Service-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN)
Business Meeting
Friday, 1 July, 2022
International Symposiumfor the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia:
A Regional Dialogue on Networking
Saturday, 2 July, 2022

国際基督教大学
International Christian University

サービス・ラーニング・センター
Service-Learning CenteriService-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN)
Business Meeting
Friday, 1 July, 2022

International Symposiumfor the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia:
A Regional Dialogue on Networking
Saturday, 2 July, 2022

国際基督教大学

サービス・ラーニング・センター

Service-Learning Center, International Christian University

Service-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN) Business Meeting
Friday, 1 July, 2022
International Symposium for the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia: A Regional Dialogue on Networking
Saturday, 2 July, 2022
Copyright©2023 Service-Learning Center, International Christian University.
All rights reserved.
Service-Learning Center, International Christian University
3-10-2, Osawa, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181-8585, Japan
Printed in Japan

Table of Content
Message from the President .................................................................................................................. 3
Editor's Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4

Service-Learning Asia Network Business Meeting 2022
1. Program............................................................................................................................................. 9
2. Participants...................................................................................................................................... 10
3. Transcript of the Business Meeting ................................................................................................. 13
Opening Remarks from Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU ............................................... 14
Welcome Address from Secretariat, CHRIST University ............................................................... 15
Confirm the Minutes of the Last Meeting .................................................................................... 17
Pre-recorded Presentations ............................................................................................................. 18
Breakout Sessions
Theme 1: Curriculum Development ............................................................................................... 20
Theme 2: Institutionalization .......................................................................................................... 30
Theme 3: Network Building ........................................................................................................... 37
Sharing of the Breakout Sessions ................................................................................................... 46
Sharing on the upcoming 9th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference, CHRIST University ................. 57
Closing Remarks from Director of Service-Learning Center, ICU ................................................ 59
4. Appendix ......................................................................................................................................... 60
List of Pre-recorded Presentation
Best PracticeInternational Symposium for the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia: A Regional Dialogue on Networking

1. Program........................................................................................................................................... 79
2. Speakers .......................................................................................................................................... 80
3. Transcript of the International Symposium ..................................................................................... 82
Opening Remarks by President, ICU.............................................................................................. 83
Presentation by Director of Service-Learning Center, ICU ............................................................ 84"Past, Present, and the Future of ICU’s SL: What We Learned from Networking with Partners in Asia"

Question and Answer Session ....................................................................................................... 103
Panel Interactive Discussion on the Future of SL in Asia: post/with Corona, .............................. 105
with Practitioners, changing Socio-Political Context, Ultimate Goals/Outcomes in the Region
Comments from Service-Learning Specialists in other regions .................................................... 116
Open Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 122
Closing Remarks by Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU .................................................. 133

Message from the President

The year 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the Service-Learning Asian Network (SLAN) andof ICU’s Service-Learning Center. On this memorable and auspicious occasion, it is my great pleasureand honor that International Christian University (ICU) hosted the international symposium dedicatedto reflection and discussion on the future of service-learning in Asia.
As we all know and as is confirmed in the SLAN business meeting and the international
symposium, service-learning is not a simple volunteer and supportive activity towards those who arein need, but rather an educational process involving the establishment of human relationships andcooperation based on the reality of the political, social and cultural situation. Through this experience,
students can gain a deeper mutual understanding and self-understanding. It is also important to reflect
on the meaning of "service" that would include the sense of work done for the benefit of human rights,
dignity, and happiness.
In order to pursue this purpose and its realization, the service-learning program has continued for
20 years in collaboration with partner organizations in the Asian region. I would like to express our
sincere appreciation to all the SLAN partners and those who actively participated in, and worked for,the international symposium.
I feel happy that, as a Liberal Arts College, ICU, with its Christian faith, has contributed to thedevelopment of service-learning, by valuing dialogue, diversity, and critical thinking; theseare directly related to the creation of a better world of communication and inclusion, with mutual
respect and understanding of others, that are essential to the practice of service-learning. I hope thatthe practice of service-learning, with its experience and achievement, will bring everlasting support tothe amelioration of the human condition and the respect of human rights, which may not stand if westop seeking peace and reconciliation. I believe that ICU, with its mission to cultivate peace-builders,will contribute to the development of service-learning further in collaboration with other partners inAsia and beyond in the years to come.

Shoichiro Iwakiri
President, International Christian University
December 1, 2022

-3-

Editor’s Introduction

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Service-Learning Asia Network (SLAN) and theService-Learning Center (SLC) of International Christian University (ICU), ICU hosted the annual
Business Meeting of SLAN and held an international symposium titled “The Future of ServiceLearning in Asia: Regional Dialogue on Networking” on July 2, 2022 at the Kiyoshi Togasaki
Memorial Dialogue House in a hybrid format. More than 100 people registered online, and persons
related to the university including the past directors and coordinators of SLC gathered at theInternational Conference Room. This booklet is the proceedings of both the SLAN Business Meetingand the international symposium.
Our long-lasting friends and colleagues who dedicated to the development of service-learning in
Asia and beyond participated in the symposium as panelists and commentators, including Associate
Professor Carol Ma (former SLAN Office, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, now Associate Professor,
Singapore University of Social Sciences), Professor Betty McCann (President of Silliman University,
Philippines), Professor Mercy Pushpalatha (former President of Lady Doak College, India), Dr. Tim
Stanton (former Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, USA), and Dr.
Florence McCarthy (former Associate Professor at Columbia University and Service-Learning
Advisor at International Christian University). Prof. Kano Yamamoto, a founder and the first Directorof SLC, was also present with Ms. Mutsuko Murakami and Ms. Atsuko Kuronuma who are great
contributors as service-learning coordinators to our program over the past two decades.
The SLAN Business Meeting discussed three main themes, namely, curriculum development,
institutionalization, and network building, all of which were raised as critical agendas of servicelearning in Asia in 2002. We reflected on the past twenty years, confirming achievement and progress,
and proposed further improvements and initiatives. The discussion in three thematic breakout sessions
is documented in this booklet.
Discussions in the international symposium mainly focused on how to develop service-learning
as a network in the future, what can be improved as a pedagogy, and the challenges of institutionalizing
service-learning. Future developments include (1) systematic sharing of service-learning experiencesin Asia, which have grown and diversified over the past 20 years; (2) joint development andimplementation of thematic service-learning programs in Asia; (3) exploring new forms of servicelearning in an era of rapid change due to the impact of the COVID-19 and climate change. With regard
to teaching methods, the panelists recommended three aspects as critical: (1) how to ask criticalquestions personally, academically, and socially in the service-learning process, (2) how to linkteaching methods to social impact and social structural issues, and (3) the ability to establish ways todevelop lifelong learners through the development of a continuous loop of reflection. In addition, it is-4-

important for institutionalization to be linked to the mission of the university, to have multiple types
and methods, and to have a general framework that organically links the three social roles of theuniversity: education, research, and social contribution.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all partners and friends who shared untiring efforts
to constantly improve our service-learning programs in Asia. I also appreciate all the past Directors of
SLC who have faced and overcome various challenges in the past to sustain the SLC and the missionof the University through the service-learning programs. We have extended our partnership in Latin
America and Africa over the past few years. We hope that our service-learning programs will connect
the commitment of people in various parts of the world to solidarity and world peace with hope andlove in the unprecedented VUCA age. I hope that the 20th anniversary of SLAN and SLC is the
beginning of the renewed commitment to educating the heart of students and to bettering our world
together.

Mikiko Nishimura
Director of Service-Learning Center,
International Christian University
December 1, 2022-5-

Service-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN)
Business MeetingService-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN) Business Meeting
Program
Date:

Friday, 1 July, 2022

Time:

1:00-5:00pm (JST)Mode:

Online (Webinar)

Venue:

International Conference Room, Kiyoshi Togasaki Memorial Dialogue House 2nd
floor, International Christian University (ICU), Japan

1:00-1:10

Opening Remarks
Robert Eskildsen, Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU
Welcome Address
Dr. Victor Paul, Director of Centre for Social Action, Christ University

1:10-1:15

Confirm the minutes of the last meeting

1:15-3:00

Service-Learning Reporting- Curriculum Development,- Institutionalization, and- Network Building

3:00-3:15

Break

3:15-3:55

Open Forum Discussion in Breakout Session
Theme 1: Curriculum Development
Theme 2: Institutionalization
Theme 3: Network Building

3:55-4:45

Report from thematic breakout rooms and open discussion

4:45-4:55

Sharing on the upcoming 9th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference
Christ University

4:55-5:00

Closing Remarks
Mikiko Nishimura, Director, Service-Learning Center, ICU-9-Participants
Amity Foundation
Ms. Hongyu She

Associate General Secretary

Ms. Cheng Chen (Olivia)

Director of Education & International Exchange Division

Ateneo de Manila University
Mr. Rizalino Rivera

Vice President for Mission Integration

Dr. Leland Joseph Dela Cruz

Associate Dean for Student Formation

Ms. Ophalle Alzona-Pornela

Director, Office for Social Concern and Involvement

Dr. Jaime Acevedo

Loyola Schools Faculty Social Involvement Coordinator

CHRIST University
Dr. Victor Paul

Director of Centre for Social Action

Dr. Valarmathi B.

Director of Centre for Service-Learning

Dr. J. Thomas

Executive member, Centre for Service Learning
Faculty, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

Dr. Kishore Selva Babu

Assistant Professor, English and Cultural Studies

Mr. Arjun B. S.

