Overseas Community Service 2007

During this holiday, many of our students are going for Overseas Community Service to various countries in the region.

Four DMIT students (Marcus, Yen Leng, Stephanie and Ernest), together with 12 other students from DECC and DCPT, and led by Mr Ong Choon Wei from School of Engineering (Electronics), are going to Siem Reap, Cambodia, for 2 weeks from 16 Mar 2007 to 29 Mar 2007 on a OCS project to deliver computers, set up a computer lab and teach the Cambodian kids Basic Computer Skills.

On this day before their departure, Stephanie says:

When Mr Ong told us that the overseas community service trip was confirmed, we were all very happy and excited about it. But when we heard that the price was around $700 plus per person, it made a few of us very sad. But fortunately, we only had to pay $300 per person because of the subsidy provided to us.

After the exams were over, we started to prepare for this trip. A main committee was set up. We had frequent meetings with Mr Ong and started planning. We started looking for members to be in the 3 different groups.

I was in the PC & IT training group, to teach the kids at Cambodia how to use the computers. We also had to make the lab sheets. It was a very tedious and tiring job. Now we understand how hard it is for lecturers to come up with lab sheets! We are now gonna appreciate every single lab sheets given to us. We even stayed in school overnight to complete it. But once it was printed out and bind into a book, we felt really proud of it and felt that great sense of achievement!

Then we had a bonding camp together. Because we came from different schools and courses, this bonding camp was really useful. We got to know each other better and it will enable us to work better when we are in Cambodia. The nicest part of the trip was going up to the highest peak in Pulau Ubin. The view was very nice and breath taking! A lot of pictures were taken up there.



Now that the pre preparations had been done, we are left with 1 more day before flying off to Cambodia. Many of us were really excited to begin with. But now, it seems like everyone is scared cos we are going to an unfamiliar place for 2 weeks, with very little communications with people back in Singapore. Not only that, we have to make decisions on our own, Mr Ong will only be there to look after us. If decisions that were made by us were wrong, we might end up screwing the whole project. The thought of things that won’t be going smoothly also dull us a little.

For me, what I hope to learn from this project is to experience life out there and not just be a pampered little kid here in Singapore. I also want to go help people over there, pass them knowledge that we know. I want to go put a smile across the faces of all those people over at Cambodia that we are gonna interact. 1 week out alone has been the longest so far, now that it’s a 2 week thing. I’m gonna treat it as a challenge, to always keep myself happy and always have a positive thinking. Not only to myself, I want to spur the rest of my team on too! Lastly, I want to have fun over there as well, learn the culture and the history over at Cambodia!