Welcome to the official website of Bridging Gaps!
Bridging Gaps is a Service-Learning project by: Neo Shuen Rong, Arturo Neo, Henry Lau, William Wong and Lim Han Xin.
Welcome to the official website of Bridging Gaps!
Bridging Gaps is a Service-Learning project by: Neo Shuen Rong, Arturo Neo, Henry Lau, William Wong and Lim Han Xin.
Welcome to the official website of Bridging Gaps!
Bridging Gaps is a Service-Learning project by: Neo Shuen Rong, Arturo Neo, Henry Lau, William Wong and Lim Han Xin.
Rationale and Area of Concern
Singapore is taking in more foreign talents and local schools are also offering more scholarships for foreign students to pursue their studies in Singapore. Thus, it can be quite obviously seen that foreigners will play a rather large role in Singapore’s future.
However, we observe that there is a lack of integration between local and foreign students, as well as locals and foreigners in general. They do not understand each other’s cultures and traditions. Among the 100 local students we surveyed, 96 agree that part of Singapore’s growth relies on foreign talents, but 68 indicated that they do not understand their foreign friends and their cultures. 74% of the foreign students also stated that they do not understand their local friends. Foreign students also tend to ‘clique’ together and hang out only with people of the same nationality. From our survey, 95% of the foreign students polled indicated that they hang out only with people from their own country and 71% of the local students also noticed this trend. In Hwa Chong, this problem is particularly prominent within the PRC(People’s Republic of China) scholars.
This lack of integration and cooperation between locals and foreign talents can bring about dire consequences. In the working world, it may damage relationships, leading to reduced work efficiency, causing Singapore to lose out economically and socially in the future.
Main Challenge
The main challenge here is the lack of interaction and collaboration opportunities between foreign and local students, resulting in a lack of inter-ethnic cultural awareness and integration.
Out of the 100 local students surveyed, 36 do not interact with their foreign friends at all outside school, while 53 interact with theirs ‘occasionally’. The statistics of foreign students towards this issue stand at around the same.
Service Objectives
Therefore, Bridging Gaps aims to
Learning Objectives
Through this project, the team members aim to
(We surveyed a total of 100 local students and 100 foreign students.)
Our project approach can generally be broken down into 4 phases.
Please click on the links for more details.
Phase 1: Partnership to Serve the Community
Phase 1 - Phase 2 - Phase 3 - Phase 4We believe that local and foreign students can interact better if they serve the community together because they are given the chance to work together. We have regular CIP activities which enable sustained interaction and integration between local and foreign students.
In March, a group of 24 local students and 8 foreign students visited St. Andrew’s Cathedral Home for the Aged in conjunction with Hwa Chong’s 90th Founder’s Day. They interacted with the old folks, put up a performance and learnt a lot from each other.
In April, the same group of students visited the Changi Airport Terminal 3 with old folks from the Caregiver Counselling Welfare Association. All of them enjoyed themselves and the students got a chance to work together with each other.
In May, 60 students accompanied old folks to the new Marina Barrage. 30 of the students are foreigners while the other half consists of locals. They had a really good time exploring the natural environment.
In addition to partnering to serve the community, we also had a peer studying session. Foreign and local students come together to revise their work together and academic help is rendered to the weaker students by their seniors.
However, due to the outbreak of the Influenza A H1N1 virus, our project suffered some setbacks which led to planning errors, causing us to be unable to organize anymore CIP activities. But this is made up by the creative alternatives that we later came up with.
Phase 2: Video
Phase 1 - Phase 2 - Phase 3 - Phase 4We are also creating a video that documents the experiences that foreign students went through when they first came to Singapore. Interviews of teachers and the public will also be included in this video. It aims to allow local students to understand the struggles that foreign students went through when they first came to Singapore so that the locals can accept them more easily and help them out when they are in need.
Please enjoy the preview of the video:
Phase 3: E-Portal
Phase 1 - Phase 2 - Phase 3 - Phase 4As technology advances rapidly, we should make use of it to facilitate interaction and integration. Hence, we are using a web portal as a platform for consistent interaction. Local and foreign students can engage in interesting discussions and share their cultures with each other on the portal.
Please visit the portal at http://bridginggaps.wetpaint.com/.