Assistant Professor, School of Business Management

Ms. Phinu Jose

Assistant Professor

Chung Yuan Christian University
Prof. Chun-Yao Lee

Professor of Chung Yuan Christian University
President of Taiwan Service Learning Association

Mr. Jung-Hua Teng

Associate Clerk

De La Salle University
Dr. Marlon Era

Chairperson, Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences

Mr. Niku VicenteService-Learning Coordinator

Ms. Marietta Guanzon

Service-Learning Coordinator

De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde
Mr. Jay Binueza

Principal, Senior High School

Forman Christian College University
Prof./Dr. Rukhsana Zia

Head CLT

Ms. Nadia Iftikhar

Assistant Professor

Fu Jen Catholic University
Dr. Miao-Ju Chwo

Director of Service-Learning Center / Assistant Professor,
Department of Nursing, Fu Jen Catholic University-10-

Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Dr. Stephen Chan

Consultant, Service-Learning and Leadership Office

Holistic Education Center, National Taiwan Normal University
Dr. Hsin-chang Tsai

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Dr. Yu-chi LeeRD

Lady Doak College, Madurai
Dr. Priscilla A. S.

Dean of Academic Affairs

Ms. Hannah Samuel

Assistant Professor Joint Coordinator, International Study
CentreMiriam College
Mr. Renato Dela Cruz

Service-Learning Coordinator

Ngee Ann Polytechnic
Dr. Joyce Tang

Director

Mr. Maode Hon

Assistant Director

Ms. Geraldine Leow

Assistant Director

Ms. Faith Ong

Lead Catalyst

Ms. Yasmeen Shariff

Lecturer

Petra Christian University
Mr. Toong Tjiek Liauw

Director of the Excellence in Learning and Teaching (ELTC)(Aditya Nugraha)
Silliman University
Mr. Novee Maestrecampo

Assistant to the Director

Dr. Teodora Cubelo

Coordinator, Master of Arts in Hospital Administration, Schoolof Public Affairs and Governance

Ms. Deborah Mae C. Salem

Faculty and Focal person for Service-Learning

Singapore University of Social Sciences
Ms. Cynthia Chang

Head (Office of Service-Learning & Community Engagement)

Dr. Carol Ma Hok Ka

Associate Professor, Head of Gerontology Program

Ms. Emmelyn Koh

Executive

Dr. Meen Sheng Yap

Director, Centre for Experiential Learning

Ms. Lay Yeo

Deputy Director, Centre for Experiential Learning

Taipei Medical University
Prof. Chia-Jung Lee

Director

Ms. Yi-Wen (Amelie) Chen

Assistant-11-Trinity University of Asia
Ms. Chin-Yi (Jean) Chen

Assistant

Mr. Divino Cantal Jr.

Service-Learning point person

Tzu Chi University
Dr. Li-Fen Jang

Associate Professor

Union Christian College
Dr. Marilou Agustin

VP for Academic Affairs

Dr. Cherrel Ignacio

Dean

Dr. Justin R. Nayagam

Director, Service learning / Assistant Professor, Botany

United Board
Rev. Dr. Maher Spurgeon

Director

University of Santo Tomas
Asst. Prof. Froilan Alipao

Director, Simbahayan Community Development Office

University of St. La Salle
Mr. Dexter Ian Tabujara

Senior Administrative Assistant for Christian Service-Learning
ProgramInternational Christian University
Prof. Robert Eskildsen

Vice President for Academic Affairs

Prof. Mikiko Nishimura

Director of Service-Learning Center

Ms. Hitomi Yokote

Coordinator and Lecturer, Service-Learning Center

Mr. Kenji Ishihara

Coordinator and Lecturer, Service-Learning Center

Note: These are the names of participants as confirmed by ICU Service-Learning Center.
It may not include all participants.

-12-

Transcript of the Business Meeting
Introduction

Nishimura: Hello, good afternoon everyone. Can you hear me?
Audience: Yes we can, yes.
Nishimura: Thank you very much. Welcome all of you to the SLAN business meeting today in which
we celebrate the 20th year anniversary of SLAN. It has been 20 years since we have started to work
together, so today we would like to take it as an opportunity to reflect back over the past 20 years andforesee the future endeavor of ours. My name is Mikiko Nishimura. I'm the Director of ServiceLearning Center at International Christian University.
Let me begin this session today.

-13-

Opening Remarks from Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU
Nishimura: And to start, let me invite two speakers for opening remarks. Firstly, our Vice President
for Academic Affairs, Professor Robert Eskildsen, please.
Eskildsen: Thank you Professor Nishimura. I hope you all can hear me. I can hear everybody just fine.
Good afternoon, my name is Robert Eskildsen. I am the Vice President for Academic Affairs ofInternational Christian University and I would like to offer all of you a warm welcome to the businessmeeting of the Service-Learning in Asian Network. As you all know and as Professor Nishimura justmentioned, SLAN was inaugurated 20 years ago after the Service-Learning in Asia Conference, which
ICU happened to host back then. Since then, the many partner organizations have been working
together to advance service-learning in Asia, and you've been doing very important work, so I would
like to thank you for that. This year marks both the 20th anniversary of the founding of SLAN and the20th anniversary of the founding of the Service-Learning Center at ICU. So this is really, an importantmoment both for the network but also for service-learning at ICU.
In order to commemorate these events, ICU is hosting the SLAN business meeting today andtomorrow there will be a special symposium to celebrate the two decades of partnerships we haveenjoyed. I think you can see a lot of people are using this virtual background, this is a special
background that has been prepared for the events this week in the celebration of this 20th anniversary
and I hope you enjoy it. I really enjoy the colorful nature of the background.
When I first heard of the plans for ICU to host this business meeting, it must have been about ayear ago, I hoped to have a chance to greet you all in person. Unfortunately, it is still not easy to travel
freely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and my greeting has to take place online via Zoom, but
despite the difficulties that COVID-19 has caused for so many people around the world, it's
encouraging to see your continuing commitment to service-learning despite this difficult situation.
Even during these difficult times, we need to continue our efforts to connect with people to share ideas
and to promote an understanding of the importance of service to society. The value of what you aredoing can be found in the understanding of service through your efforts. Many young people willdevelop a better understanding of how they connect to society, how they can direct their efforts to help
other people, and how the simple act of helping others can bring benefits not only to society as a whole,
but also to their own lives.
In closing, let me welcome you once again to the business meeting today and let me wish you thebest of luck in taking care of the business before you. Today in your meeting, let me also thank you
again for cooperating in promoting service-learning in Asia. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much, Professor Eskildsen.

-14-

Welcome Address from SLAN Secretariat, Dr. Victor Paul, CHRIST University
Nishimura: And now let me invite SLAN Secretariat, Doctor Victor Paul, Director of Social Action,
Christ University please.
Paul: Thank you Professor Mikiko Nishimura, the chair of today's business meeting, Professor Robert
Eskildsen, Vice President for Academic Affairs of International Christian University, Professor
Valarmathi, Director of Service-Learning Center at Christ University, Ms. Hitomi, Coordinator ofService-Learning Center at ICU, and all the members from all SLAN partner universities and colleges
and participants. Good morning and good afternoon greetings and warm welcome. From SLAN
Member Secretariat, the new secretariat at Christ University, Bangalore, India, I consider thisopportunity as honor and privilege to welcome you all to the Service-Learning Asian Network businessmeeting today. What is special about this 8th SLAN business meeting is that, as Professor Robertmentioned, this time we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of our SLAN and also the ServiceLearning Center at ICU. So to commemorate this occasion, as Professor mentioned, ICU is alsoorganizing a symposium tomorrow, July 2nd with the theme on service-learning in Asia and its value
and significance.
As all of us know, as we are practicing, service-learning provides our students with opportunities,
great opportunity to develop civic engagement skills by working with the community and teachers.
They enhance their group, organizational and interpersonal skills. They also gain important experience
working with diverse members in the community in their own institution neighborhood. So I am surethat this symposium will throw light on areas like service-learning integration in curriculum, andrelated aspects like credits and non-credit systems, interdisciplinary approaches, institutionalizationand challenges, and partnerships. At Christ University, we have been practicing, we have taken up
service-learning in the year 2012 then onwards we have been communicating with different
universities and colleges in India and also we are training several other institutions in India. In all theseoccasions, we used to hear from them how to integrate curriculum. So I'm happy that we have taken
up this topic and also the importance of partnership. I think we need to think about mainstreaming ofservice-learning in our universities and colleges and also identify sustainable measures for installation
wise, as well as our network wise, sustainable matches for continuing or strengthening our servicelearning system.
Now we have completed 20 years. And this is an opportunity for all of us, all the partner members
to think about how to strengthen our network and develop strategies for collaboration. We need tokeep in mind three Cs. The first C is connect. We need to connect frequently. We need to communicate.
We need to communicate frequently and we need to collaborate. So I'm sure this conference, this
symposium, and this business meeting today, we are going to listen from our colleagues, other partner
colleges and universities and that will also help us to reflect on the current status of our institution,-15-

and also identify the gaps in the areas of these three areas. Mainly curriculum in socialization andpartnership, network building and take appropriate action based on our discussions today andtomorrow's reflections.
Once again, let me welcome you all to a meaningful and valuable discussion today and thesymposium that will be held tomorrow. And I take this opportunity to thank everyone at ICU forplanning this International Symposium on Service-Learning in Asia, and its value and significance.
Very important topic. Let me also thank my colleagues, Dr. Valarmathi and the team from Christ
University for their leadership and planning for the 9th Asia Pacific Regional Service-Learning
Conference in Bangalore and I look forward to meeting you all in person next year, during our annual
conference and also SLAN business meeting. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Dr. Victor Paul.

