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They have travelled all the way to Cambodia with the aim of implementing their Final Year Project (FYP), and later discovered that it was not just about the grades. Five students from the School of Applied Science had embarked on this insightful Service-Learning journey between 26 to 31 August 2008, along with their facilitator, Dr Khaleda Mita Ali, and two staff members from the Office of Student and Graduate Affairs, Alicia Zee and Selamat Jufri.
Here are some of the team members' reflections* on their experience:
"It began as a main concern of project work and grades, but as we progressed and worked with them, it made us want to do it in order to help them. It became more about them then it did of us. Immersing ourselves into a new and different culture was insightful and a first of its kind experience that we will never forget. Coming out from this, we have gained a sense of achievement, created friendships, even in such a short time and exchanged cultural habits and norms.
The entire time spent on this project gave us an opportunity to gain hands-on skills for designing and constructing a full scale greenhouse appropriate for mushroom cultivation, as well as use locally available agricultural waste material as substrate medium to grow gourmet oyster mushrooms. We faced a lot of challenges along with things that we could not anticipate beforehand; but brainstorming with the Cambodian youths and through mutual sharing of experience and expertise, we managed to troubleshoot and improvise to work our way towards a successful accomplishment of the targeted goals. We have also managed to give them something to learn from in order to further develop their learning and agricultural skills. This was one adventure that we would definitely like to embark on again."
The overall objective of the project was to create the social context for their FYP and to enhance their ability to apply their core programme knowledge into real-world needs. The team worked with youths from their host partner, CARITAS, in Phnom Penh, and cultivated gourmet mushrooms using waste materials such as wood and other paper products. This reduces the chances of unnecessary burning and cuts down on pollution on global warming. The team is thus aware that developing environmentally friendly recycling technology has become immensely important to tackle some of the problems which everyone is facing today.
*The reflections were made possible by the following students:
Stacey Lee Henderson, Diploma in Biomedical Sciences
Rachel Yeo, Diploma in Biomedical Sciences
Tay Yong Chuen, Diploma in Biotechnology
Md. Najibul Hossain, Diploma in Pharmaceutical Science
Linus Sebastian Chan, Diploma in Pharmaceutical Science
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