Engaging with the Community: Immersing with Diverse People during SHS
“No man is in an island — and no one ever becomes poor by giving”
As part of our curriculum in our Humanities class, we were able to be immersed with a variety of communities i.e., gift giving, cultural trips, attended socio-civic seminars, and even to our immediate community as well. Looking back at my high school journey, these immersion events became an integral lesson that shifted my perspective to become more aware with our present societal issues, and developed my sense of leadership towards leading communities to betterment and alleviation of problems.
My journey with interacting with the kids on our community preschool, empowering the deaf community, building teamwork with our class, and attending socio-political community development seminars may be short, but in that short amount of time we have inculcated the virtues of empowerment, and transformative thinking — that we can do something in our community, and help them achieve prosperity and alleviation, — that even in our simple ways, we can boost their morale and inspire them.
Biggest Lessons
Probably the biggest lessons we have learned during our immersion is that it widens our perspective towards the community we have been to; that there are numerous challenges they constantly face on a daily basis and that through acquainting them, we learned that there is something we can do to help them — even in simple, little ways. Also, through community immersion, we have learned that we, too, can be part of the solution to improve the society, and these little ways touches our heart to become better, responsible citizens.
Community immersion is service learning outside the four corners of our classroom, and this journey is a worthwhile experience because through this student-directed opportunity, we firsthand experience real life scenarios or people, and in the same manner, acquire necessary skills that are applicable in the real-life setting. The empathy, reliance, justice-centered virtue, and the passion ignited to transform society are the primary skills I have learn throughout my immersion period.
Now relating this to our current program, immersion is important especially to us, the future public servants, because through this, we can target the challenges of the community and strategize action plans to transform them towards poverty alleviation, and achieve prosperity.