-16-

Confirm the Minutes of the Last Meeting
Nishimura: Now let us begin the business meeting. If you can look at the program, I hope all of you
have received the program. If not, let me just confirm. So first, we would like to have confirmation of
the minutes of the last meeting. And following that, we will have some service-learning reporting ofeach institution which lasts for about almost 2 hours, but in between we have break time to entertain
you with some music and dancing, etc. And then after the presentation of all institutions, we will havean open forum in which we first will go into the breakout session of three groups. Theme one will
focus on curriculum development, theme two on institutionalization, and theme three network building.
So please remember that you'll be joining one of the thematic breakout sessions. It's up to you. You
can choose any group that you want to join. So, by listening to these presentations, please remember
to take notes on any feature that you would like to discuss during the breakout session. And after the
breakout session, we will have the open forum in which we share what we have discussed in breakout
sessions and then we would like to talk about the future and what we would like to pursue in the next
20 years to come focusing on these three themes together.
So, now let me move on to the second agenda, confirmation of the minutes of the last meeting.
Could you check the program page four to five. You see the minutes. Are there any questions,suggestions for amendment or correction? Please let me know. No question? It can be approved, I
think. Thank you very much. Let us move on to service-learning reporting. Presentation by each
institution will be made. Let us take a group photo before starting the reporting, because obviously a
few of you may have to leave early. Could you turn on your camera so that we can take a photograph
together? Thank you.

-17-

Pre-recorded Presentations
Nishimura: Let's have this pre-recorded video presentation. I hope you are not going to be bored, but
seriously, please take notes while listening to them on three teams. OK, we will proceed according to
the program in the alphabetical order, from Amity Foundation. There is no break throughout thepresentation of eight institutions. Only after 8 institutions’ presentation that we will have a break for
15 minutes. OK, so please go ahead, thank you.

See Appendix "List of Pre-recorded Presentation" for detailed information of the presentations.

Nishimura: Thank you very much for your attention to all the videos and thank you so much for yourorganization of making these videos in advance. We know that a few institutions unfortunately couldn't
make it because of other probably pressing issues at the institution. However, you are very welcome
to submit your video as well as one page summary of best practices to us so that we can put yourinformation in the archive record, which is going to be kept at Christ University, the secretariat in the
future. We also will include information sharing of the institutions that are not present in the prerecorded video messages to be included in the minutes of today's meeting. So sorry for not being able
to include everyone, but I hope you can bear with us and share information later.
Now before moving into the break, I would like to announce the three breakout room sessions.
We are going into three breakout rooms. I hope your zoom account can allow you to choose any
breakout room that you want to go to after the breakout session, but basically, we are going to make 3
breakout rooms, curriculum development, institutionalization, and partnership or network building.
And for each session we have prepared some questions for you to discuss, and we would like you tovolunteer to be a rapporteur in each breakout group. So, during the break please think about which
breakout room you would like to join. Thank you very much for your patience and the attention to allthese pre-recorded video presentations. Let's have a 15 minute-break. And during this 15 minute-break
we will have wonderful performance of students from Christ University. It's a cultural performance,
so please enjoy this performance and feel free to get coffee or tea. We will see you again at 3:15. Thankyou.
<Break>Nishimura: Hello welcome back everyone. I hope you are all here. So let us explain again the breakout
session, what we are going to do now. For about 40 minutes we are going to be divided into threegroups to discuss three issues. In the curriculum development, we discuss these questions. How should
service-learning be integrated in the curriculum? What is the role of service-learning center and faculty-18-

in the department? How do you measure the learning outcome of service-learning? What can we docollectively at Service-Learning Asian Network to improve curriculum development? In the breakout
room regarding institutionalization, we ask questions such as, what kind of efforts have been made to
mainstream service-learning in the universities? Who should be involved in decision making andleadership of service-learning? What can we do collectively as SLAN to make service-learning
institutionally sustainable and effective? Then the third theme is partnership or network building. We
ask questions, how have you built network in partnership with community partners for servicelearning? What are the benefits of international networking in service-learning such as SLAN to yourinstitution? What can we do collectively as SLAN to make networking in Asia more effective? Having
said that, I hope you have made up your mind and now, the breakout room is open.
Yokote: I think it is open. If you scroll to the bottom of the participants, there are three rounds, andyou can pick and then you can transfer yourself to the breakout room.

-19-

Breakout Sessions
Theme 1: Curriculum Development
Participants:

Dr. Carol Ma Hok Ka, Dr. Cherrel Ignacio, Mr. Dexter Ian Tabujara, Ms. Hongyu
She, Dr. Jaime Acevedo, Rev. Dr. Maher Spurgeon, Mr. Maode Hon, Mr. Niku
Vicente, Mr. Novee Maestrecampo, Ms. Phinu Jose, Dr. Priscilla A. S., Mr. Rizalino
Rivera, Mr. Toong Tjiek Liauw, and Ms. Yasmeen Shariff

Facilitator:

Mikiko Nishimura

Nishimura: OK hello everyone. Can you hear me? Hi, this is the curriculum development session.
Have you got the questions? So, for about 40 minutes, let's discuss this curricular issue. How should
service-learning be integrated in the curriculum? What is the role of the Service-Learning Center andfaculty in the department? How do you measure learning outcome of service-learning program? I haverecognized that there are many kinds of programs in Asia at your institutions, credit bearing, noncredit bearing, mono-disciplinary or interdisciplinary. So, could you share your experiences and someideas for suggestions in terms of improving the curriculum development? Before doing that, we needto ask you to volunteer to become a rapporteur. Is there anybody who would be willing to report what
we are going to discuss in this breakout session to the main room after 40 minutes? Any volunteer? Itshould not be me. Just report what we have discussed in this room.
Ma: Can I nominate? Maode from Ngee Ann Poly.
Maode: Ok I will do the coalition and the reporting.
Nishimura: Thank you so much. For the sake of announcement, we are going to record thisconversation so that we are going to put everything in the archive. But before making it publicized,
we would check on you who have spoken up for each review and see whether this is exactly what you
meant. So don't worry so much about recording. OK. Any idea? About curriculum. By listening to all
the video-prerecorded presentations, what came to your mind?
Priscilla: Shall I start? I am Priscilla from Lady Doak College. From all the experiences from Lady
Doak, I strongly believe that it should be credit-bearing and it should be academic also. Any servicelearning program, we may have lots of other extension programs, community engagement programs,
we may have. But service-learning according to my own experiences at Lady Doak and looking into
the experiences of other institutions among India, I surely believe that it should be pure academic
service-learning program, and it should also bear credits. And that is because and I also wish to saythat in India, slowly service-learning is taking up momentum and a lot of institutions are nowpracticing service-learning. And as an initial thing, they have taken it up as a non-credit bearing. But
surely, I think that is mainly because of the initiatives taken up by the United Board for Christian-20-

Higher Education in Asia. They organized a consultation for involving Lady Doak and Christ
University, and we had oriented many of the colleges among India and many of them have taken it up
and they are in the process of designing their own curriculum for service-learning. I think, in the near
future, many of the colleges in India are going to implement it in their own campuses. So, successstories from Christ and Lady Doak have been shared with many of them, and Lady Doak is working
as a master trainer to many of the colleges, and in Lady Doak we have experimented with various
models. And we institutionalized service-learning in 2003 and from all those experiences I can say it
should be credit-bearing and academic discipline-oriented, looking at how the students get benefitedout of it. And it should also be a mandatory initiative in all academic institutions.
Nishimura: May I see what kind of impact you have seen through these credit-bearing and academic
courses as opposed to non-credit bearing or non-academic courses? What is the most effective impact?
Priscilla: The impacts are many. Actually, the first and foremost is the student impact. They get
transformed so much after going through these service-learning experiences in various forms and they
bear the torch for service-learning. It becomes a lifelong learning for them. And in various ways they
get benefited, and the institution also gets benefited because we are in touch with the nearby
communities. We do something to the nearby communities to uplift their own living conditions andtheir own life conditions, so institutions also gain. And not only that, the faculty who are in charge ofthese service-learning courses, they also get transformed because of the learning experiences that theygain while they handle these service-learning programs along with the students. They learn so muchand their research also widens and has a lot of benefits. It's a multi beneficial thing.
Nishimura: All right, thank you very much Priscilla. Anybody else please feel free to share your view.
Yes, go ahead, Niku.
Vincente: I agree with Dr. Priscilla. In that case we always stick to the definition that service-learningis credit-bearing and academic in nature. That is the distinguishing factor of service-learning, and allother social engagements we always emphasize in our orientations. And another emphasis, especiallyin the Philippines, we have this course now, and it's called the National Service Training Program. It'sa course specifically for first year students, where all schools in higher education prepare students for
civic education and also defense preparedness programs. So, we have to distinguish NSTP as wellfrom service-learning. And another factor that distinguishes service-learning from NSTP, because wereally have to distinguish service-learning, service-learning should be disciplined-based and coursebased. It simply means that, you really have to develop a mastery of a certain course or certain
discipline while you do your service. That's why we always stick to our model that we learn to serveand serve to learn, and that learning should really depend on the mastery of the course that you are
undertaking and that's why we always stick to the term that it is course-based. If the service that they

