HER Journey: A best practice service project by students at United World College of South East Asia

2. Follows a clear process such as the Stages of Service Learning.

One of the fundamental components of best practice service is the presence of a cycle which guides any person serving in a community through a series of steps before and after taking action. This helps to alleviate tokenistic service that is lacking depth, along with ill informed and misguided attempts to serve. One of the most common cycles is Cathryn Berger Kaye’s Stages of Service Learning (2004), which also underpins the Creativity, Activity and Service stages in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. This process includes the steps of investigation, preparation, action, reflection and demonstration. These stages are not always taken in linear steps, rather as feedback loops that are interconnected, with reflection being an important part of the cyclical process. The students involved in HER Journey have worked through the stages of this model over the past two years, returning to it at different points as needed, for example when ideating new initiatives, reviewing their progress or facing challenges such as those presented by Covid 19. The students remarked that following this kind of work flow has come quite naturally as they addressed the community need.

An example of this is the reflection process the students needed to go through as they tried to build a working relationship with a Singaporean Non-Government Organisation (NGO). The group remarked that their relationship with this particular NGO had challenges. Karen explains that “despite proposing interview requests frequently, we were unable to secure an approval or concrete action agenda from the NGO partner”. After several unsuccessful meetings the team went into a reflection process to discover what the issue was. Their findings were that the goals of the NGO were not aligned with the goals of HER Journey. The NGO wanted the student group to promote their course offering in the UWC community and HER Journey was more interested in finding out how the journey of the FDWs transformed after taking the classes. As a result, Karen explains that “we started to identify more with self-organised workers’ communities, whose members are more willing to share with us their experiences for non-advertisement reasons. This trial and error process led us to realise the importance of aligned interests prior to starting collaboration”.

Something that stands out about HER Journey is how much investigation the students did into the perceived issue before taking action. As outlined above, the students spent a significant amount of time in the investigation stage before taking action. Students who recognise the importance of investigation as they address a community need are far more likely to truly understand the service work they are undertaking. This includes being informed about the context of the community need and able to view the bigger picture rather than just the isolated issue. Aware students understand that there are historical, political, socio-cultural, environmental and economic factors that all have influences and can take a whole systems approach to leverage change.

3. Is reciprocal.

Reciprocity is defined as an “ongoing process of exchange between two parties for mutual benefit, where both the students and the partner organisation or the community gain in a balanced way” (Orenda Learning, 2019). Though they will not benefit in the same ways, the gains should be equitable. Lough and Oppenheim (2017) suggest that when reciprocity is low ‘service’ can “reinforce power differences between the giver and receiver” (Lough and Oppenheim, 2017). They also outline three areas that need focus to ensure service is reciprocal: building relationships over time, ensuring mutual benefit and joint decision making.

The students at HER Journey ensure reciprocity through their consultative approach. They have put significant effort into building relationships with local NGOs such as the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) and the Centre for Domestic Employees, meeting with them regularly to discuss and revise their projects. They also made connections with women employed as FDWs and consulted them throughout their process, asking for feedback at specific times. In one survey that the students sent out, they were told that their podcasts “portray workers’ stories in a realistic way” and that listeners felt that they could “easily empathise” with the stories shared. All the respondents also said that the podcasts helped them to make better decisions when transferring between employers.

When the students were asked about the benefits they gained from the project, they share that it has enabled them to understand the struggles of the FDWs in more depth, and develop an increased level of empathy. Yueyang says it has empowered her to “become a voice for minorities and create cultural change through raising awareness”.

4. Involves building meaningful relationships.

The ability to build positive relationships is fundamental to best practice service. Whether students are working with people, animals or the environment it is a given that they will interact with others as they undertake their work. These relationships need to be consultative and collaborative, as well as open-hearted and compassionate. As outlined above, the ability to build consultative and collaborative relationships is closely tied to reciprocity. The better the relationships, the more reciprocal service work can be. The depth of the relationships forged can also help to ensure that the project is meeting its targets to address a genuine community need and that the students are working in a way that other stakeholders are comfortable with and supportive of. Better relationships generally mean increased communication and support feedback along with reflective practice.

The students at HER Journey highlight the relationships they have built with women who are FDWs as part of the reason they are so passionate about the cause. Getting to know some of the issues the women face, that HER Journey seeks to address, has helped them to get to the core of their challenge. Of course, this has also led to an increase in compassion in the students as they are able to hear the stories of the FDWs first hand and discuss solutions.

The ‘Empathy Challenge’ is a series of cards that cover issues such as labour rights violations and highlight real life experiences of FDWs. The game supports the deepening of relationships, in this case between the FDWs and their employers. As part of this project, students from HER Journey invited FDWs and their employers to sit down together at events and play the game, taking on each other’s real life role. Callista explains “we were able to maintain positive relationships with FDWs through participating in the activities hosted by the NGOs and having conversations with FDWs. It is often off-line meetings that are most effective in establishing emotional ties, so Covid has indeed been quite a challenge for us”. Callista also shares, “I’ve grown up being raised by domestic workers. Though I’ve never really become friends with any of the FDWs in Singapore, I care for them deeply. When I hear their stories, I recognise them from the lenses of the women who’d taken care of me in my childhood”.