Voluntary Service Project

Date and Venue of the Programme

Date: 1–18 August 2008
Venue: (subject to the nature of activities organized, availability of locations and decisions of the designated beneficiaries)

Objectives

1. Being the highlight of the whole summer project, the Voluntary Service Project (VSP) aims precisely at nurturing participants’ sense of belonging to society and empathy with the feelings of people from various backgrounds.
2. We believe that after completing the tasks in the voluntary service project, our participants will have acquired the basic techniques in organizing social services and will be able to employ the skills and this experience of theirs learnt from this program in the future.
3. We believe that through organizing a service program under our ambassadors’ supervision, participants’ leadership, time management, resource allocation and risk management skills will be substantially improved.

Details

The project holders of the Summer Project are planning to cooperate with 3 service centers. Participants who have been allocated into groups of 10 during the orientation camp will continue to work with their group-mates in their respective groups in the Voluntary Service Project. During the Opening Ceremony, each group will be assigned a specific beneficiary and the members of the concerned groups are required to organize activities for the clients from the designated centers. Ambassadors assigned by the Organizing Committee will continue to supplement their group kids when assistance is necessary and will provide directions for them when the group meets difficulties.

After the assignment, each group is entitled to an information package containing essential information for organizing an activity together its designated beneficiary. In addition to sponsorship previously obtained during the Presentation Day, each group will receive $100 as the budget for organizing a program with the centre. Centers may also provide subsidies to cover up groups’ expenses upon their request, but the amount is left for their own negotiations. Groups are expected to conduct frequent meetings to discuss the issues involved the voluntary service and ambassadors will follow up on them to ensure on-schedule progress.

Each group is responsible for organizing a program with the designated service centre in 2 weeks’ time. The participants of the program will come from

1. Group members within the organizing group
2. Group members of another group previously assigned by the organizing committee during the Opening Ceremony.

Apart from the regulation that each group must organize at least 1 day of service with their corresponding centre, there is barely any restrictions on the operation mode of the programs.

Information Package

The information package serves to provide participants the basic information that they will need to organize a social service program. Some of the documents in the information package are listed as follows:

a) Information of the centre which the volunteers are going to serve.
b) Useful phone numbers
c) Sample documents (proposal, agenda and minutes)
d) Allocated budget for each group
e) Background information of the clients whom the volunteers are going to serve