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will do is not course-based, then it's just a community engagement. For us, it's not really servicelearning. That's why you always think, for example, for the college of engineering. Of course, they do
audit assessments of buildings, and these are industrial engineering students and civil engineering
students. Because this is their mastery. If it's not their mastery, we only label it as community
engagement. That's really one big factor in the curriculum on how we build it.
That's why right now we are developing a transition. Most of our faculty before consideredservice-learning in the general education subjects, but right now they are developing service-learning
activities and programs mostly in their major courses. Because that is where the mastery of a certain
subject begins, really for the student. So, it simply means that most of our service-learning activities
are for graduating students, third year students. And we also have right now service-learning for seniorhigh school students. In the Philippines, we have tracks in service-learning. The business track and the
STEM track science and technology track and, I forgot the other one, that there are three blocks andwe also have the ADB, arts. So what? What we do should not be course-based because most of thesenior high school subjects are not yet a mastery. But there's a track, so it should be discipline-based.
Their service should be discipline-based, at least. So, what we did there is service-learning trading
capstone. They have to, their kind of service should be related to their track at least. So, because really,
the goal of the university, even if they go to other universities such as USLS for example here, orAteneo, at least once in De La Salle they have experienced service-learning and they are ready even
if they do service-learning in Ateneo or in any other university or any other prime schools. So, I thinkthat's on my part.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much. You emphasize the transformation of the higher education
system as a whole to streamline service-learning in major curriculum. Thank you so much. Jamie?
Acevedo: Hello and a blessed afternoon to everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to listen and toshare with everyone. This afternoon I would just like to affirm how we at the Ateneo de Manila
University sort of align with the previous people who shared that service-learning and its
understanding really involves a credit-bearing academic course, and it was mentioned also in ourpresentation how we are very happy to have institutionalized this service-learning program where wehave a new curricular framework. This is of course, I'm speaking here of the tertiary unit of the Ateneo
where we work with college students. We have a program in which all students are expected to engage
in service-learning activities. And this is part of the process of social transformation of students whoare in their first year. They are introduced to communities, and they come back in second year for
more sort of sustained engagement with certain communities and then in the third-year program, where
we have the National Service Training Program that was mentioned earlier, they are now expected todeliver certain service-learning outputs now for the community. And this is done as part of arequirement of a core curriculum course. It's a social science course entitled society, economy, and-22-

sustainable development, and we have also endeavored to make it interdisciplinary and to tap theparticular competencies of students. So, this social science core curriculum courses are taken by
students together with a major course, depending on their degree. So, for example, health science
students have a health course now and the type of service-learning engagement that they do depends
on the kind of skill that they can provide in terms of helping the communities. So, the health science
students will, for example, work with local governments to work on their health systems. Local healthsystems at the barangay level. We have management students who will now endeavor to set up social
enterprises with partner communities. We have humanity students who will engage a local youth
theater group, and for example this was just last semester where they helped them to transition toonline theater production. So, this is sort of where we are, moving here at Ateneo de Manila University.
Nishimura: Yeah, great, it's very impressive to make it service-learning as part of the core curriculum
for all students. Thank you so much. Now, She Hongyu, please.
Hongyu: It's a great privilege to be able to participate in the SLAN network meeting. We are a bit
different, probably in comparison with other participants who are mostly from academia, we are a
Non-Governmental Organization as introduced earlier. We work as a receiver of students who aremainly from ICU, but we are also thinking of sending students internationally for service-learning in
the future. And I'm very, very much interested in the curriculum development aspect of the whole
program. My suggestion: could we have written information, written brochure of all members of theSLAN network? It's very informative to have the introduction earlier today, but if we could have some
information on hand, we would know the possibilities on the ground. I'm very much interested in thestatement the participants introduced that according to different majors, they planned different
activities. That would give us a better idea of what kind of students that we may recruit, or we may
invite to join such a program. So, my suggestion is that if we could be more closely linked with the
network, it will be very helpful for future program development. And meanwhile we would also liketo contribute. We are now running several institutions for social services such as institutions to provide
services for the elderly, a bakery with young adults with mental challenges. These are very interesting
programs for international students. So far, we have had several groups of ICU students, and in the
future, we also welcome students from other parts of Asia. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you so much for your wonderful suggestion to exchange our information on
curriculum development, and possibly also learning outcome rubric to share, so you know what weare really aiming at the result of learning. If there is overlap across the region, we may probably beable to develop the course together, or Amity can send Chinese students to the programs to make it
more international. Or our faculty can and discuss academic issues in China as well. Thank you somuch. Ok, Mary Jose, please go ahead.

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Jose: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. My two pence on what my experiences are, I know there
are a lot of experts on the panel here, Priscilla mademoiselle, Carol Ma, Spurgeon sir, all of you havecome with the great loads of experience, but at Christ I think it was evolving more organically because
we didn't have it as a credit-bearing course. We had it as a non-credit bearing course initially. Then we
made it a credit-bearing course. Today if you look at S-L at Christ, it's all credit-bearing courses. So,
one or two things to add to what Priscilla Ma'am was saying is that, as leadership, institutions havetaken up service-learning, that's a good positive sign, plus the government also insists on community
engagement and service-learning through the new education policy, that's a big thrust area that thepolicy focuses on. So, when there is a policy that drives us all together, I think it makes it easier, andbeing a little more experienced in this area, we are able to help other institutions as well. Not that weare the best in town, but at least we are able to help others. So, when I talk about credit- and non-credit
bearing, my experience is that the dilemma between the head and the heart. Some students don't wantcredit. Some students want credit. So, most institutions, at least Christian institutions, we have clubs
and associations that are focused on prayer, spirituality, and outreach. So those will take care of these
non-credit bearing interactions and engagements. But we should focus on service-learning as a credit
bearing course if we look at it as curriculum integration. So, there's no two thoughts about that at
Christ that we say the service-learning is set-up so that we could integrate academic rigor into theprograms that we take.
The second thing is about how we are able to make an impact, not just in the immediate ecosystem,
but also careers that students are building and helping these departments to network on their own with
community partners, and that builds a lot of branding for our institution. As a higher education
institution that has accepted a lot of elite students, I think it is our responsibility to expose them tocommunity engagement in service-learning, because they might not get an opportunity otherwise toengage in social action. And that's why we make it mandatory that it should be credit-bearing. So,
credit-bearing and it should be academically driven. Plus, that question about interdisciplinary. Today,
inclusivity and sustainability are not any passing fads or fashionable words. It is not an option anymore.
It is inevitable. We all have to do it whether we are management students or whether we are humanitiesstudents. All of us have to integrate these things, so I think interdisciplinary is the only way to go
forward. I might be good in social entrepreneurship, but I also want to enact a mine industry to tell
women there how social entrepreneurship can be empowering. So, I might need humanities’ help when
I want to get there in the field and do this. So that's about the first question from Christ's viewpoint.
Nishimura: That's great. And this interdisciplinary approach to service-learning could be very
challenging to institutions where faculty is very much compartmentalized, sometimes. Not so much at
the liberal arts colleges, but the other comprehensive research-based universities. I wonder whether
you have some ideas. Great, thank you. So, from the United Board, Spurgeon, please.

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Spurgeon: Thank you. So, in continuation with Priscilla and her sharing, I just want to mention thechallenges which we face in the Indian context. In India, service-learning as a course, if you look into
the institutions, it's only Lady Doak and Christ University that have strong service-learning programs,
and Don Bosco University seems to be doing something similar to service-learning. But the challenge
we face here is developing the curriculum or curriculum development. The faculty needs to be trained.
One of the things we have in India is a national service scheme with 50 years of history and ispurely an outreach program. A kind of community service. They may go to the villages and distribute
food packets; still, our faculty thinks that distributing food packets can become service-learning. So
that's the kind of mindset they have. So as United Board, we have taken concrete steps to train thefaculty in India, and Lady Doak and Christ University are helping. Along with them, I want to mention
and acknowledge the contribution of Ngee Ann Polytechnic to the training of Indian faculty. I havemet both of them virtually. We are also planning to develop an online course for the faculty on servicelearning, say how to develop curriculum content and how to integrate service-learning into thecurriculum; they are working on it. But I just want to acknowledge on this platform that Ngee Ann
Polytechnic is joining with the United Board in training Indian faculty to develop curricula in theirown institutions. Thank you.
Nishimura: Wow, great, thank you so much. UB has been so helpful for institutionalization, but now
you suggest even a trans-institutional attempt of faculty training within India and across the region,
that's great. Thank you so much. Now may I invite Aditya from Petra Christian University?
Nugraha: Hi everyone, good to get to know you. Let me introduce myself first. My name is Aditya
Nugraha, I'm from Petra Christian University. I'm very new to this service-learning thing. This is myfirst event of service-learning that I am attending. So, in the past, the service-learning at Petra Christian
University was managed by the Institute for Research and Community Outreach. But then it wastransferred to my unit. So, it's a new unit. We are called the Excellence in Learning and Teaching
Center. We were established in 2019 with the help of United Board actually, under the whole person
education initiative by the United Board. So last year we got this new responsibility to manage theservice-learning. So, in a way service-learning has been transferred from being purely a community
outreach project into something else, which relates to the method of learning. Because in my unit, weare dealing with the method of learning. We are not dealing with community updates. OK, so that's
kind of something that is new for me that I'm learning. And today's meeting is very helpful for me toalso refine my understanding of service-learning.
And the second thing is about the curriculum. In our university, we have that mono-disciplinary
and interdisciplinary, but still confined in the academic department or faculty level. So, meaning,
basically it has to be credit bearing, because it started from the existing courses from the academic
department or the faculty level. But then we also have the general education department, whose-25-

