Community Builder Week

From 29 April to 3 May 2013, the 3rd and 4rd Saints Advocate organised Community Builder Week to raise awareness among the students of the privilege they currently enjoy and encourage them to help those less fortunate in the community. During the week, there were many activities conducted, including collection of can tabs, photo taking and exhibition. Besides that, the Advocates also gave out various freebies to students, ranging from foam roses, encouraging messages on sticky notes to balloons to bring smiles to their faces. The week was ended off with a Service Learning Convention, where SL Representatives from each class gathered and had a hands-on experience of giving out small gifts to people around Potong Pasir to simply brighten up their day. Community Builder Week was after all a good reminder to all of us to be more aware of the needs of the community.

Community Builder Week is the first activity that I was in charge of. Through this priceless experience, I have learnt how to work in team with people I did not really know before and maintain effective communication with them. In this event, I was in charge of the exhibition. Initially, even though the seniors had already come up with all the plans, they were still open for suggestions from us. This, hence, allowed us to voice out our ideas to improve the exhibition. I was quite excited for the Community Builder Week in the beginning as it was my first time organising a school-wide project in SAJC.

During the preparation, I had the opportunity to go out and buy materials used for exhibition with my other task force members. As we wanted to display the models of two children from Singapore and third world country in the exhibition, we decided to buy 2 mannequins to make the models look realistic. Unfortunately, the seniors came to tell us later that we should not have spent so much money on the mannequins only although it looked nice. It made us feel quite guilty and sad about that.

Moreover, Community Builder Week project has actually taken a lot of my time. For the whole two weeks after school, we prepared the materials, set up the boards and exhibition. During the week itself, most of our breaks were occupied. It had also affected my studies a little bit because I had a very little time to complete my homework and it drained a lot of my energy. In the future, should there be another project that requires all advocates to be on duties during breaks, I would suggest that we have shifts only for half of our breaks so that we can use the other half to have lunch and/or studies. However, this has also taught me to manage my time well and effectively.

Freebies given out to students during the week

After all, despite all the problems faced, I am glad to say that Community Builder Week has been successful, judging from the fact that many SAJC students have responded quite well to our project. They were excited to take photos with our photo frame to show support to Simei Care Centre. They liked our gifts such as paper roses, ribbons, balloons and hair clips. Some of them were interested in our projects, asking us the objectives of our project and asking how they can support Autism. It was indeed a good experience with Saints Advocate.

SL Representatives listening attentively to the speaker during the Service Learning Convention

-Natasha Ratanapan, 4th Saints Advocate