GESL: Group Endeavours in Service Learning

GESL Group 9 Project: Dream Builders SG

Migrant workers are often skilled, holding degrees in their respective countries. Yet they come to Singapore to work, investing lots of money in this opportunity to earn money with the hopes of building up their own dream in the future. Why do they do this? Often, when trying to help migrant workers, we assume their perspective. We take their contributions at face value, ignoring their experiences and dreams.

Dream Builders SG hopes to give light to the experiences of migrant brothers, as well as the dreams they are working towards. By creating an opportunity for migrant brothers to experience the SDI experience, it gives us an insight on how they live and experience Singapore. By producing and releasing a video that shows the hopes and dreams of the Migrant Workers, we hope to raise awareness of the experiences that migrant workers have in Singapore. In the process, we hope to humanize them and show Singaporeans that they are not just non-disposable, but an integral part of our society.

This campaign also hopes to challenge people to do a kind act for migrant workers during our social media phase, and to hopefully gain enlightenment about some of the plights of the migrant workers. We feel that a video showcasing the voices of migrant workers can also be a good educational tool for teachers.

To achieve the service and learning objectives, our group decided to start conceptualizing a way to address the knowledge, visibility, and the ‘heart’ of the issues, by creating a ‘Brain team’ first to develop a campaign which addressed the 3 aspects. The brain team had then set the direction, events, and deliverables needed for the campaign. We focused on 4 main activities throughout the campaign, which are as follows:

  1. A dormitory visit to Tuas South Dormitory to help SDI gather migrant worker interest in their english courses, as well, as a fact finding mission for our group to personally see the living conditions of the migrant workers.
  2. An ongoing social media campaign that aims to gain more outreach and spread the information of migrant worker experiences through multiple mediums and beyond traditional boundaries
  3. An interactive evening session with the migrant workers to provide some comfort and respite out of their hard work during their off-day.
  4. Filming, producing and releasing of a video that encapsulates our project to serve as a bite-sized resource for teachers to educate our future students about empathy and diversity
GESL_Sabrina Tay_End of Project Reflection.pdf