Learning Outcome 2 – Demonstrate that you have undertaken, developing new skills in the process

Learning Outcome 5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

At the beginning of the year with our service, our purpose when going to the DSA was to sing songs and help them to read the lyrics if need be and to generally get everyone comfortable with singing around other people. One of our students from UWC would lead the session by first reading out one line and having everyone repeat after them, and then after getting through one verse we would sing one line and then repeat, and then sing the whole verse and then eventually the entire song. It was a very student led activity. Now however, we’ve come a long way and instead of a UWC student taking charge it is usually someone from DSA who will sing and read out the lyrics and the rest of us will follow, everyone taking turns leading and then figuring out if we can harmonise on top of the melody, if the guys should sing one verse and the girls another etc.

For me, I can personally say that after a couple of months all of us (not just within the UWC students but also everyone from DSA) have gotten much more comfortable with singing in front of each other regardless of whether we can sing well or not, which is something I think is great as it shows that we have developed a confidence that no matter how good we are, we can still have fun and that it shouldn’t matter, and by giving everyone from DSA the opportunity to take the lead we can also help their confidence grow in leading people and decision making, which really shows how important collaboration is as without the collaboration of the UWC students and the people from DSA we probably would not have been able to get to the level of comfort and leadership that we are at now! I can’t wait to see how else we all develop as a community and will definitely write another reflection at the end of the year to see if there have been any further changes!