Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL)

What is GESL?

The Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL) is a local service learning project that all student-teachers in NIE have to participate in.

It was started in July 2005, and its aims are to:

Broaden student teachers' sense of how diversity increases the community's potential to be
Expand student teachers' understanding of how teaching affects the community
Develop leadership competencies for student teachers to design and lead service learning programmes for students
Nurture teaching and community building as lifelong commitments
Awaken student teachers to new realities and insights regarding what they may accomplish as educators

Source: Group Endeavours in Service Learning, NIE

First GESL Meeting - 19th August 2019

My team members met for the first time and discussed about general administrative matters. We also discussed which specific groups of people would we be interested to work with. We eventually decided to stick to having children as our target audience (TA), and to explore past projects by our seniors, before deciding on a particular organisation to work with.

Second GESL Meeting - 26th August 2019

Our purpose of this meeting is to finalise our roles in the group. Below is the organisational structure that we have settled on:

Group Leaders: Felicia & Kai Jie
Secretaries: Elda & Qurasiya
Security Officers: Kamaro & Fikri
Treasurers: Benjamin & Wei Ting
Photographers: Gwen & Celes
Event Officers: Amelia, Chelsea, Klaudia, Nuha, Samuel, Sarah & Yu Jing

I took on the role as a treasurer in hopes to contribute to the group extensively while working on our projects.

We also narrowed down to 5 different organisations which we would like to work with:

Muhammadiyah Welfare Home (MWH)
Cerebal Palsy Alliance Singapore (CPAS)
Children Aid Society
Riding for the Disabled
Yellow Ribbon Project

We decided to, in 5 different groups, contact the person-in-charge of each organisation and update the rest in the next session.

Third GESL Meeting - 2nd September 2019

In this session, we shared on the information we got after contacting our respective organisations. We have eventually finalised to work with MWH, while keeping CPAS and Riding for the Disabled in view.

We will also be meeting up with the person-in-charge of MWH to discuss more about what we can do for the children there. We decided to do art-related activities with the children as we felt that it is the most engaging and fun activity for both the children and us.

Fourth GESL Meeting - 16th September 2019

We met up today to discuss about the meeting that some of my group members had with MWH. We had a clear idea of how we want the programme to be like (i.e. a one-day programme for the boys in MWH). We also broke into groups to discuss about different proposals for different segments like icebreakers, sports & art.

In addition, we also talked about how the absentees can contribute to our project as the date was fixed in December where many people have different plans (e.g. overseas voluntary activities, family plans). We decided that the absentees can help to do flag day for MWH to raise funds for them.

Fifth GESL Meeting - 7th October 2019

Today, we sat down as different groups to discuss and finalize our games before sharing our ideas to the rest of the team. In my group, we have to decide on activities for two different segments - icebreakers at the start and a concluding activity. For the icebreakers, we have decided on Pair Whacko, Ninja and Blind Man's Bluff. Considering that our Muslims friends in MWH may not be comfortable with using Poker Cards for Blind Man's Bluff, we decided to use UNO cards instead. For the concluding activity, we decided on The Silouhette where each participant will draw his silouhette on a piece of A4 paper and that paper will be passed around in the group where each group member will write something positive on it.

Together as a team, we also decided on dodgeball and fooseball for the sports segment, and painting of canvases for the art & craft segment. This is also the last meeting we have before the rehearsal on 23rd December 2019, after our finals and overseas voluntary activities.

Rehearsal Day - 23rd December 2019

For rehearsal, we were supposed to meet up in school to test our games out. However, I was down with food poisoning and was unable to attend. I received information from my team member to understand how the games went and how we can improve on the actual day.

Actual Day - 26th December 2019

On the actual day, it was really different as how I imagined it would be. To get to know the boys in a few hours and carry out the activities were not an easy feat to me, especially due to the language barrier as they often speak in their Mother Tongue. However, it was heartening to see some boys there taking charge and helping us to better manage the day. I can see that the boys really enjoyed our activities, especially the sports segment.

It certainly warms my heart to see that our hard work did pay off. And with that, we conclude GESL 2019.

I would like to extend my gratitute to my team members and my group leaders, Felicia & Kai Jie. Their efforts and hard work made GESL very much more enjoyable for us. Felicia also kindly drew this picture of our group. ☺️

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