Posts filed under 'Feature: GAHA Member'
Hi there!
My name is Shawn Low and I received my NYAA Gold Award in 2004. At present, I am a third-year student at Harvard College majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology. I am concurrently pursuing a teaching certification in science through the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE) as part of a joint program between the college and the GSE.
My college experience in the United States has been as colorful as it has been exciting. But, rather than bore you with a laundry list of my activities, I wish to share on one aspect of my time here that I have found particularly meaningful - community service.
In my spare time, I am a volunteer with the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Allston - a short 10 min bus ride away from campus. Horace Mann is the oldest public day school in the United States for Deaf students. The school traces its founding to nearly a century and a half ago, and was associated with historical figures such as Helen Keller and Alexander Graham Bell.
At the school, I am involved in an innovative project in vocational training called Scanworks. Modeled as a ‘business within the classroom’, Scanworks aims to equip Deaf students with digital imaging skills while allowing them to make some pocket money through the profits generated. Students are taught on-the-job and previous clients have included institutions like the Boston Teachers Union and the Allston-Brighton Museum. My role in this project has been two-fold, first as a mentor to these students, and then to advise the students on the operational aspects of the business.
Communication was (and in some sense still is) an issue I had to grapple with right from the start. Coming from Singapore, I am not fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). My knowledge of ASL is limited to those signs shared between the sign language system in Singapore and ASL. Unsurprisingly, when I first started, I felt like much like a duck out of water. I had all these ideas that I wanted to implement with the students, but being new and not knowing the language well were two large impediments.
The new is at once both a challenge and a promise. One thing that I have learnt through the NYAA programme and through my own experience with GAHA is that teething issues are extremely common whenever something new is put in place. It could be a new relationship between people, a new way of doing things, or even a new project altogether. However, this does not imply that one should give up. It just means that more time needs to be devoted to analyze these issues carefully. What I find keeps me going in tough times like that is the promise that an idea holds or what I want to see happen. I find great excitement in this sense of possibility.
Over time, I made an effort to pick up ASL signs relevant to the business. I tried to make use of more non-verbal cues to interact with the students. Instead of shrinking away from them, I forced myself to confront the language barrier. Sure, there were times when it became awkward and we needed to call an interpreter in. However, even as there were difficulties in communicating our ideas, the mutual sense of trust and sincerity was never once questioned. Both sides were willing to make this work. And sure enough, things did progress much faster after those initial weeks.
I have been with Scanworks for nearly one and a half years now and I am happy to say that the business now has a systematic workflow for all incoming and outgoing jobs. I helped to develop a system of accounting for all new jobs to ensure a high level of quality control. In fact, the students themselves saw the value of having a proper system in place to organize work especially when the work orders started to pile up. Personally, if they were able to recognize the value of systems in organizing work, at least half of the class objectives would have already been achieved - for they would then bring that same mindset and apply it in whatever field they may endeavor.
Volunteering with Scanworks has been a meaningful way for me to spend part of my mornings each week. I think it is an interesting model of education that is quite unlike anything that I have seen in Singapore. Nonetheless, regardless of how novel or revolutionary this concept may be, I still find in it the same ingredients that make any successful project - hard work, ingenuity and resilience.
December 31st, 2009
2008, that was the year I decided to take a chance with my inept Chinese. I headed to China to obtain my bachelor’s degree and at the same time complete my NYAA Gold Award. I must say that it was an extremely challenging past year for me. Firstly, the language barrier was a great obstacle. Religion restrictions, restricted speech and the lack of sambal kangkong further compounded the problem. Having to meet and live with all kinds of people in the one and only 23-storey dorm for foreign students was an experience that both taught me amazing things and tapped on the tolerance I cultivated with NYAA’s multi cultural programs.
That is the unrecognizable me on the far right
To elaborate, in school we are not allowed to speak about religion or politics. The threat is well enforced by the presence of communist party members in the student population. Furthermore the Internet is also heavily censored in China. Sites such as FaceBook, You tube and BlogSpot to name a few are blocked. As Singaporeans, we come from a less difficult environment. Thus it is extremely easy to think that the only system that we were brought up with is the right one. However, judging others based on what we know and ignoring all that we do not is too easy and against all that NYAA enforces in its programs.
