Service Learning Program

Service-learning is an innovative approach to education that integrates volunteer community service and active reflection with academic coursework.

Designed to promote more meaningful interaction between education and society, this process links classroom learning to what goes on in the real world and encourages students to be useful and productive in the service of others. As students engage in service-learning they develop a variety of skills that strengthen their ability to face current social challenges. These include critical analytic skills, personal skills related to their own self-awareness and self-confidence, and skills that enable them to successfully interact with others unlike themselves.

The benefits of service-learning are now so widely recognized that it has actually become an international movement. Service-learning programs in western countries are varied and extensive, offering opportunities to students in higher education as well as to high school students. Currently, there is a growing interest in service-learning in Asia with programs operating in colleges and universities in the Philippines, Korea, India, Thailand and Japan.

In China, service-learning programs are already being developed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but the concept is relatively new to universities in the Mainland. A tradition of community service does exist among colleges and universities in Mainland China, but the critical link between these activities and classroom learning has yet to be formed. Given our broad relationship with many of these colleges and universities, Amity would seem to be in an ideal position to help forge that link.

What Amity has done in Service Learning

(1) Faculty Workshop

Amity held a Service-Learning Workshop in Nanjing in September 2004, featuring lectures by Service-Learning specialists from South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Hong Kong SAR. Forty faculty members from seven universities in Nanjing and a few other cities attended the workshop. This workshop was the first of its kind in Mainland China.

Participants were impressed by the wide range of international perspectives on education and the various models of Service-Learning introduced by the speakers. Chinese faculty members took an active part in all the discussions and expressed a belief that Service-Learning has great potential to advance many of the goals of the ongoing education reform in China. Possibilities for turning existing students service programs into Service-Learning were widely discussed as were suggestions for enriching the curriculum and establishing a valid evaluation system. By the end of the workshop, there was broad agreement that efforts should be made to publicize Service-Learning and build general awareness and that educators would benefit from training that shows how to adopt this as an approach to teaching.

(2) Publications

As there are currently few materials available on Service Learning in Chinese, we have translated the book Service Learning in Higher Education Around the World by Howard A. Berry and Linda A. Chisholm in to Chinese. We will publish and distribute this book to Amity-related higher education institutes in order to familiarize more people in China with Service Learning concepts.

(3)Establishing a Model Service Learning Program

In Spring 2005 we sent two faculty from Nanjing Normal University and Hangzhou Teachers’ College to attend a United Board workshop in Hong Kong to learn about how to integrate Service Learning in to a curriculum. From this, we hope to develop a model Service Learning program, working with the Social Work faculty at Nanjing Normal University to integrate their students’ service programs in to their curriculum.

(4) International Exchange Programs

Over the past three years, we have been supporting English majors at Nanjing University and the China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing to go to less-developed parts of northern Jiangsu Province and help train middle school students in oral English skills during their summer vacation. Last summer, we also invited five British students through the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) to join the Nanjing University students during their service time.

As well as the above, we also arranged for two students from Hong Kong’s Baptist University to engage in Service Learning activities in Nanjing during December 2004. The Hong Kong students interacted with students from Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University. They also visited the Amity Foundation’s headquarters, the Amity Printing Press and the Home of Blessings, as well as spending time with students at Amity-supported schools for the children of migrant workers.

Amity’s Future Vision for Service Learning

We believe that Service Learning has a great future in China because it fits in with the goals of our countries educational reforms. These goals include fostering a sense of social responsibility among students and promoting the whole-person development of students. We realize that more effort needs to be made to publicize Service Learning and build awareness about it, as well as training people in how to adopt it as an approach to teaching.

As an NGO working in the fields of education, health care, social welfare and community development, and with our broad links to overseas church-related organizations, as well as our close relationships with Chinese universities and colleges, Amity would like to become an active advocate of Service Learning within mainland China.

In the future, we plan to hold more workshops and publish more books in order to introduce more people in China to Service Learning. We would also like to work with interested higher education institutes in Asia and around the world in order to explore international exchange programs. We hope to integrate these programs in to our existing programs.

We feel we are just beginners in the field of Service Learning. However, we have now taken initial steps within this field.