Inspire

What inspired me to be involved and participate in this community service is because in primary school I have done similar community services like this. When I was in primary school, on a termly basis my class and I would help the elderly cleaners to help clean the tables and chairs before we go for our school holidays. We also helped them to move the tables and chairs in preparation for the PSLE and also for the end-of-year graduation ceremony. All these small acts made me learn that when we work as one we can achieve more and actually save a lot of time. It also helps the elderly from straining their backs and their knees. Therefore I feel that it will be meaningful to continue this act of kindness and contribution to the community by planning and carrying out this project. In addition, I have seen many people doing voluntary work to help those elderly in need especially at the older estates on social media. Those simple acts of kindness and contribution to society also impacted me and made me feel that each and everyone should at the very least try to contribute and help the community out even if it is the smallest one. This is why I wanted to carry out our community service by helping the elderly cleaners in our school.

Learn & Decide

The main purpose for this proposed idea and community service is to help the elderly support staff who are mostly seen cleaning and helping to maintain the cleanliness of the school.Since a lot of the task they are doing are quite physical in nature we, Mayflower Scouts, decided to make our contribution a termly one and collaborate with the school’s Operations Manager (OM) to make this project feasible. Through this contribution we hope that we can better appreciate those elderly cleaners and try our best to help them out as much as possible when we see them. In the spirit of community service for the aging society, we also felt that it was a great opportunity to spread the word and that there was a need to take a step forward and be a leading example to others to inspire and encourage them to help out as a little goes a long way. We started planning the project under the guidance of our Scout Leaders with the school’s OM to help out with the various jobs around the school on selected Saturdays during our weekly CCA sessions. The plan for this term was to assist the monthly wipe-down and cleaning of the canteen tables and benches (due to the COVID situation) and also the cleaning of the school hall to aid the Support Staff prior to the setup of the hall for the upcoming examinations.We also plan to clear the various heavy and bulky cca equipments from the different ccas for the mass refuse removal in school. After which we compiled our logistics like the dry mops, pails, brooms, cloths and cleaning agents. We then decided to execute this project from the 7th to the 17th of April 2021. 

Do

Service hours: Total Hours: 12h (7th April 2021 – 17th April 2021)

• 7th April 2019: 2hr (planning and meet up with OM to discuss on the project for 10th Apr)

• 10th April: 4hr (Execution of Day 1 of service-learning activity)

• 14th April: 2hr (planning and meet up with OM to discuss on the project for 17th Apr)

• 17th April: 4hr (Execution of Day 2 of service-learning activity)

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We started by discussing how to split the manpower as I felt that we should place people at areas where they can showcase their strength and thus can complete the task at a faster and more efficient rate. My assistant patrol leader and I then came to a conclusion that we should split the patrol up where the stronger ones can help to move the tables and chairs at the hall in preparation of the upcoming examinations while some proceeded to do the wiping down and cleaning of the tables and chairs at the canteen. We also assigned some people to the hall to help sweep the floor and do some basic cleaning so as to ensure that the hall will be in a good condition when used for the examinations. Through this meeting and the first day of executing the community service, I learnt that we can do the job faster and more efficiently when we delegate the job properly and ensure that everyone knows what to do. (execution day 1) At the next meeting, my patrol and I split ourselves into different groups where some of us help to sort the poles between the good (those that can be kept and used for firewood) and bad ones (those that have deep cracks on them) and some help to move the bad poles to a corner and arrange them systematically and neatly. One of the groups where the people were stronger helped with some of the bulky disposal of items from the various CCAs for the mass disposal. When the groups finished sorting the poles they also went ahead to help with the disposal of the heavy CCA equipment. (execution day 2) Throughout the two days of doing the community work some challenges I faced is that it can be quite challenging to sort out the manpower as there are limited people who are at an advantage in terms of strength. In addition it was difficult to move the bulky items from one location to the remonal area as the items are really heavy and there are many corners and turns between the two locations, but we managed to overcome these challenges by communicating with one another and also working with one another.