Phase 4: Handbook
Phase 1 - Phase 2 - Phase 3 - Phase 4To allow foreign and local students to understand each other’s culture better, we are creating a handbook to showcase the food, people, religions and trivia of Singapore and other neighbouring countries like Malaysia. This simple handbook will be published upon completion and distributed to students.
Shuen Rong
I personally feel that I myself have been a part of my project, ‘Bridging Gaps’. Throughout this project, many of my experiences had been exactly what our project had been aimed at. Working with my Malaysian counterparts had really showed me the importance of my own project. In our group itself, we do have disputes, arguments and misunderstandings now and then and this is what we want to try to minimize with ‘Bridging Gaps’. Furthermore, I have a sense of satisfaction and perhaps a little grief doing my project. Satisfaction from accomplishing the objectives of this project and seeing our group bond and really succeed. Grief from the setbacks that our project had faced. Although the Influenza A H1N1 virus had really caused much of ‘Bridging Gaps’ not to fall through, I am proud of my group and myself for not giving up and being able to make it through the storm and still achieve our objectives, no doubt at a smaller scale.
Also, I would like to express my satisfaction at how this project has grown and how it affected the participants. Yes, reflections might be the easy way to find out their feelings about our CIP activities, but it is probably very artificial. But seeing them wave at us and saying hello is pretty much all we would want. This shows us that they really feel a bond with us and we have already become their friends, regardless of nationality and age. I personally have seen Singaporeans discriminating against other nationalities because they do not understand their cultures and habits. However, in my class and project work, I work very closely with my Malaysian counterparts and have learnt much about them so thus we had decided to do this project.
Finally, I would just like to reach out to every student who feels that people from other nations and cultures are totally different from us. I want to tell these people that they are not. I have found out that with what I’ve learnt from my project, everyone is equal and capable, regardless of nationalities and cultures. I would always bear this in my mind, and I hope that everyone would too.
Arturo
Since I embarked on this project, I have learnt a lot from my experiences. Doing this project gives me a sense of enjoyment and fulfillment. Probably it is because I see myself working hard to achieve what I want, or maybe it is because I see the smiles on the beneficiaries’ faces.
Bridging Gaps is a special project incorporating local and foreign students and at the same time involve old folks. By having our CIP activities, we are actually helping both the students and the old folks. This is a point that has made me enjoy this project all along.
Throughout the journey, up till now, this project has taught me a lot about responsibility and teamwork as well. We have deadlines we need to follow and many things we need to settle on time. And we also have to work as a team, split up the work so as to ensure efficiency. Independence is another value I learnt. We cannot always depend on our mentor or group leader, we need to take the initiative too.
After a CIP event, I would have a lot of thoughts and emotions after reflecting on the day’s events. I would recall back on the lessons I have learnt and what I can take away.
I still remember once when we were on the excursion to the Changi Airport Terminal 3. I was the tour leader and brought the group around the place. There was a particular old lady that I remember vividly because she taught me a very important lesson through this simple 2-hour trip. She said, “I treat everyone here (in the group) as my parents. I treat them with respect. And so will you.” She repeated these sentences for many times. But every time she said it, I would think that it made more and more sense.
Although it may just be a CIP activity, I learnt to treat everyone with mutual respect and to be more courteous.
Last but not least, I hope that Bridging Gaps can continue to live on even after the projects’ competition. It is something that we can incorporate into out lives. We must learnt to accept ourselves, and accept others.
Henry
One year ago, I arrived here in Singapore, a whole new environment filled with strangers, fierce competitors and many unfriendly Singaporeans. Now that I think of the past, I barely remember the days when I was always surrounded with unfamiliar faces.
Due the gap between our languages (Malaysians tend to speak more Chinese while Singaporeans converse in English), Malaysians always find it difficult to talk to Singaporeans without getting laughed at. However, after the many outings and activities carried out together, us Malaysians started to settle down and were accepted amongst the Singaporeans as fellow students. However, I feel that this is possible because in my batch, there were the least in number of Malaysian students, thus, we are forced to communicate and befriend the locals. However, there are more than 20 students in the new Malaysian batch of 2009, which provides the Malaysians with a more comfortable environment with many friends from the same primary school. Thus, they lose the need to befriend the locals.
