Volunteers from Asian Business School during RIMBA launch at Publika.
We are strong believers in experiential learning and on the job training which when applied as volunteer opportunities create Service Learning. Service Learning focuses on the service delivered and the learning derived from the experience the volunteer is exposed to. We have been hosting Service Learning projects since 2012 with various school and college students on a wide range of activities from Painting our old office, sorting out rejected jeans from Levis to be distributed to underprivileged communities, running workshops at Kidzania, gardening at Kebun-Kebun Bangsar, Plogging at Bukit Gasing, Launching RIMBA The Card Game, Social media content development, hosting gameplay days, and most recently making a video for our RIMBA Campus Challenge.
Some student groups are as small as 3 pax and as large as 12 pax, some volunteer over 6 hours, 20 hours and some for an overall duration of 3 months with specific KPI set by their program. These “projects” don’t seem like much just from the name itself but dig a bit deeper and you will see how students who are otherwise not in the same team / gang work together towards achieving a task that contributes to our achievements, outreach targets and social mission.
Volunteers from Sunway University that helped us to produce a promotional video for RIMBA Campus Challenge.
Forming a team is a big step in service-learning, they learn to be observant of others and start to identify many things about themselves; they are an inch away from their comfort zone, explore new ideas and apply themselves in the tasks that are set before them - we are equally invested in this, we spend time to evaluate and break down each challenge, coach them through the process and problem solve the challenge along with them. We facilitate the teams based on what we have on our plate and we navigate the scheduling of time and skills across the team. In turn, they are introduced to environmental sustainability, behaviour, cognitive bias and systems as well as an introduction to learner preferences that we need to navigate in order to connect people to our content.
Students from Sunway University volunteered with RIMBA in social media content creation.
We spend a fair amount of time introducing the values of Service Learning to help the volunteers identify with their experience; what they deliver and what they gain. We are flexible with the teams and have even gone on to collaborate with them on their assignments to provide interviews, give talks and write testimonials for them. Service Learning opportunities with us is a short form of industrial training, we hope this exposure will stay with them as they build their career and professional profile. We hope they will always look back at the challenge they had with us as an opportunity to adopt sustainable lifestyle behaviours, participate in civic society movements and continue to invest time in community/environmental-based projects. We appreciate their time and effort, we welcome your learning journey.