My Self-reflection

                 My Experience

 

In my life, I never had a course this interesting and different from all the courses I had in High school or college. It was all about volunteering and helping other people. In my experience most of the courses were sedentary and in class works. On the other hand, this course made us go out to the community and experience different things and interact with other people. 

However, what my group and I’ve been though was not a good experience. To begin with, we had a plan that involved food awareness and we were going to work with “Abu Dhabi Food Authority”. The bad part is that they accepted our project and our plan, but literally at the last moment they turned us down. We had to make a fast plan to cover on this one, so we went to a super visor “Abdulrahman”. With time we found out that he was the laziest guy in HCT.

 So we had to make a third plan, which was our successful one and the best one we did. It involved interacting with other people in different ways and a recycle plan that will help make the college a green community. We had to work in the: Reception, Library and the documentation center. We also had to work on the recycling project on our own time to fulfill the objectives step by step. What I found out was, volunteers have a huge responsibility on not making actions without the supervisor’s agreement.

If I ever had to take this course again, I would have asked around before about the volunteering places and the supervisors that can take us. Also do things early, and confirm about the program and the schedule that we will have.

I already set my mind on volunteering in my future life. Because there are people out there facing poverty and need hands to help them with loads of stuff.

Project Plan

Title of Plan:      Experience in HCT Departments

Name of the Group Participants:

1-Saif Abdulla Almutawa

2-Ahmed Abdulla Alali

3-Bashir Almugharbi

4-Eisa Almuhairi

5-Abdulla Jamal Alnueimi

Organization and supervisor:

Higher college of technology

-Eliana (Student services)

- Ibrahim (student council)

Purpose / What do you wish to accomplish ?

Gain as much experience as we can and different skills possible from voluntary work. And make a change in all HCT Departments.

Get a project from the student council and work on it; we got the recycling plan for the college.

Time Schedule:  

Spread Around the Week. (Mainly in Community Service’s class time)

Hardcore 16 hours. 

First week Self and communication skills and experience

 Second week recycling group project

To be successful:

First we need to enhance our communication skills, and observation skills. Also, the ability to act on spot.

Second, to get the most suitable recycling company for the college and make recycling a major thing in the college.

Benefits to participants:

First we gain experience and skills that will help us in our lifetime

. Second we will make recycling bins for the college that will help making it green and use the papers for something good.

Problems we might go through:

We already went to many problems like being turned down from a huge authority, which made us make up another plan really fast that will be effective as well. So the only problem we might face is being turned down by the recycling companies now.

Project week #2 Step #2 Date: 10:30 - 14:30 12/5/2014

Last week we got their proposal, and we sent it to the Student council and its going to take a while to get the confirmation of the director.

So the student council told us today to find good spots for the bins because "Zone waste papers"   agreed to give us 30 bins, and we need to put them in the most reasonable places.

Also, we asked students how far would they go to put papers for recycling ... the results were terrible. they need the bins very close to them. so we went and looked all around the college to get some good results.

After all, as we expected the library was the place that needed most bins, then J Block, F block and the faculty room. and will put some in the corridor.

 and we found some papers in the bins that aren't going to be recycled and some with the janitor going to throw them in the bin.

 I really think it is one of the biggest thing i will ever change in something. Unfortunately i wasn't happy with today's work, because the weather wasn't on our side. Very hot & sunny.

A video of us discussing about the recycling company:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-nSxrLxDE

Project week #2 Step #1 10:30 - 14:30 4/5/2014

On this week we will all work together on one task. To begin with , we arranged a project with the student council to hold one of there projects due to their exams pressure. So they agreed to the recycling plan. We are going to bring a company that will be in charge of taking the papers that are going to be recycled. we talking to many companies (around 7 ) but only 3 met our requirements that we got from Ibrahim (one of the student council).

our requirements were:

1- free of charge or gain money from the huge amount of paper

2- they provide us with recycling bins around the college

3- weekly or monthly collecting time

4- to be done around this or next week


And only 3 were happy with these :

Zaytoona Recycling            

Contact:         

• Tel:  02 5838328
• Mob: 050 8183369
• Email: zrecycling@yahoo.com     

1- 6x6 Metal Cage (outside)

2- weekly
3-free 



MAHY Khoory & Co.
Contact:

• Mob: 056 6861792
• Email: prem@upm.ae 

1- 6x6 Metal Cage (outside)

2- Fast agreement

3- Free

4- Monthly

5- Need to call 1 day before for the collection

6- Collects: paper, plastic, metal cans


Zone Waste Papers
Contacts:

• Mob: 052 6403566
• Email: zeina@zonewastepapers.com  

1-Big boxes spread in the college

2-Free of charge if the load is over 500 kg

3- monthly or weekly

After all the notes that we took and selected the companies, we went to the student council to ask for what is most suitable. They agreed to the last one, Zone waste Papers.

