FROM A PILOT PROJECT TO A CREDIT BEARING SERVICE LEARNING SUBJECT IN INDONESIA

The Indonesia Service-Learning project was associated with the service-learning subject: “International Service-Learning: Land and Resource Management for Sustainable Development in Rural Area” which were collaborated between Department of Land Surveying & Geo-Informatics and Office of Service Learning with support from International Affair Office, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

This service-learning project was jointly organized by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Duta Wacana Christian University (DWCU) which was in conjunction with previous attempts between PolyU, DWCU and Australia National University in previous year pilot run, the second collaboration with DWCU in serving the remote area of Yogyakarta - Banjaroya Village enabled the sustainability from previous findings and suggestions. Banjaroya comprised 19 hamlets with a population about 2,500 households. 10 of them were selected as our serving target communities. Some of the hamlets were newly selected for this year’s attempt. Students were distributed in different areas in the hilly area from upper stream to lower stream for the completeness of the consideration of rural environment. 19 PolyU students and 39 DWCU students were divided into 10 teams and stayed with local families for nearly one month. Students were expected not only to provide meaningful community services, but also they were guided to learn about the local cultural, wisdom and the local difficulties toward development. Students presented their development proposals with University students’ insight and their global vision to the government officials and hamlet leaders at the celebration stage in this service project trip.

This paper will discuss the changing of this program from a pilot international Universities attempt to a credit bearing curriculum. The details of this paper would compose with the teacher’s report on learning outcomes in this international collaboration project and students’ reflection.