students come from various academic departments and faculties. In this case, usually the topic of thecourse is a bit general like civic education. But then, the lecturer kind of reworked the assignment forthe students so that they can go out to society, and then do their part to help the society to improve thesociety based on their subject, specific expertise based on the department or faculty. So those are someof our experiences.
And then the third thing that I wanted to share is about the new opportunity for us in Indonesia.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Research just launched about one and a half years ago, a thingthat we call emancipated learning, which entitled every student to have at least one semester or 20
credits to learn outside of their own academic departments, and then also, if the students still want it,
they can have two semesters or 40 credits outside of the university. And then the government has
initiated nine different tracks for these emancipated learning. And three of those nine tracks are closely
related to service-learning, which is community engagement. Let me see my notes. And then theteaching assistants in local schools, like in small villages, so that students can spend one semester toreally practice their teaching skill. This is usually very relevant to the faculty of teacher education inthis case. So, this is a very good opportunity because in this emancipated learning, the government
also created kind of a digital marketplace, so it's kind of a website for the government where students
can apply and then the government also helped the university to look for partner institutions. The
partner institutions also apply to this website so that they created some kind of a digital marketplace
to connect, supply and demand. We can say that. So that's a big challenge, I mean, big opportunities.
So the community engagement is still not a big thing now, the one that is gaining momentum now is
for the internship and then foreign student exchange. They are very big now, with so many participantsfrom all over Indonesia. The community engagement part, I'm sure it will catch up in the following
years. I just wanted to share all those developments. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you so much. Is this emancipated learning only applicable domestically? Or can wehave this...
Nugraha: Yes, only available for Indonesian students, but then I think there are some tracks that could
also involve faculties from foreign institutions. But for the students, only for individual students. But
I don't know. I don't know the future possibilities. If there are possibilities to include, I will surely
notify you. Because this is a wonderful opportunity. It's a very big thing now in Indonesia nationally,
because so many institutions are now competing with one another to send as many students as possible.
But as I mentioned, currently because this is very new, like less than two years. The big thing now is
the track for an internship and foreign student exchange. But for the community engagement teachingassistance, it's still trailing behind, but I'm sure in a few more years they will catch up.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much for sharing the wonderful news. OK, so She Hongyu, are you
raising your hands again for the second time?
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Hongyu: I think all the ideas are very enlightening to me. One idea: Right now, we are taking students
in the form of the organization of a particular university, but in the future, it may be based on the needsof society or based on the needs of the institutions they are going to work for. If we can put forward
the needs of certain institutions, and there may be requirements or possibilities of accepting students
from different majors or different countries, would it be possible to have such a model of cooperation?
So that students from different countries may come together in the same institution, and there might
be opportunities for local students to join as well. This probably would be an enlarged service-learning
circle. My very brief idea.
Nishimura: Thank you very much for your very interesting and wonderful idea. Maybe we can create
some thematic service-learning whereby some domestic or inter-regional theme to tackle, and we kindof call for participation of students from different countries and we facilitate the interdisciplinary
course for that. That should be very exciting. Thank you so much. OK, Carol?
Ma: Thank you. I just want to echo what Hongyu just mentioned about the project. COP from Petra
Christian University, actually doing this model also, but because of the pandemic, they stopped for awhile. And then so other universities, I think they also do. But I think if we can do more is also good.
We can also think of what Mikiko mentioned about the thematic one. But talking about the curriculum
development, first I want to congratulate all the university representatives here, because I see a lot ofdevelopment in the past few years regarding the curriculum development. But I always want tochallenge ourselves, to ask ourselves. Because a lot of academics, the reason why you are all here isbecause you believe in service-learning, or maybe because you are the director of service-learning,
but how can we attract more faculty members to come on board, right? So, because a lot of faculty
members, they think that they have to sacrifice their academic knowledge, then they do servicelearning. But actually, it's not, because we mentioned about this academic service-learning. But how
can we persuade them? We have to start to ask ourselves about how. And that will go back to thecurriculum design.
One of the very important elements is about the learning objective of the course. And then what
are the learning objectives? What are the learning outcomes? And based on that, how actually what
we want to see them in the assignment and also the matrix. So it's actually step-by-step development.
And I understand that different universities may have different requirements of the curriculum design,
but we understand that when we do curriculum design, there are a lot of generic elements. So, this partI think we can learn from each other, by sharing the curriculum. Maybe we can actually take thisnetwork as a platform. And so for example, different universities just showcase what curriculum
design that you are using, and then from local to regional, then of course local and even different
departments may have different curriculum structure. That's what I find out. And then so within theuniversity, faculty members can discuss it, maybe with the support of the Director of Service-Learning.

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And then after that we go to a higher level, the regional. And this regional, then we can actually goback to what Hongyu you mentioned about. To join together to do service-learning. But one thing
about this curriculum development also, is if we see as a credit-bearing, right? Because some otheruniversities may not see it as a credit bearing. So how can we ensure every student goes through thesame learning? Because there could be students because they needed more as a credit bearing course
they care more about the way. And some other students, because they come on, but it's only pass orfail, or even they don't need to count for the grade, so it's actually some dynamics in between.
So when we talk about regional partnership in this curriculum collaboration, I think we have toreally understand each university's criteria so we can ensure the quality of learning only for theteaching part. I think definitely a lot of you also mentioned about the training to the faculty members.
And I think we should create a role model of faculty members as the master trainer but not only one,but can be two or three or even five, and then they can actually go and train within your university.
For those who are interested in doing curriculum design like what United Board mentioned about,
Singapore Ngee Ann Poly actually will help to do the curriculum training to the faculty members. And
can we also share about the models of what Ngee Ann Poly is going to do. We can learn from eachother. And I know Silliman University, they have some certificates on curriculum design. Also, Hong
Kong Polytechnic. They also have this curriculum design. Can we have one day, maybe to get people
on board, and then to talk about it? I think that will be more fruitful for the network, so this is actually
my humble idea.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much. Now we are running out of time. So shocked to see how fast.
Dexter, you haven't spoken up, so could you?
Tabujara: Good afternoon once again. In terms of curriculum development, we also need to dosomething, or improve. But let me also share what we are doing in terms of curriculum review. What
we do first, by ensuring that the four principles of engagement in service-learning are integrated, or
it’s present in the syllabus of service-learning course. So, if those principles are present, we try toconsider them as advanced, or faculty who are the service-learning champions. So, if they are the SL
champions, they can share with us in our PLC, or professional learning community, and so, they share,
they mentor other faculty from different colleges to help them on how to improve their syllabus in
their particular discipline or course. So in that community as well, we have some questions about how
to integrate the four principles. Then that's going to be the opportunity. They share experiences andthen they share feedback as well. And then part also of developing our four-curriculum development,is we have SL champions or mentors per college. So those new faculty who are engaged in SL, or newones, there will be champions in charge of the particular area. So there will be a process so that if they
have something to learn or they can, we can help them. Then another one is in terms of the level-up
process. In terms of engagement in S-L, for us here in St. La Salle, our entry point is the NSTP. So-28-

there is an introduction to service-learning. So after that they familiarize the principles, the processesof community engagements. Then in the third year, 4th year years it…
(Time was up and we were bounced back to the main room.)-29-

Breakout Sessions
Theme 2: Institutionalization
Participants:

Ms. Emmelyn Koh, Asst. Prof. Froilan Alipao, Dr. J. Thomas, Dr. Joyce Tang, Dr.
Leland Joseph Dela Cruz, Ms. Marietta Guanzon, Dr. Marilou Agustin, and Dr.
Valarmathi B.

Facilitator:

Hitomi Yokote

Yokote: Hi everyone. This is Institutionalization session. We would like to cover three discussion
points which were shared in advance earlier.
1. What kind of efforts have been made to mainstream S-L in the universities?
2. Who should be involved in decision-making and leadership in S-L?
3. What can we do collectively as SLAN to make S-L institutionally sustainable and effective?
Let us start with the first discussion point "What kind of efforts have been made to mainstream S-L in
the universities?" Mei, would like to start sharing about your university?
Guanzon: In De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines, the process that we undertook in
institutionalizing S-L was by soliciting the leader’s active role. We engaged the institutional leaders insupporting the S-L’s alignment with the vision, mission, and goals of the university. We incorporate
S-L into the structures and formal organizational setup of the university. And, more importantly, we
get our leaders’ commitment towards S-L institutionalization through the incorporation of S-L in plans,
programs, and policies. We identify and engage S-L champions who are allies in S-L such as faculty
members and administrators. They helped us popularize and implement S-L. We form our students,
faculty, and community partners through training and orientation. We treat our key stakeholders as coowners of S-L as they have a big role in the success of S-L. Without them, we can never implement
service-learning. So that's all. Thank you.
Yokote: Thank you very much for the very thorough analysis. How about other universities? Anybody
like to share or comment about how efforts are being made to mainstream service-learning?
Dela Cruz: I can go ahead. I am Leland from Ateneo de Manila, also from the Philippines. When wewere forced to revise our curriculum because the government had a new mandatory curriculum, we
took the opportunity to review our entire program of studies. And in the process, we were able toinclude a course that was service-learning, and it's required for all of our undergraduates. So, it's reallymainstream. All undergraduates of all disciplines have to do service-learning. It's kind of also withwhat we have in the Philippines, the National Service Training Program. But aside from the mandatory
NSTP we created a course alongside it, which would provide academic content, or service-learning.
So, we were fortunate but not exercise of revising our entire program of studies allowed us to-30-

