Wednesday, November 26, 2008

President’s Award for Services

A friend sent me this newspaper clipping when she saw my photo in it. What happened was that our team was presented the President’s Award at our university on this past Monday. Mainly for the service learning projects that we have been carrying out over many years, in Hong Kong and mainland China. At last count, there have been more than 30 projects of various types, with a wide range of recipients and partners.

There have been numerous workshops and summer camps for primary and secondary school students, on web page design, multimedia, robotics, intelligent garments, .... Parties, workshops, and wireless network setup for a special school. Workshops for children of refugees stuck in Hong Kong. Robot competitions for primary and secondary schools. IT workshops for young offenders under superintendent caution. Web site development for brain disease patients and other NGOs. IT workshops for the elderly. Information System development for the Police and Justice Departments. Anti-drug campaigns in collaboration with the Police. Training and workshops on innovation for a large number of schools. Robotics-based science and design short courses in the regular curriculum for schools. ...

In the past three years, we took our students to Hubei province three times to organize information technology-related summer camps in three different secondary schools in two locations. We also took our students to Gansu province twice to install a computer network at a primary school for orphans in a remote mountainous area, and provide training to their teachers and students. We are going back to the school next summer and are also exploring other challenging opportunities to serve.

We are true and passionate believers in service learning, in which our students learn compassion, civic responsibility, people skills, and real-life impact of their profession through authentic and challenging services.

We are very grateful to the university and particularly the former head of our department, who have consistently supported our projects with suggestions, time, space, facilities, and most importantly, finances. We are, of course, very happy with the students who participate enthusiastically, who keep returning to help.

I am, ultimately, thankful to God who allow me to live out my faith in this wonderful way. And for giving me two fantastic partners, V and G, in this adventure.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations~~~~~

StephenC said...

Thank you. Many many people (colleagues, students, partners, ...) were involved in our work, and we are very grateful to all of them.