The Singapore booth at a mini world expo organized by my university
I had an opportunity to attend an award camp in Russia called “Trust the World”. From it I learnt the very important lesson of tolerance and the need to understand the background and rationale of why different countries and types of people do things differently, that helped greatly in China. It was much easier to simply write off everything that disagrees with my comfort zone as ridiculous. However when understood and taken in context, given the history of China and how just 41 years ago, the country was still in the midst of great turmoil during the cultural revolution, it is amazing that I even have the opportunity to study there, much less watch Grey’s Anatomy on a Chinese video streaming site.
The graduation party I organized under the Singapore association for the class of 2005 themed – Old Shanghai
NYAA’s skills and service program have also helped in motivating me to leave the comfort of my 23-storied air-conditioned international dorm to immerse myself in China and its culture. For my skills program, I picked up Peking Opera and actually succeeded in performing for a few nerve struck minutes during the Christmas program. This newly acquired skill helped to smooth conversations with my Chinese friends and taught me a multitude of classic songs that every Chinese knows. As the popular songs of each generation act as good guides to the flavor of the respective ages, the practice of Peking Opera has led to a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. For service, I went out to the slums to teach children originally from the countryside English and math. That opened up my eyes immensely to the life of a blue collared worker in China. The one and a half-year commitment is quite a long one for a restless soul like me. However it is exactly the thing I need to guide me towards perseverance and following through with my activities. In short, the NYAA has been an immense motivation to stretch my boundaries (and vocal cords) to really experience china.
One benefit I did not expect to reap from NYAA but managed to, is a stronger bond to home. Completing my NYAA program constantly keeps me thinking of Singapore and reminds me of my duty to it. Therefore I have actually joined the Singaporean Students Association in Shanghai as external affairs officer to both raise awareness of Singapore and aid Singaporeans students with their life in Shanghai. The leadership skills and training I have received with the Singapore Young Photographer’s Convention and other opportunities that NYAA has provided has helped me immensely in my role.
I seem to be talking about all the pros of the NYAA program. Therefore I must add a con. NYAA’s Gold Award program has kept me so busy always trying to do something new or addressing my duties that between NYAA and my studies I have hardly any time for Grey’s Anatomy.
For those that have managed to read to the bottom, I offer a quote. Josh Billings a famous writer in the eighteen hundreds once said “There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.” The NYAA program offers us experience. However, we have to take the next step ourselves and apply it.
Alison Lee Jiaying
NYAA Gold Participant
Beijing, China
October 10th, 2009
Contributed by: Mustafa Izzuddin
The Balkans is one of the most misunderstood regions of the world. From its political history to its ethno-religious diversity to its healing process being influenced by divergent political agendas of leaders and by the international community, this is a region that warrants greater scrutiny. From this standpoint and thirst for curiosity, I embarked on a 3-week study trip in April 2009 to the Balkans beginning from Serbia and ending off in Croatia with Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnia) in between. Hosted by the Serbian Society of the London School of Economics, this trip was aimed at dispelling misconceptions about the region, particularly Serbia, with the hope that the 12 participants would take away with them some useful learning points alongside the appreciation of the rich cultural diversity of the Balkan region. The added interest for me, as a youth leader in Singapore particularly with the Gold Award Holders’ Alumni, was to understand how young people viewed the Balkan region, and what roles they have played in the healing process of their respective countries.
Starting in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, we met with the returning Prince of Serbia, the Governor of the Bank of Serbia, and the current Serbian Foreign Minister. Serbia was the centrepiece of Tito’s Socialist Yugoslavia, which disintegrated in a series of wars in the 1990s, and culminated in Serbia becoming an independent state in 2006. Slobodan Milosevic was perceived as the man responsible for the dissolution of Yugoslavia and its attendant Genocide Wars in Bosnia (1992-1994) and Kosovo (1998-1999). As a newly independent state, Serbia has had to deal with 3 major foreign policy challenges as the Serbian Foreign Minister explained in great length.
The first is the issue of Kosovo. Serbia views Kosovo as its autonomous province managed by the United Nations (UN) which comes to imply that Kosovo remains an inalienable part of Serbia and not an independent state as was declared by the parliament of Kosovo in February 2008. International response has been mixed and the global community remains politically divided on the issue of the international recognition of Kosovo. Kosovo is important to Serbia as it is crucially a cultural bastion of Serbia’s historical legacy of Orthodox Christianity. Concurrently, Kosovo Albanians, who are Muslims, believe that they are starkly different from the Serbians and desire their own independent state. It has become a zero-sum game in which Serbia’s loss will be Kosovo’s gain and vice-versa. No country wants to lose its territory, and so this remains one of Serbia’s key foreign policy challenges both locally and globally. What struck me was how Serbia valued relations with countries that supported its stance vis-à-vis Kosovo. When I introduced myself as from Singapore, the Foreign Minister was quick to respond with delight: “We respect Singapore. Singapore is a beautiful city”. I returned the compliment by praising Belgrade as a warm and cosy city. Serbia and Singapore may be worlds apart in distance but they appear to converge on the Kosovo issue in their consistent support of the UN resolutions on this matter.