mainstream a service-learning parts for all undergraduate students. Thank you.
Yokote: Thank you very much. How about other universities? We have many Filipino universities
represented here. De La Salle and Ateneo, we have Saint Thomas as well. Oh, Sharon, you raised yourhand.
Valamathi: So, with regard to the efforts taken by CHRIST University in India. To institutionalize, thefirst effort that we made is to establish a Centre for Service-Learning to cater to the need of S-L andmonitoring the service-learning activities. So, this year beginning January, we set up the Centre forService-Learning that is supported by the management, to cater to the interest of various departments.
The moment we initiated this, we also received notification from the Government that in the future
there would be a two-credited course which would focus on community engagement, and servicelearning activities. So, after we set up the center, we identified faculties from different departments.
We also have different campuses in Karnataka itself. So, we had first formed a team of executive
members, to understand how CHRIST University would go about institutionalizing the servicelearning course and also accommodate international partner’s requirements. So, a lot of brainstorming
happened and finally, management is convinced now all undergraduate programs would have amandate for two-credit courses. The course will be taken up either in the 2nd or the 3rd semester, as amandatory graduation requirement. The intention behind having S-L in the second year is toaccommodate students who wish to continue service-learning activities in the final year at their choicewith the Centre for Service-Learning. The Centre has executive members who have received training
and who will impart training to other departments. The executive members came together andidentified faculty members from all the departments, irrespective of whether they had an existing
service-learning course or wanted to introduce a service-learning course to standardize the SL course
structure and implementation. The departments are flexible to frame their service-learning curriculum.
They're flexible to give credits or have their own assessments. But they'll have to introduce a course
which is integrated into the existing course or introduce a new S-L course.
And one of the main challenges that we are finding is to develop a university manual. So far in
the Indian universities we have not found a manual or a framework for service-learning, when we
think about institutionalization, the first step was to display in our website a temporary manual whichgive them basic framework to design and implement service-learning. We have put a temporary
manual which focuses on what is the requirement for departments to implement service-learning, so I
think one of the main challenges when I see about institutionalization is understanding the bigger
picture, future of how service-learning would benefit all the stakeholders, including faculty members,
the students and the community where we go and engage our S-L activity. So, we have kept these threefoci i.e., faculty members also get some kind of incentive through service-learning. They're motivated,otherwise the challenge is very few faculties would be interested in handling service-learning courses.

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Then students, how do we inspire our students to take up a mandatory course on service? And themoment we say mandate, the students’ interest may drop. So, our challenge is to kind of reinforce thatinterest. When you interact with the community, you're going to have a life-changing experience. And
the community will also have transformation due to their intervention. We still are in the process of
finalizing and elaborating a handbook in service-learning.
Yokote: Thank you Sharon. Mr. Frolian had raised his hand. So, would you like to share?
Alipao: Yes, good afternoon. Nice speaking to you again, Madame Hitomi, from the last time we werein Singapore. So, for the first question. What kind of efforts have been made to mainstream S-L in theuniversity? I would like to use the report that I submitted. This is within the scope of this academic
year 2021-2022, because I believe that the serious effort of institutionalization of service-learning in
our university is just happening in this pandemic now. With the effort of the Simbayan Community
Development Office, this is the office in terms of the whole community engagement program of theuniversity, meaning it's not only the service-learning but the whole engagements of different
stakeholders when it comes to community development and advocacy. So, the office, we initiated theidea of institutionalization. The office set up a meeting with our Vice Rector for academic affairs,
regarding the plan to top the different academic resources for community engagement. Because mostof the community engagement before the pandemic is more on the engagement of different student
organizations, so it's not academic, but voluntary. But this means that service-learning, the idea andthe proposal were accepted by the academic affairs. So, during one of our meetings the Simbayan
Community Development Office also presented the concept and proposal to the Deans. So, the Deans
have good acceptance and are committed to adapting the service-learning in their respective academic
units. Because of this, we conducted several orientations and workshops at the academic and university
level as part of the institutionalization. To mention some of these service-learning orientations withcurriculum development and the respective academic unit, we have the faculty advocacy letters within
the compose of humanities and social sciences, the college of tourism in hospitality management, wehave also the university-wide training of faculty members when it comes to curriculum development,
so your integration of the service-learning in connection to sustainable development goals and thecommitment for global compact on education. So, but also part of the ongoing institutionalization, theoffice, wherein I, and together with other researchers, we are now conducting baseline research on thepractice of service-learning or related to service-learning. Because we believe that despite of nothaving an institutional support of service-learning, there are sporadic approaches of different forces ordisciplines, so after the research which is undergoing now, but in the initial findings, we can see thatthe health sciences they have their own way of doing community related courses like community
health nursing, community medicine. So now based on the orientations that are given now withdifferent academic units, it's easy to align the service-learning in their curriculum, so we're not starting-32-

from zero. Instead, we're gaining or creeping the efforts from the past. It's already a long practice ofdifferent academic units. So maybe I can say in my initial findings in the research, there is a type of
institutionalization is realigning the pancreas efforts.
But there are also courses, academic programs, which should really keep emphasis on servicelearning because they're just seeing engagement as extracurricular. So that's why we really have toreview and reorient. So, institutionalization in our research, we see the effort now for curriculum andteaching, and even the partnership with the community. The advocacy of the office is really to see toit the sustainability of working with community. So, it's not only the service-learning that could sustain
the engagement with communities, but there should be support programs for the communities. That's
the overall engagement of the university for our partner communities and institutions. I have also to
say the credit to the De La Salle University for the effort to reach out to us, for training and in linewith university effort, so training and it's a global effort to really work for all Catholic universities tointegrate service-learning. That's very supportive to our effort under the Simbayan. I can say that
service-learning if we want to really establish service-learning, help really to be advocate, because it's
not popular, it's not easy also to engage with communities for most of the faculty members, and evenadministrators to engage with communities, or extra effort to make the program more deliverable andmaintain their academic competitiveness. That's why there is also a concept of, if we're going to enter
into a community engagement, our academic excellence effort will be also affected, so we have toreally explain the impact of community engagement and service-learning to our administrators. Thankyou.
Yokote: Thank you very much. So we should move on to the next question. Who should be involved
in decision making and leadership in service-learning? I think some of you have already mentioned,
so those who haven't spoken yet? Maybe Marilou, would you like to share your thoughts on this one?
Agustin: Yes, good afternoon everyone and I am from Union Christian College, Philippines. So, in ourcollege, of course the decision is coming from the President or the administrator of the university or
the college. It's because from the plan and including on the thrust and the reaction of the school, it's ofcourse the President who will approve and endorse and cascade the plans and programs up to the lower
level. And that's the reason why after approving that it's been part of the thrust and the action of Union
Christian College, it is cascaded to the academic and non-academic division. That's the reason why
service-learning is part of the syllabus or that is an academic instruction. So, all academic units andeven all college students, and even the junior and senior high school students in our college are part in
the implementation and in the program of service-learning.
Aside from that, our organization, our student organizations are also practicing or going into thecommunity and having their mandate and part of their mandate is to practice the service-learning.
Because in our vision, it is stated there to realize the whole person education. That's the reason it's

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been part of our whole curriculum and our whole life in college. So even non-teaching personnel arealso involved because there are different activities, and we have different programs where the focus ison service-learning. Especially in the college of nursing, where in the RLE, or the related learning
experiences, is really very close to the service-learning program. The same is true with accountancy,
even education programs and even senior high schools have been doing this program. So that is really
how we start, institutionalize service-learning in our college. Thank you so much, and nice meeting
everyone.
Yokote: Thank you very much, Miss Marilou. Would anyone like to add to that, for who should be
involved in decision making? I think everyone has ideas as already expressed. So maybe we should
move on to the final one, which is a big question. We have about 10-11 minutes to discuss this andthen we need to report back to the entire group. So the final question would be, what can we docollectively as SLAN to make service-learning institutionally sustainable and effective. It's a bigquestion. Do you have any thoughts on this Miss Joyce?
Tang: Yes, I was taking down notes. I think from what I am hearing currently, that may be a good startis that there is sharing of resources, there is cross training, that seems to be going on. And that will
include learning of best practices. So, I think that's a good start from anything to do with the network
I guess. If there could be more collaboration across in different ways, would be helpful. So, I also
understand there have been some joint research that has been taking place or may not be about
institutionalization or service-learning, but it could be about other initiatives, and I don't know whether
the question is really just how do we look at institutionalization, or actually the impact of the network
on service-learning as a whole? Because I think if I may summarize a little what has been shared justnow on institutionalization, actually, in a way, it's very personal to the institution. Depending on theinstitution's vision and who the stakeholders are, the pace of institutionalization the country mandates
even, as I'm hearing from the Philippines. A lot of it has to be dealt with internally and maybe at thecountry level, so that support is more pertinent, right? Because I hear from our friends from thePhilippines about, was it Philippines or was it from India? About the mandatory, I think India, sorry,the mandatory government, a government mandated syllabus. So, it's something that maybe as thecountry you understand what is needed and the support from the SLAN network for those initiatives
might be helpful. So just some thoughts. I don't know whether they are relevant.
Yokote: Thank you, yes indeed. I was just wondering about funding as well. If we have some collective
fund as a SLAN, which we can use, that would be nice. I mean we don't have any sort of common
pockets, so we just have to depend on each individual universities’ finances. Some secured United
Board’s funding for further development, so United Board could be really a catalyst or secure thefinance for some of the projects. Is it sustainable? I don't know.

