Leading Beyond Self

A leadership role I held was the Administrative Representative (Admin IC) for Team B of my service-learning initiative - Beyond Self. Beyond Self is a partnership with Beyond Social Services focused on enabling social progression among lower income families. We organise and provide academic support programmes as well as fun and educational activities for primary school children of these families. We were separated into two teams - Team A and Team B for the weekly sessions with the children.

As an Admin IC for Team B, I put in a lot of effort. Firstly, during the earlier months of joining Beyond Self, all of the Admin ICs, including myself, had many discussions so as to form the attendance system. Furthermore, I wrote some of the After Action Reviews after Team B’s sessions so as to better reflect on the session we attended. I also marked, recorded both the children’s attendance as well as the mentors’ attendance for Team B’s sessions which I attended and emailed them to the Community Partner on a monthly basis. This is in addition to the duties of mentoring and tutoring the children when they need help in homework or assessment books.

As an Admin IC, there were many things I had to do in Beyond Self behind-the-scenes. It was not just about marking and recording attendance for both mentors and children. This is because when we entered into Beyond Self, there was no proper attendance system, both offline as well as online. We had to come up with the rules and guidelines for the mentors and children, such as the consequences when they are late or have bad behavior. However, ultimately what we do in Beyond Self is for the benefit of the children. I really enjoyed interacting with the children on a one-to-one basis and getting to know them better personally.

In conclusion, leading Beyond Self as an Admin IC has been a great experience for me as I gained better leadership skills. I believe that being a great leader is to have confidence, courage to make difficult decisions and still be attentive to the needs of others. In Beyond Self, the primary goal is to make a difference to these under-privileged children by providing educational support as well as fun activities that they enjoy.