CCAC X PubSoc: CCAs in Limelight Series
The Service Learning Summit (SLS), organised by the 37th batch of Hwa Chong Interact Club, took the form of an online conference held on the 6th and 7th of December. The objective of this year’s event was to provide a multi-faceted platform for student leaders across Singapore schools with a strong interest in service learning. The summit brought together 148 participants and facilitators from 11 Secondary Schools and Junior Colleges in Singapore, out of which included 9 Organizing Team (OT) members from Interact Club. Under the overarching theme of ‘Service’, participants engaged in discussions to better gain crucial insights on the following four topics: Poverty, Special Needs, Migrant Workers and Environment. With students participating in presentations by impactful service learning groups, dialogues with external speakers, and focus group discussions, SLS robustly supported a burgeoning youth volunteerism ecosystem.
Hwa Chong Interact Club and SLS participants engaged in an SLS session
2021 marks the first time that Hwa Chong Interact Club has organized the SLS. Being their largest event ever, the event was certainly daunting to the team. Moreover, given that SLS was a new event which many were unfamiliar with, the members struggled to reach out to a wide audience. Tan Wei Liang Darrius (21S7F), the President of Interact Club, shared, “We started off with a blank slate - no previous proposals to refer to, no seniors to fall back on”.
However, despite the multitude of challenges faced by the team, they did not back down. Instead, they worked cohesively as a CCA to support each other. “The planning of SLS really involved many people, and definitely wouldn’t have been possible without the support and help of many others”, reflected Koh Heer Lin (21S7F), the Overall In Charge (OIC) of SLS. “As such, I’d like to thank everyone who has supported the team in this journey.” When asked about their most memorable moment in SLS, the members unanimously agreed that it would be witnessing the close bonds forged between the participants and the facilitators. After going through countless ups and downs, it was heartening for the students to see the participants wholeheartedly immersing themselves in the event and making the best out of the experience.
There is that saying: Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will. In retrospect, Darrius simply expressed, “Expect the unexpected”. Given that there were many sudden circumstances and changes that occurred along the way, the team quickly registered that they just had to keep on moving forward. Thus, they took things one step at a time and focused their efforts on finding viable solutions at hand. By trusting in the process, their belief that “everything would turn out just fine” was indeed not misfounded in the end.
Although hosting SLS posed many new challenges to the team, it also stretched them to new limits, and was an extremely rewarding and enriching experience for the students. In fact, Interact Club hopes that their fellow juniors will take their lead and continue planning future summits. They are excited to welcome “committed, compassionate, and confident” juniors with a genuine passion to serve and a willingness to lead to their CCA. Looking back on the summit, Sim En Hsien Andrew (21S79), the student mentor of SLS, concluded, “SLS was really quite the rollercoaster, and a wild ride. We experienced many ups and downs together, but despite the odds, we managed to pull this off.”
Congratulations to Interact Club and their Teachers-in-charge, Mr Yee and Mr Ho, for a successful Student Learning Summit 2021!
Written by: Peng Yi Xuan Tricia (21S61) and Lim Ye Xue (21S65)
Edited by: Hu Chen Wei (21A15)
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