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Tang: Is that happening already? Or is that a new suggestion?
Yokote: Oh, it's happening already. The United Board already provides finances like I think Christ
University had, so Sharon, if you could go ahead.
Valamathi: I think the United Board grant fund was given to many institutions, including CHRIST.
There was a call for proposals, and we submitted them, and they gave us 10,000 USD for the
institutionalization of service-learning. And I think there are multiple times United Board has comeforward, I know, asking institutions interested to give proposals, and they would support them. Coming
to the point, I was thinking, SLAN, how do we take advantage of our network? So, I was thinking of
the existing members if you could put across your expertise in your website or in a common forum
where SLAN has all the information. We are looking for some institutions that would collaborate inmaking service-learning policies for an institution to carry out. And I know you have two decades ofexperience implementing and institutionalizing service-learning. You would have changed, upgraded
and learned a lot through your experience. But if an institution claims to have some expertise in making
service-learning policies, how to design the policies and make an institutional framework, we cancollaborate. In case any cost is involved, we can look at how we can mitigate that cost for the training
university. And then utilize that expertise. So suppose if CHRIST University feels that it has richresources for accommodating people coming and staying and doing a tour or doing a study visiting
our project areas or visiting our community. Then we would put in our website saying that, yes, we
are willing to accommodate the SLAN partners to come and stay with us. In fact, we currently have
five MOUs with international universities, but they are not SLAN partners. Apart from SLAN
members, we have exclusively 5 institutions from USA and other parts such as Netherlands, Singapore,and so on, who come just for the service-learning experience. We want another institution to offer ashort-term course on service-learning related to sustainability, which is the main key here. The
institutions would widen up the area such as the area of community engagement or the area of student
engagement or faculty involvement etc., so that each of them can come with their expertise and thenwe can share. We can connect more on one-to-one and share our experiences.
Yokote: Thank you, thank you very much. Mr. Leland?
Dela Cruz: Hello. I think there's a lot of knowledge here, just from the videos earlier, but it was kindof hard to process the videos. I think it might help the network if we have some sort of knowledge
management strategy. For example, just classify all the universities, in terms of different stages ofservice-learning, who has been imported in the curriculum, who has its voluntary activity, which might
be a possible research proposal for the United Board. But really, for our own use so that when it's clear
to us, for example, Sharon’s concern is about institutionalization policies. Then it might help her if
she knows which universities have already institutionalized so that she can already approach that-35-

university and asks how did you go about this particular practice. And so, one would be a research tosort of create some way of helping us to have a handle on where each university is. Then maybe
another will be some sort of platform. I don't know what ideal platform there is available where we
can raise questions and then people from the network can answer. So, for example, Sharon, you had aquestion about how to set-up institutionalization policy, then those who have had experiences can justanswer the question on that particular platform. So, in other words, welcome line is knowledge
management. I think we have very rich experience as in the network, but the information is notprocessed or it's not available in virtually, but it's easy for us to handle the information. Thank you.
Yokote: Thank you very much for your input.
Tang: If I may add to what this brother just said. I remember SUSS, kindly set-up a clearinghouse
under SLAN. I don't know whether that would be what you're referring to, but that could be more
publicized and perhaps more utilized by the members. That was just a thought that came to my mind.
Yokote: Thank you, I think we have SUSS member here. Emmelyn, are you here? Is the clearinghouse
active?
Koh: Yes, we do have a digital clearinghouse, as a National Service Clearinghouse for service-learning
research and policies. But I'm not too sure if it's understood, sorry, I joined the institution not too longago. So, I can share in the chat, this is our link to the digital clearinghouse.
Tang: OK, thank you.
Yokote: Thank you very much. Mei, you raised your hand. Did you want to comment?
Guanzon: Right, well, my thoughts on sustaining SLAN, one I think is to increase our global
competitiveness and global connectedness. So, as you know we have this global program called
Uniservitate and De La Salle University is the designated regional hub for Asia and Oceania. We could
share the resources with fellow SLAN members. And it's just that for now, it’s the focus is on Catholic
Higher Education Institutions, but we are planning to expand the reach of the Uniservitate Program in
the region so that we could reach other non-Catholic universities. We could also tap other institutional
networks, such as Uniservitate for global partnerships on service-learning. Thank you.
Yokote: I think it's already time I want to continue but we need to get back to the entire group. Thankyou so much for your time and maybe we should finish here. Miss Joyce, would it be OK for you toreport? I leave it up to you.
Tang: I try.
Yokote: Thank you so much. Let's go back to the session. Thank you very much everybody for joining.

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Breakout Sessions
Theme 3: Network Building
Participants:

Mr. Arjun B. S., Ms. Cheng Chen (Olivia), Chinwei, Mr. Divino Cantal Jr., Ms. Faith
Ong, Ms. Hannah Samuel, Dr. Kishore Selva Babu, Ms. Ophalle Alzona-Pornela, and
Dr. Stephen Chan

Facilitator:

Kenji Ishihara

Ishihara: OK, thank you. So, let's discuss these three questions. So from local perspective, international
perspective and also perspective as a SLAN member. So, I think you all have a lot of experiences so
it would be great to hear from you. And this is a small group like about 10 people. So, let's have an
active discussion. In terms of the first question. How have you built a network and partnership with
community partners for service-learning? Do you have any ideas or any experiences to share? Ms.
Hannah please.
Samuel: So good afternoon. Good evening, good morning, everybody. I am from Lady Doak College,
India. At Lady Doak, we have included service-learning into a credit-bearing system and something
as a mandatory program which all students in the undergraduate program have to undertake. They
have to do that as a project and submit it in the form of a thesis, and they'll have a viva where they will
defend. In the viva they will defend their findings and then they will be awarded their degree. So, thisis something that is mandatory for them to earn their undergraduate program. So, for this, our partners,
our community partners, we have, actually we have structured our service-learning program in such a
way that, though the departments function individually, we have a center for lifelong care engagement,
who do things for us.
Now if you want to have a community partner, now we have our center for lifelong careengagement who are willing to draft, you negotiate with them and then form an understanding so that
we can go. The students can go and work in the local area. So, we usually target NGOs, Nongovernmental Organizations like Dan Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, Road Truck Club, who are
already doing a lot of service among people. We are able to connect with them and choose what isrelevant to our students’ learning and act accordingly. Now say, for example, Chemistry students are
doing something on water pollution. And how things can be rectified. So for that they work with aparticular organization, the NGO who specializes in water. Now for that we have an NGO called Ark.
They help us to serve the community better, to transfer our students’ learning into some component
over there, so that they can have a target group, they can have a village where they go, they conduct
experiments, and then they test the level of the pollution of water over there and then they suggest
remedial measures so that things are done, and a lot of sessions are also conducted for the society overthere. So, this is one way of doing through NGOs. And the other one is addressing specific community-37-

like dancers, traditional dancers who are actually on the decline. You know we have a lot of traditional
dances in Tamil Nadu in particular, and other things like doll-making industry, making dolls with clay
and all that. So those are things you know. Those handicraft artisans are slowly on the decline. So,talking to those people bringing out the best in there like documenting those things is something that
the English department does. So for this we don't have an MOU or something as such. But we havesocial workers who work very closely with them, so getting in touch with them and using them as
resource person contacting them, inviting them as resource persons gives us a connection with themso that we are able to reach out to the community effectively and it becomes a sustainable thing. It
becomes an ongoing process. The connection stays, so that is how we do at Lady Doak. Thank you.
Ishihara: OK, thank you very much. It's very interesting, and you see each department functions as agateway for community partners. And also you have two kinds of partners like NGOs and local groups,
and one has an MOU and the other doesn't necessarily have MOU. And these are non-profit, right?
Thank you. Is there any other? Dr. Vino from TUA?
Cantal: Hi good afternoon to everyone and I apologize if my background is a little noisy. But I would
like to share with you the experiences of our university. My name is Dino. I am a faculty of Media andCommunication of Trinity University of Asia and the Philippines. And in the university, we have theinstruction, the research and extension. And since it is already in place, the extension part, we have anoffice which takes care of the community partners. So, this office is mandated by the commission onhigher education that we should have an extension office for the university. And so what we do inservice-learning is, we are partnering with the communities that are in partnership with the extension
office, so the extension office has programs in partner communities which most of them are aroundthe university and based on the programs that they have planned, the students who are coming fromdifferent programs in the university are participating and trying to be able to give service based on the
major in college that they are taking. So, for example, if they are business majors, they are being
assigned to partner communities that are doing entrepreneurship or any other programs related to that.
So, there are already built partner communities because there is a community extension office of theuniversity, and the service-learning office is just trying to ride on the already established program byconnecting it to the program of the college to that course of the college student that he or she is taking.
Now in terms of building a network with other communities, the university and the community
extension office is also trying to explore other avenues, not just partner communities but institutions
as well. Like for example, the non-government institutions where students can do service. To that now
the difference is that the community extension office is purely voluntary. There is no grade given to
the student if they are doing service in the community extension. But in service-learning, it is arequired activity as part of the course. So that is how we do it in my university. We anchor ourselvesto the already established community extension office, which does voluntary work and then, we try to-38-

