On the 16th of November 2019, we participated in the final pitching day for the Youth Sarawak Social Project Challenge 2019 where we had to pitch the results of our pilot project which we had carried out. The other top 4 finalist teams were also present and ready to put out their ideas. Three judges were invited to assess the pitches presented by us. Lau Zhi You gave the pitch while Ehlena Lau and Irwin Fong were in charge of the slides and questions. In the end, we managed to win second place and received a cash prize of RM 2000.
For the past few weeks, we carried out a social project at Kampung Stass, Bau to help reduce the high rate of school dropouts in Sarawak. Our project was named “School on Wheels” and our role was to spark their interests in different fields of study, to provide insight to them and to connect them to vocational colleges in Kuching and Matang. We went to villages to visit the students and conduct programmes that involve hands-on activities and short presentations on vocational studies. We also researched and relayed information on vocational colleges to the students. Because of the mobility of bringing these programmes to the villages, it is called “School on Wheels.”
Not only that, we invited trainers to come and teach the students on basic vocational studies like fashion, modern agriculture, carpentry and electronics. We conducted a five-day programme with the students there and included all activities in a video. We facilitated a course on culinary art which required the students to put together sandwiches and to make snow skin mooncakes. For carpentry, we asked the students to construct model furniture with ice-cream sticks. For fashion design, we tapped on the students’ creativity to create shoes out of craft foam.
All in all, we are very grateful to have been able to take part in this competition and definitely learned some lifelong knowledge and experiences. We also would like to extend our gratitude to our teachers Ms Nancy Ting and Mr Fabian Kong; our Principal, Fr Francis Lim, SJ; Mr Alan Tan of Kuching and Mr Steven of Kampung Stass from Yayasan Lasallian Kuching who partnered with us; Interact Club of St Joseph’s Private School; our beneficiaries as well as our parents for their endless support and cooperation.
We are also satisfied that we are able to help the kids in Kampung Stass to find their interest and introduce them to vocational studies. This has also been a very fruitful experience for us as we have never done something like this before.
By Lau Zhi You, Ehlena Lau and Irwin Fong