The second is the issue of European integration. According to the Foreign Minister and reiterated by the representative of the European Commission in Serbia, Serbia has worked hard to put in place measures to quicken its European integration. Alas, she remains only a potential candidate for membership of the European Union (EU) and has yet to become an official candidate, let alone a full member of the EU. One could feel a sense of disappointment mixed with frustration among Serbian policy-makers towards the EU. One sticking point is the perception among some EU member-states that Serbia has not done enough to bring the genocide perpetrators to justice. However, Serbian policymakers feel this is a misconception because they have been successful in doing just that, sometimes at the expense of its own populace. For Serbia, European integration is a risky venture. On one hand, European integration is crucial in many respects not least the appeal of the Euro given that the Serbian Dinar is valueless, a point vividly made by the Bank Governor. I had a tough time converting the Serbian Dinar to any other currency as the banks simply refused to accept it for obvious reasons. On the other hand, Serbian policymakers have had to incur the wrath of its domestic constituents who are not in favour of the EU (as portrayed by anti-EU signs all over the city) because European integration would mean that domestic markets will not be protected and many Serbian small and medium businesses may apparently go bust. Taken together, I foresee Serbia having to build up its own economic pillars rather than becoming an EU member anytime soon. As the Foreign Minister put it, it may take eons for European integration to be possible since Serbia’s efforts have apparently not been appreciated by some EU member-states, and it comes a time when Serbia has to move on with its pride intact.
The third is the relations with countries in its neighbourhood. Historical baggage has continued to be a sore point in Serbia’s relations with its neighbours particularly Bosnia and Croatia in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Mending relations with its neighbours is a key foreign policy initiative for Serbia especially since the people in countries like Bosnia and Croatia appear to still harbour anti-Serbian sentiments as they heal from the scars of past wars. According to several Croats whom I spoke to, they were upfront in their views that Serbs were not welcome in Croatia. While Croatia has healed itself quite quickly to the extent of becoming a candidate for EU membership, Bosnia is still picking up the pieces with scars visible throughout its capital, Sarajevo. The added challenge for Serbia is to revive diplomatic ties with Montenegro which became independent of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, and later infuriated Serbia with its recognition of Kosovo’s independence. A hostile backyard does not bode well for Serbia especially when it attempts to open up a new chapter in its history that is post-Milosevic, democratic and neighbourly in its outlook. How quickly Serbia is able to mend ties with its neighbours to the extent that these neighbouring countries recognise a new Serbia, the more diplomatic recognition and goodwill it will then receive from the European and global community.
On the socio-cultural front, I was heartened to learn from the returning Prince of Serbia that NGOs have been sprouting all over the country and that more young people have been getting themselves involved in civil society. Such a development would have been unthinkable under a Socialist regime which had also banished the royalty and sent them into exile. At the same time, more and more educated youths have become heavily involved in the political process. Some, as young as 21 years of age, have stood for elections and won seats in parliament. I asked a young lady parliamentarian what motivated her to join politics at such a tender age and she replied that “…only when youths get involved in the political process can Serbia shed its past image and move into the future with its head held high…” With such fervour and vibrancy among youths in both the political and NGO circles, I have no doubt in my mind that it is just a matter of time before the recognition of a new Serbia is rightfully given.
There is much to admire about Serbia. Its capital, Belgrade, is a hallmark of tourism and boasts a rich cultural heritage amidst tumultuous historical times. While predominantly Orthodox Christianity, there are also other religions being practised in Serbia. Not least Islam with a half-destroyed mosque operating in a central part of Belgrade. The mosque tells its own remarkable story of struggle and survival. After countless meetings, talking to numerous people and immersing myself in Serbian culture, I left Belgrade with a more educated opinion about a country that is arguably the most misunderstood in a misunderstood region called the Balkans.
August 16th, 2009