Project Week Reflection

As part of our school’s service programme we had the opportunity to plan a trip to a destination of our choice. My friends and I were interested in undertaking a service – based expedition, and through our research we discovered Danau Girang Field Center. The centre is a wildlife sanctuary where we planned to assist researchers in collecting data — specifically helping the research of wild butterflies.

Unfortunately due to the Covid-19 pandemic, travel restrictions and safety concerns meant that we were unable to go on project week this year. Nevertheless, through our research and planning process, I had a valuable learning experience working collaboratively with my peers. I found the experience particularly helpful as we were initially quite a disorganised group; however, after creating a master planning document and assigning each other roles, we were able to set deadlines for ourselves and clearly see our responsibilities to the group. I believe this pushed our group to ensure everyone met deadlines (no one wants to setback the group) and it really made our team value the importance of taking the time to stop and plan, rather than diving straight into the deep end.

View our original planning document here

SFE Final Update #LO4

Happy late 2020!

So far in Solar for East, we’ve had a very exciting few weeks presenting to the middle school classes. I’ve been part of the classroom presentations which happen during mentor and we’ve been going from class to class talking about the importance of the project; we conclude with a lovely demo panel that shows the voltage produced on a live graph — the kids love this interactive aspect of the presentation!

Our small original team has grown in the last few years as the demands of the project grow larger and larger. In fact just looking back Solar for East has been my longest running activity, which I joined at the start of my high school experience and have stayed committed to throughout these 4 years. I’m really appreciative of the experience I have gotten through Solar for East and I hope to have other opportunities in the future to work with such an effective team.

In other news, we’re also getting serious about the handover as we are aware we won’t be able to commit as much time to the project in the coming months. We’ve just completed our interview process and had the first meeting with our new recruits just last week. In the coming weeks, we will be working with the grade 9s and 10s,  getting them familiar with the installation procedures as well as the level of organisation required for the project to continue operating smoothly.