Reflection on Service Learning Activity Part 3

This is a three-part series blog entry of my participation in our class service learning as part of our requirements in this course. The three-part series blog will focus on my experiences and reflections before, during and after service learning. To check my first and second series of Service Learning Activity, kindly click here for the first and here for the second.

Painting in Navotas

This was our group's first leg of the service learning activity. In partnership with the Habitat for Humanity, our task here is to paint houses in the community. Aside from our group, we are also being joined by a group from Japan, students from Immaculate Concepcion Academy (ICA) and the MFI undergraduate students from DLSU. When I reached this place, I felt that it was like the community is similar to Gawad Kalinga all over again, except I hope that I do not accidentally paint a light bulb again because of my excitement in using the roller brush during college. I used to do house painting in Gawad Kalinga, so I thought that we're going to paint the external structure of the house, but upon reaching the assigned house, they asked us to paint the interior of the house. Honestly, it was an easy task as we were six people painting one house and only two sides unlike when I was doing this in college there were only three of us and we had to paint two sides of the house exterior since we were assigned a corner house.

As the saying goes, the more the merrier and the easier the task will be completed. We were able to finish the task ahead of time compared with other groups. While painting, we also conversed with the resident of the house we painted by asking their way of living in this area and knowing their family more. After painting, we also conversed with the coordinator of the area and asked her different things from how they had ended up in this place after typhoon Pedring and also inquired other activities that they were conducting in the area. It's nice to hear that the people here had a decent living and the community also have a public library for the children to study. However despite these brilliant sustainability activities that was being planned by the community, we learned from the coordinator that some residents would not participate in activities such as seminar about values and they would just gather whenever there is a gift giving in their community, which is kind of sad. Overall, this is still a positive experience as we were able to discover the other side of the community that we used to see in the city. In addition, similar to what I saw in Gawad Kalinga, these residents also had their own livelihood in which they would sell different things such as food, prepaid load, or even service such as manicure.

Spending Time with Kids

After our morning community service in Navotas, we immediately went to Hospicio de San Jose in Manila as been promised to the organization despite not being credited as part of our community service. Even if we only spent a few hours with the toddlers, all of us enjoyed our time there as it enabled us to take care of them similar on how we are supposed to take care of our kids whenever we are to have one. It was a positive experience especially when I'm quite scared up until now that I might have the fear that I could not handle child-rearing in the future. This made me realize that maybe if you would be able to train your child well, you would not have any much issue rearing the child even if he/she reach the teenage years.

A Day in a Construction Site

This is the last leg of our community service of the same organization Habitat for Humanity, but this time our service is located in Stonewell, Sto. Tomas Batangas. The community is in partnership with Rockwell wherein they would build low cost housing for the people near the area. Based on our queries, the house would cost around 450,000 pesos and the target market are usually the public school teachers. The things we did in the community are shoveling and carrying sacks of sand and stone, sifting sand, assist the workers by transporting buckets of cement for filling the blocks and placing putties to fill in the gaps in the wall.

Doing these things are no easy task, especially if you come somewhat unprepared of the circumstances that you'd be dealing with. Despite the initial advice by one of the coordinators that we must wear sunblock and even offered hers, we all insisted that we could go without one even if we did not bring any sun protection except for our gloves and asking the coordinator for one would seem to be embarrassing on our part. The result of resisting the coordinator's offer? A sunburn on various parts of our body. This experiential activity in serving the community made us feel where the minutes seemed to be hours, especially when we thought we already did a lot of tasks, it also made me realize that we should not take the construction workers for granted as they always make a huge effort in doing these daily activity just to have food on the table for their family. Aside from experiencing what they're doing in a day, it's also nice to see that despite these hardships that the construction workers had gone through, they still managed to put a smile when you see them working. I think this could be the result of the community and the company that is in partnership with establishing a rapport with the workers, in which despite getting meager income, it enables them to work with enthusiasm because these workers were treated with respect, which I think is the most important thing that can be given by anyone for them as it would allow them to appreciate themselves and think that without them, these houses would not be built.

Final Thoughts

Despite the early time we need to wake up in order to do this thing, I was more of looking forward to this outreach as it would allow me to experience helping other people and seeing the smile and appreciation in their faces once again. Also, this is not the usual outreach I've been doing during my college life except for the painting part. It's heartwarming to know that these people appreciate the help that we did for them that day even if it is a little one. I think this service learning allowed me to have life in a new perspective in terms of being prepared such as knowing what situation we're going at (e.g. we are under the heat of the sun, therefore we should bring sunblocks) and realizing how life of being a construction worker was like. We thought that we already labored a lot of things such as carrying sacks of sand and stone, but upon looking at the time, we were surprised that we only spent a few minutes while we thought that we already spent almost an hour already.

In this experience, aside from learning more about the community, it enabled me to also learn more about my group mates and grow together as a person.