When I first took up this project, I joined because of the main objective of the project, which is to narrow the cultural rift amongst the locals and foreigners so that they could work alongside each other better in their 4-6 years of schooling life in Hwa Chong.
So, our group went together and planned many activities and programmes which are aimed to make the locals and foreigners work together. As this was my first time organizing something, I was excited and nervous, and was even afraid of embarrassing myself in front of my peers and juniors. Thanks to my group mates, I was able to overcome this fear and lead the juniors for outings with the elderly at places such as the Marina Barrage and Changi Airport Terminal 3. Furthermore, I have learned the pains of being a leader through the sec 1s. In my opinion, as a leader, one must be always on the move and make important decisions. There are certain problems encountered, the most severe of them is when the students disobey the orders of the leader. Through these brief leading experiences, I learned that a group is almost unable to function at all without a leader who is decisive and bold.
Just when we were planning for our future work, the H1N1 pandemic struck, causing many of our plans to be delayed, forcing our group to re-plan and redo everything. Thanks to the leader, our group managed to buck up and came up with new ideas. I hope that in the future, our efforts in this project would not go to waste and that the locals will make friends with the foreigners as I believe that we all have our strong points and without working together, we are unable to achieve the best results.
William
Since I started doing this project, I learnt many new things while mxing with my Singaporean friends. I feel that this is an all new experience as this is the first attempt at a service-learning project.
Firstly, I learnt about teamwork. There were arguments and disputes among the team mates sometimes. This is the reason why our project is named ‘Bridging Gaps’, to bridge the gap between foreigners and locals. With teamwork, all problems can be solved if the group is united. Hence, teamwork is one important value I learnt more about.
Secondly, I learnt about handing in work on time. This is important as the team leader can only complete the powerpoint presentation with everyon finishing their own parts, for example. Procrastination may lead to a breakdown in team relationships, affecting work efficency. Thus, punctuality is important.
I also learnt about the importance of being hardworking while doing a project. By being hardworking, the efficiency level would also increase. With that trait, the workload can be reduced and the work can be completed quickly.
The ultimate aim of our project is the ‘bridge’ the gap’ between foreigners and locals. It would be an irony if gaps are existent in our own team. Hence, we must ensure that there are no communication breakdowns within out own group and I am proud to say that such communication breakdowns are minimal in our group.
Together, we hope that Bridging Gaps can be a success and most importantly, everyone who participated in this project enjoyed themselves thoroughly while they gained some knowledge.
Han Xin
I first joined this project as I was very concerned about the topic. Indeed, there were some ostracizing issues that I observed, when I first got to Singapore. Some Singaporean students commented on the presence of foreign students, when we, the foreign students, were within earshot. However, it was only after I began to work on the project to find that actually, the dividing line between us can sometimes be very thin. After all, we are all living in a multiracial country, with various religions and many races. So our work focus here was on the lack of integration between local and foreign students instead then, I told myself.
The outdoor trips to Changi, Marina Barrage and such were indeed fun. Most, if not all of us, found the outings fun and interesting. After all, just walking around and talking with the person beside you was easy and surprisingly productive. People learned stuff from each other, even though some might be rather useless.
But, what I have learnt was not from these new found friends. I have acknowledged the significance of being together for a long time. It can bring about the growing and strengthening of bonds as nothing can ever achieve. I have found out firsthand the strength of teamwork. A sort of feeling, one that is indescribable, is gained through it. A group feeling of triumph, I would say. I have learnt that in life, things do not always go your way. Obstacles do arise, almost frequently, and it is us to you yourself to counter it and overcome the problems, or get drowned in the waves. Sometimes, the people you meet are not exactly the type of people you rather them to be, and yet you are forced to mix and interact with them. People with attitudes or characteristics of which you do not approve, but is required to keep around you. In such a situation, you actually learn how to treat them appropriately. As the saying goes, “If you cannot defeat them, join them.” The skills of making these people “join” you comes naturally, when you have experience in such situations. All in all, I found our project very intriguing. Even now, I still feel the echoes of excitement and anticipation from the start of this year, when I first joined the project.
We would like to thank the following people: