My Community, My Commitment
Though, the concept of environmental-community service is not very new, its importance has developed in the past few years. There are thousands of organizations all over the world that engage and hold millions of young people all through the world. People of all age groups, with a maximum number of youth are involved in the process of community service. Environmental-community-based organizations include; social service organizations, nonprofit providers and associations that engage both young people as well adults as volunteers; youth development organizations, after-school programs, and faith-based organizations. The process is beneficial both for the individuals as well as the society.
Environmental-Community service can be defined as a service that is performed for the benefit of the public. Basically, community service is a way for a person to give back to a community in which they live. There are many ways of giving back to the community; it can include mural painting on school wall, cleaning and painting of orphanages, building a small bench for students in school, collecting items for charity, or just simply cleaning up a park. One of the main benefits of environmental-community service is that it builds a person’s character. It helps you to work on skills of being able to communicate with people, being able to work on a team, and being able to take on leadership role. Applying what is taught in the classroom to real life problems not only helps the members of the community, it also increases students’ knowledge and skills while helping them find their place as engaged citizens of the world
Issues encountered
Rumah Hope
Rumah Hope was started in 1994 as a social ministry of Good Hope Lutheran Church, ELCM in aid of five needy children and as a sanctuary for abused, neglected and under-privileged children between the ages of five to 17. The Home relies solely on public funding to maintain itself.
Rumah Hope aims to provide a suitable social setting with physical and emotional care to children. From that, we will be looking into the community issues faced by this non-profit organization. The lack of both non-financial & financial help, as well as volunteers for helping hands, we can contribute our part to help solve and protect the children in need. The reason we chose orphanages to help out is because we want to provide the basic necessities to the children. These children are the leaders of our future generation, it will be a pleasure to support and motivate them to achieve their goals and dreams, without being treated differently from anyone.
Our task is to identify an environmental-community related issue in your local community. The issues have to be genuine and any solution provided by your team must have an impact to the environment and community. You will need to visit your project site more then once to collect a variety of observation before making suggestions or proposals. Our observations should also include what is the main environmental-community related issue, who are affected, any particular organization directly related to the issue, what the people or community needs and etc. Your record of the observation can be in the form of written, video or visual.
The understanding of sustainability (environment and community engagement) and your role and responsibility as a designer should be reflected throughout the execution of this project while;
- Exploring the issue
- Writing an effective proposal to resolve the issue
- Execution of the project on site
- Engaging the site and community
- Creating the awareness and impact via your solution/product
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In the group of 13, our team had worked together as a group to solve all the problems encountered in Rumah Hope. For example, the main issues are the lack of greeneries and worn out wall. To solve the issues, we have to design a green and sustainable solution for them. Using recycled wood to build a hanging garden and planter boxes for plantations is one of our main design solutions. Not only does reusing the recycled wood helps improve its life cycle, but utilizing it to plant more vegetation helps increase the greens in Rumah Hope. This project required our passion and commitment in order to execute our tasks perfectly, as they are not easily completed if we did not work as a team.
Final Products: A3 Posters + Proposal + Multimedia
The project asked for two outcomes:-
- 2 A3 research poster of the project
- Multimedia presentation of the entire project from proposal to completion
- Proposal Submission and approval
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Attached below is the full version of the Rumah Hope Proposal