Service Learning Introduction

For Service-Learning in Crawford it was suggested that the student teachers work together on one project that would involve both the foundation and intermediate phases. This gave me the opportunity to work with two other students on a wonderful project for Baby Moses. A local orphanage or refuge for abandoned and abused children. The ages catered to range from just eight months old to the age of eighteen. The proposal was written and signed off by Ashleigh Bateman in the Foundation Phase. For the intermediate phase it was Sandra Xu who approved the project

Upon meeting with the founder of the organisation Lani de Klerk, it was suggested that we focus on three main categories of donations: clothes, toiletries and food. This allowed us to have a whole category for ourselves. Tracy-Lee taking clothes, Casey taking toiletries and Dean taking food. The intermediate phase would be Dean’s department whilst the foundation phase would be shared amongst Casey and Tracy.

In the July holiday Tracy-Lee created the video and poster for our organisation. This was sent out to our mentor teachers who put them up on Toddle in July. The program would then run from the 18th of July until the 18th of September. Upon getting back in August it was time for the official launch. This would require the printing of posters for classroom and donation box display in the Foundation and intermediate phase classrooms.

Into the second week of block 2 the grade 7’s had their PYPX projects. These are projects mandated by the school to give back to the community. Similar to how service learning works for us. The theme was human rights such as sanitation, shelter and food. This allowed a few groups of grade 7’s to collaborate with us for our project. This included two meetings with the grade 7 groups in second break on the 1st of September and the 4th of September.

The last segment of this journey would be on the 18th of September. It would consist of many photographs, packing cars and a short speech to give our gratitude and appreciation to all those who made this project the success it was.