Now its time to arrange the meeting and get this thing going !

Project week #1 Day #2 10:00 - 14:00 30/4/2014

In the second day, we went to Benjamin in the library to see what we can gain from there. the first thing he gave us was arranging the book for the foundation student.

 however it wasn't as clean as we expected them to be. first they were all dusty, and the funny thing is that Ahmed has allergies from dust :'D !! so he was all sneezing and was red nosed for the rest of the day. and they were really messy to the point were books were on the ground. anyways, we collected the book that were around the library and put them all in one place. then we split them off into there groups and put them back. 

                                                       These are the book we collected.

                                          That how we were supposed to arrange them.

Then after we cleaned and finished all the arranging we went to the documenting room, more like the stationary. we had to scan and sort the book to whoever is going to use it. (it was a very hot room with bad air conditioning )

(video soon to be added)

we had to scan like 70 books.

Project week #1 Day #1 11:30 - 15:30 27/4/2014

In the first day,we went off to our supervisor Ms. Eliana and she said that we need to gain experience through our voluntary work. so therefore we were spread around the college to different departments to gain work experience. Ahmed alali and I were sent to the reception area to where we communicate and interact with people to assist them with what they need. We were sending fax and  answering the phone calls giving information and transferring them to whom can assist them. NEVER GIVE WRONG INFORMATION.

The funny thing is that at first we thought we wouldn't like it. but it turned out to be fun and we challenged each other to who helps the most people. and I won eventually.

 However this is only the beginning to our big shot.

                                                  -----------------------------------------------
                                                  That's what we were supposed to do !

                  
              However, unfortunately i got a call from someone who had a very specific demand.

through out this experience i learned how to deal with people as fast as possible and conclude the talk.

Exercise #7

LSH 2903 – Community Service – Learning /  Exercise #7

Charity and Volunteering in the UAE - Information and Activities

The UAE is famous for its hospitality and the desire to give one's time and efforts to help other people.

When I travel to other countries and talk to people about my job, the students and the UAE in general, one constant thought I hear repeated is that the UAE is a very hospitable country and its people are very generous. People in the UAE often want to do things to help others, whether it is other UAE Nationals or people from other countries.

Within the UAE we see so many examples of people volunteering and giving to charities to try and help others. People do this out of the simple goodness of their hearts and to try to help other people to have a better life than they have at the moment. An obvious example is TAKATOF which promotes the idea of volunteering within the country.

Just last semester (March 2013) we had a major charity fundraising week when students, staff and teachers of ADMC raised 25,000 Dh to donate to a school in a poor village Cambodia.

The UAE is also very strongly represented in the international field of assisting people from other countries. It may be through the Red Crescent that people donate money, time or skills to try and help others. So much of the time when we hear about various international problems, the UAE is one of the first to step forward and provide assistance.

Activities

Use the following link to access the website of the UAE Red Crescent.

Once you are there, see if you can answer the following questions. This will help you to find out what the organisation does, what some of their projects are and who are the people involved in the organisation.

http://rcuae.ae/

1.                The UAE Red Crescent has contributed to a number of building projects both inside and outside the UAE. Name three projects the UAERC has worked on

a.      Building Schools to the poor countries

b.      Somal’s poverty Aid

c.      Donating to syria

2.                Name at least 4 countries the UAERC has worked in to provide various project assistance

a.      Syria

b.      Somal

c.      Palastine

d.      Afica

3.                What was the estimated total cost of projects undertaken in the UAE during 2009?

180, 830, 333 Million

4.                According to the information about the foreign based projects, which group of projects received funding of 8,373,558 Dirhams?

External Projects

5.                According to the information about the Foreign Projects, the UAERC is involved in some very important work. According to the English translation, these are listed below. Try to come up with an easy explanation for each of the terms in the grid.

	Translation Term	My/Our own meaning
	reconstruction	Rebuilding
	disasters	Catastrophes
	crises	Disaster
	rehabilitation	Recovery
	infrastructure	Structure
	devastation	Damage
	public utilities	Services

6.                Name three situations which are listed as �natural disasters�.

a.      Earth Quakes

b.      Storms

c.      Tsunami

7.                Crescent Volunteers University

What are the three areas of training/qualification that university students could work towards?

a.      First Aid

b.      Volunteer work

c.      The international Humanitarian law