SIM-RMITSC Gives Back to the Community – A Retrospective on Student-led Community Service Initiatives
Learning valuable lessons and gaining new skills is a big part of undergoing higher education, but it’s often a means to an end for a lot of students. Attending university is a good way to gain academic accolades, form relationships that can provide a leg up in the professional world, and even achieve more holistic awards in extra curricular fields as in our sports or arts clubs. What drives a lot of our most well-achieved students, and anyone for that matter, is a desire to achieve some sense of fulfilment.
However, our students don’t just seek personal fulfilment. Many of their initiatives are often based within the school to engage the student body to involve the greater community; something that RMITSC has been especially hard at work with their recent projects. Today’s article takes a look at 4 of the recent community involvement projects that the SIM-RMIT Student Council has executed.
Their initiatives included organizing food drives for less fortunate households, engaging the elderly in nursing homes with welfare and fun activities, and taking care of our local environment through beach clean ups – though this last one fell through, the students did their best to conduct an alternative event to make up for it.
Active Ageing Centre Volunteering
Organised by our SIM-RMIT Student Council, this event was planned with the objective to promote community service and engagement among RMIT students. It gave their students an avenue to engage with and form bonds with the elderly in Active Ageing Centres; spaces for seniors to socialise, take part in recreational activities, access community health services, and contribute to the community. The engagement session provided a lot of value not just to the elderly, but to the student volunteers as well! Students cited developing a better understanding of communication skills as well as a greater sense of patience, empathy and compassion.
CIT CAT Food Drive
1 out of 10 Singapore households face food insecurity yearly. It’s a sad statistic, and one that galvanised our students to play their part in fighting this issue by hosting a Food Drive in collaboration with Singapore Food Bank. Singapore Food Bank is a local non-profit charity organisation that operates foodbank services locally. Utilising their expertise, the student volunteers organised a food drive where they compiled and distributed donated food items. The total yield was projected to be enough to support over 300,000 households. In addition to this, the student council strove to make this event an opportunity to raise awareness on food insecurity and educate on different ways that we can assist the underprivileged in Singapore.
Shoreline Sweep – Changi Beach Environment Cleanup
This activity was organised by SIM-RMIT SC with the goal to share knowledge on protecting our environment and saving marine lives. As part of the community service, we hoped that our Councillors would also better understand the experiences of the cleaners charged with the upkeep Singapore’s beaches and parks to keep them clean and pleasant for the enjoyment of any one that visits. Unfortunately, due to inclement weather conditions, the students were not able to continue with the planned event. However, though the rain out an end to the original plan, the council was smart in quickly drafting up an alternate programme meant to inform and engage with the volunteers and other fellow students. Community Involvement team member Owen Foo writes that though this event had been an attempt to provide “a platform to reach out and give back to society”, the backup programme was a valuable “knowledge sharing session”.
Willing Hearts Food Drive
This food drive was executed in partnership with Willing Hearts Singapore to give back to the community during the festive season. Willing Hearts is a secular non-affiliated charity run by volunteers and a small staff that operates a soup kitchen supplying 7,000 meals daily to beneficiaries including the elderly, disabled, less fortunate, and migrant workers in Singapore. RMITSC’s councillors thus had a very fruitful experience being a part of this largely volunteer led operation and contributing to their work. They cited how it was heartwarming to see the amount and extent of work that goes into helping the needy, and how sharing the volunteering experience as a team built strong bonds and an appreciation for the value that groups like Willing Hearts provide to our society
In summary, we can see that RMITSC has really put their back into community service projects this year. It’s no easy feat to juggle running a student council, studying and shouldering the responsibility of collaborating with external groups and charities, but the teams and volunteers involved in these initiatives have certainly come out better for it. On behalf of the school, we thank the students involved for being wonderful representatives of SIM and we’re all looking forward to announcing any future volunteer opportunities that RMITSC plans to organise!