Overseas Service Learning

Team Vietnam in front of painted mural

Students in Xinmin Secondary School have many opportunities to give back to the community, but we believe in extending that learning about various communities to even beyond Singapore. To that end, Overseas Service Learning (OSL) is a specialised programme where Secondary 3 students are given the opportunity to embark on a 10-day trip to a rural village in South-east Asia to participate in service learning. Over the course of the trip, students will help to improve the lives of villagers through activities such as building communal toilets, raising the flooring of houses prone to flooding, refurbishing village schools, constructing water tanks, and many more.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had two teams of students travel to Thailand and Vietnam respectively. Team Thailand helped to fix a village well and conducted activities for the village children while Team Vietnam helped to raise the floor of a house that had been severely flooded during the monsoon season as well as give the walls of a local school and university a new coat of paint and murals. Over the course of the trips, the students worked tirelessly during the day to complete the projects while also interacting with local students to help improve their conversational English. There were also nightly reflection sessions to guide the students in learning more about both the communities they were serving, as well as themselves as compassionate contributors.

For many of the students who have embarked on OSL trips, this programme is the highlight of their Xinmin school experience because of how much they are able to learn about themselves and the world at large. In many of their individual reflections, these students realise just how much they end up taking for granted in their day-to-day life. Following the trip, many have endeavoured to improve their outlook and strengthened their desire to continue giving back to the community, both local and overseas.