Once again, Kwee Chek and, I as Delegation Leaders (“DLs”) are bringing another group of SP students from various schools (SMA, DMIT, EEE, SB, MAE and CLS) and cohorts (2nd year and 3rd year students) to embark on another overseas community service* (“OCS”) trip. And it is to Luang Prabang, Laos, from 5th to 19th June 2017. Coming along with us are two Youth Community Leaders (YCLs): Heng Wei and Jasilyn Sim, who had experienced a previous OCS trip as participants; and seventeen students (YEP** Participants), who will be experiencing the OCS for the first time! Oh, not forgetting, representative of our partner from YMCA, Grace, will be with us too!

Laos (or officially the Lao People’s Democratic Republic) is one of the lesser-studied countries in Southeast Asia (Boute and Pholsena, 2017). Per Boute and Pholsena, 50 percent of the population in Laos is under the age of 20. These young people (around 15 years old) barely finishing their elementary or secondary studies will seek new economic opportunities outside their province (2017).

During the briefing session we had with the students’ parents and relatives on 25 May 2017, Grace enlightened us on the students of the secondary school, whom we are going to work with at Sang Khalop Secondary School, are largely from other provinces of Laos. Many of them rent a space with the local villagers during school term and return to their respective province in term break.

This is the first time we are visiting Laos and we are very-very excited about it! The YCLs and their YEP participants had worked very-very hard to complete pre-trip local community services and other preparations for the trip. They had created a motto for themselves and that is to Push Beyond Limits! Well done, guys!

For us, the DLs, we will always be reminded by the words of our founding father, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, when he said:

[There] are two factors in the formative influences of a young man or a young woman’s life: one is the home; the other is the school. We cannot do very much about the home, but we can do something about the school. (Extracted from Tan, Low and Hung, 2017)

Although it is a mere 2-week trip, the something that Kwee Chek and I can do here is to ensure good character building amongst our young men and young women student-participants (“participants”).

During the trip, we will uphold the values of Respect and Responsibility, and we strongly believe that to Learn, is to Serve.

4 Jun 2017

*The terms Overseas Community Service (OCS), Overseas Community Involvement Programme (OCIP) and Overseas Service Learning (OSL) can be used interchangeably.

**YEP stands for Youth Expedition Programme