when we work with them. We saw that they lived in rather constricted conditions which contrasts to the environment in UWC. Therefore, we keep in mind that we cannot behave and say things we usually would with our friends and teachers with them as they have a different mindset. We have to be able to provide a comfortable environment for them in order to help them and make them feel more inclined to participate in our activities. Furthermore, we learned that not all of them speak English, because of this, we were able to predict that miscommunication would be common and so we wouldn’t be impatient with them. Any important information about the experience. From this experience, I want to be able to widen my understanding of people from different backgrounds and ethics in order to diversify my mindset.  I also hope to build relationships with my peers in the service along. with the members of the care centre who attend the service.

 

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