My Social Action Project

I will consider the effectiveness of the Tops and Tags initiative, considering each component of creating awareness, educating, uniting, as well as parent and community involvement

I believe that the Tops and Tags initiative was highly effective at the school I implemented it at. The school had done a similar initiative to this before, where they collected bottle tops for an art mural which made it easy to seamlessly direct the same initiative to a different cause. Further to this, parents were not apprehensive about donating their bottle tops towards the cause as it was something that could be easily implemented at home.

Creating awareness

To create awareness in the Tops and Tags initiative, I placed posters around the school and I made announcements in assembly to spark interest in this cause. Once the project was implemented, the learners started to create awareness about the initiative to their families and friends so that they could contribute towards the donation of bottle lids and bread tags. If I had to implement this initiative again, I would like to extend the initiative throughout all phases of the school and not just the Preparatory and Intermediate phase.

Educate

Unfortunately I was not able to educate the learners like I had hoped for, by having a guest speaker address the learners on the initiative. However, the learners were still educated on the initiative as I engaged in regular discussion with the them about the initiative. If I had to implement this initiative again, I would like to be more effective by organizing someone from the organisation to come to the school. I think this will make the learners feel as if they are part of something bigger, and that their collections are going to a greater cause.

Unite

I felt that the Preparatory school in particular, united together as best as they could to collect as many bottle lids and tags. They collaborated effectively with one another and were committed to working towards a common goal. Further to this, when the learners united together to collect as many bottle lids and tags as they could, they were simultaneously eradicating other social issues one bottle lid at a time. Through their best efforts, they were able to always keep the playgroup clean from this initiative, they were involved in recycling projects and they were educating their peers on the initiative.

Parent and community involvement

The parent and community involvement in the initiative was heart warming. I was amazed to see how many people were willing to contribute to this cause.

Reflecting on the impact of the initiative on the school and community

The Tops and Tags initiative had a positive impact on the school and community as everyone within the surrounding area was working towards a common goal.

How has service learning changed me personally ?

Service learning has changed the way I view the community as I did not think we would get the response that we did. Further to this, this experience enhanced my problem solving skills as it required us to address real world problems and challenges. Through this experience, it taught me how to problem solve and to be adaptable. It also allowed for the opportunity to take on a leadership role whereby I utilised decision making skills and developed the ability to mobilize others towards a common goal. At times, I found this initiative to be challenging when collecting the bottle lids as there were days where we had to sort out waste from the collection points.

This experience personally changed me to be resilient as despite these challenges, we continued collecting even if people would throw waste in our collections as I knew there was a bigger goal to be achieved. This social action project also provided me with the opportunity to improve communication and teamwork skills as I decided to pair with a student teacher from the intermediate phase. Additionally, through this initiative I came to recognize that I had the ability to effect change which lead to an increased motivation to make a difference in the world, and thus my decision to continue this initiative to personally collect bottle lids.

How has service-learning developed me professionally? What new knowledge, skills and /or attitudes have I gained?

While service learning developed me personally, this experience has also developed me professionally. I found that I developed a wide range of skills through this experience as this initiative involved a wide range of tasks including being a project manager that required good communication, teamwork and leadership skills. This experience helped me acquire transferable skills that are highly valuable in a professional setting. Through this experience, I was also able to collaborate with a diverse group of individuals and it required the skills of an effective project manager to plan, execute and evaluate the success of the initiative. Further to this, my communication with people has also improved as before the initiative, I would have been apprehensive to ask parents for donations but the parents and learners were more than willing to help.

The benefits of this initiative to the school and its sustainability.

The Tops and Tags initiative was beneficial to the school as this initiative serves as an excellent educational tool to raise awareness about the importance of recycling and reducing plastic waste. It further kept the playground clean from waste and it involved the whole school community. Teachers, parents and staff worked together towards a common goal which fostered a sense of unity. The Tops and Tags initiative proved to be a sustainable initiative as even though the campaign is over, the school is still encouraging a sustained effort to continue collecting bottle lids and tags up until the end of the year. Further to this, even if our current endeavours do not lead to the immediate generation of a wheelchair, with the help of the combined efforts of the community, a wheelchair will still be distributed to someone in need as our collections will be merged to achieve this goal.

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