connect the programs being taken by the students to the existing projects of the community extension
in the university. Thank you.
Ishihara: Thank you Sir. It's very interesting that the Office of Community Extension manages
partnership and service-learning joins that partnership, already established by the office. So thank you.
Is there any other? OK, so from the fastest, Dr. Ophalle?
Alzona-Pornela: OK, but I think Dr. Stephen was raising his hand a while ago.
Ishihara: Dr. Stephen do you have a question or…?
Chan: I'm Dr. Stephen. No, I just want to share a little bit about our experience and what we hope to
do in terms of international collaboration. I'll wait for my turn.
Ishihara: Sure, thank you. Dr. Ophalle, go ahead please.
Alzona-Pornela: OK, thank you. My name is Ophalle from the Ateneo de Manila University,
Philippines. Just to add a few points. I think we have a lot of similarities from what Hannah and you
know, so. I'm with the Office for Social Concern and Involvement and we handle the partnerships, we
handle that we service the link between the university and the students, the faculty and the partner
communities and institutions. I think we're able to, on our end, build our network of partners throughour long-term partners wherein we, during the time where we were still not doing service-learning. So,
if you are able to catch it a while ago in our video, we've been around since 1975. But the video did
show only from the early 2000s. In early 2000, we haven't really had much service-learning initiatives
in our university. But we've had community outreach, community service. Where for instance we go
to different partner communities and institutions and do particular service. That's not necessarily tied
up to a course, so it's not credit-bearing. Aside from the NGOs and the people's organizations, I think
one of the things that we've been, that's a bit unique, if I may call that, would be our partnership withpublic schools wherein we not only engage with the students with a young public school students, butalso with faculty with young teachers or teachers are like who would need some help in terms of say,their modules or some skills needed.
Another thing that we've been getting into would be, partnerships with our government
institutions. So, from the national government agencies to local government units, because we believethat through these partnerships it would have become more impactful. It would have long-term effects
and long-term partnerships, and, in the end, we could go and leave, and you know, just allow them tocontinue the projects that our students have been doing. That's all, thank you.
Ishihara: And thank you. Yeah, the period of partnership is, I think, a very interesting topic as well.
Whether we should have some short-term partnership or long-term partnership. So, thank you for your-39-

insights. So, we are still discussing local partnership. Are there any more insights about it? Or if not,we can move on to international, but you are free to jump in. OK so Dr. Stephen.
Chan: Yes, so I'm from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I actually know some of the people atthis gathering. Just a little bit of background of our university. We at the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University service-learning is a compulsory subject for all our students. So, each year we have about
4,200 students taking service-learning. We have about 60 different service-learning courses to offer
each year, so the students can choose one of those courses. Well, when it comes to partnership, we,now most of our students actually serve in Hong Kong. Most of the projects in Hong Kong, about let'ssay 75%. Another 25% is away from Hong Kong. Among those 25%, about maybe I would say, I can't
remember the exact percentage, but maybe about 50% goes to mainland China. That's about 600-700
students each year who go to mainland China. And about 400 go to foreign countries, before thepandemic. Of course, the pandemic changes now, scrambles the numbers a lot. That's the situation. I
was the head of the office of service-learning in which our mission is to help our professors to set-up
partnerships, local, mainland China, and overseas, so that students can find their projects overseas.
That's why that's my main interest here. And I want to focus on international because the local ones
are relatively easy for us to depend on, because we know the people and the local NGO. So, it's notdifficult for us to find partners for local projects. It is an international project which requires work.
Because you know we are based in Hong Kong, and we want to send hundreds of different students.
We aim to send about 1,000 students away from Hong Kong to foreign countries in about 5 years’
time. That's our objective. So, we have a big job to do to find all this international partnership. So far,
our international partnerships are mainly in Southeast Asia. We have good connections with Cambodia.
Relatively good connections with Vietnam. We have good partnerships with Myanmar before thetroubles over there. We are beginning to build good partnership with the Philippines, and we havesome companionship with Indonesia, and we are beginning to build some partnership with India, andwe have a strong partnership in East Africa in Rwanda.
Now most of these partnerships are built through very often personal connections. Some of theprofessors may know, may have some friends, fellow professors in other countries and they may knowsome NGOs themselves. We also find some good connections through the United Board. They havebeen very helpful from the very beginning. You know, introducing us to people in different countries
because they have such a good network, so that is how we have developed things. Now we want theway that we operate is that we often take students as a team and send them to a project. Say, in aforeign country. So, in the foreign country we often work with the local universities and, but more
often we work with the agents directly.
What our experience has been is that when we will, the local university, now some of the local
university, they have a strong local network but not always. But often you find that local university,
which is good at academics but not necessarily good at connecting us with the local community. So-40-sometimes we find with more effective for us to directly work with the NGO rather than work throughthe university. But ideally, we would like to work with the university because we would like to havean academic exchange with the local universities so that our students can work with their students andserve the community together. I mean, we also want to make this neutral. We want to send our students
to universities in foreign countries. We also want them to send their students to us so that the exchange
is mutual, that's ultimately what we aim to do. And we do this not just within Southeast Asia. We
actually do this with more developed countries as well. We have a strong partnership with numbered
universities in the United States, and we try to make it reciprocal. We send our students to the UnitedStates to work with their NGOs and then we wanted them to send students back to Hong Kong. And
we also said we want them to send students to get with us, to go to a yet a foreign country. We havedone that like, for example, Cambodia, and Rwanda, so we want to expand that because we want tobring people together. We have also tried to take students to one Southeast Asian country to get with
our students to go to another Southeast Asian country, so that people can really now have a link with
their neighbors so they kind of serve each other as well. So that's the kind of direction that we aregoing.
At the same time, we also feel that we want to link up more with the international community
doing research in service, and one of the things that we believe very strongly is that we cannot justteach service-learning. We need to do research ourselves so that our teaching is based on solid
scholarship, based on solid experience, based on the results of strong research. That's how we build
reputation. If we can continue to just do work and work and work, people do not respect us. They
would simply say OK, you are doing what other people are telling you to do. You are just following
other people’s model. You are not contributing to the scholarship. The Americans will never respect
us until one day we can publish our own research in respectable conferences, in respectable journals.
And so that's one of our aims. We are very active in the international conferences, we publish ourpapers over there, we published in their journals, with publishing journals of higher education to build
our own strength, but at the same time to build down up our credibility, in terms of service-learning.
And so that's part of the reason why I'm here today. I'm trying to get to know the members of thisnetwork better. We have not been very active in this network before, partly because of the time. Your
conference tends to take place in summer. For example, like this is July, but usually June, July, August
are the busiest time. I used to like most of the time, I'm now in Hong Kong now because of thepandemic, but otherwise I would be either in Cambodia or Vietnam, or this year we are trying to restart
our program, so in about 2 weeks-time I'm going to take a team to go to Rwanda. So, conferences in
July are a big problem for us, so that's another technical issues to consider if we want to bring people
together. We might need to consider when is a good time for people to meet. OK, sorry I don't want totake up too much of the time, but that's what I wanted to make my intentions clear to everyone.

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Ishihara: Thank you very much. Yes, international partners, it can be both with NGOs and with
universities, and also reciprocity in international service-learning is also challenging and as you said,
research is quite a huge agenda for service-learning and probably international service-learning canelaborate an opportunity for joint research. That would be very interesting. So, thank you. Are there
anymore opinions, insights about international partnership?
Olivia: Greetings from Nanjing, China. I’m Olivia from Amity Foundation based in Nanjing. Different
from some other universities or colleges of SLAN members, Amity Foundation is an independent
Chinese social organization founded in 1985. It works to promote education, international exchange,
public health & welfare and other related development work in China and overseas countries. Our
partnership with International Christian University’s Service-Learning Center started in 2006. In thepast 16 years, Amity has received many students from ICU and they have been engaged in local
voluntary services, such as volunteering at Home for the Elderly, Amity Bakery, Communities in
Kunshan City, socializing with students from Chinese universities, etc. Based on the strong
connections that Amity Foundation partnered with the overseas countries, such as USA, Japan,
Philippines, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Laos etc., we have developed different programs according to the
local needs and always taken human beings as the first priority. From our programs, participants ingroups are able to choose program activities upon their interests and preference. By attending the
programs, participants from different cultural backgrounds work together and learn mutually to gain
deeper understanding towards each other and enhance the sense of teamwork. And during the activities,
innovative approaches are being introduced and adopted as well.
In 2020, due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, which made it difficult to promote
the on-site exchange programs. Therefore, we transferred the program into the online one, and was
finally implemented successfully. We collected questionnaires from the participants and fully
understood what they would like to learn from this online program. Much research concerned withworldwide issues was shared and discussed. However, there have been challenges confronted, forinstance, the academic orientation cannot be well-integrated into the program, we suggest having
professionals or experts in service-learning to monitor the program and design the evaluation in a more
systematic and academic way. As an NGO, our advantages are mainly in the service parts as we arerooted in the city and rural communities. We need to find a way to combine the academic knowledge
with more practical experience that we conducted with social service centers and communities. Thisis mainly our experience with service-learning program and I hope the information can be helpful for
us to promote the program in a better way. Thank you.
Ishihara: Thank you. ICU and Amity Foundation have a long-term partnership and especially thisworked last year because we had an online program, and this was quite good to overcome the COVID-42-

issue. So, thank you. And yes, academic integration is a challenge. So thank you for raising it. OK, so
we have less than 10 minutes, but, do you have any… Ms. Hannah, please?
Samuel: Yes. This is with regard to our international collaborations, and I just thought that the United
Board and SLAN have been very helpful in networking with other institutions. The United Board, they
don't just stop helping us with networking with other institutions, but also help us, encourage us, byproviding research grants so that we can conduct workshops and then we can grow. And now recently
we have received a grant with regard to the whole person education. We have received a grant of$10,000 and we are hoping to conduct a series of workshops. Also, we are planning to explore
possibilities where we can engage in internet secondary courses. So, it helps us to grow from one stage
to the other, and that is something unique that we have benefited from the United Board Associationand collaboration. And the same is the case with SLAN, like when we meet people, friends like you,
we are able to identify common grounds that we stand. Especially I like the way that Dr. Stephen waspresenting and saying that their institution is interested in sending students in international servicelearning programs and also receiving students from abroad. So, we would very much like to send ourstudents to and we would really welcome your students to our campus, too. At present, we havestudents from International Christian University. We have had students from Singapore University ofSocial Sciences and from Taiwan region, and so it goes on. So, it would be really nice if more students
can come for our international service-learning program, too.
But I didn't say that one challenge that we face. This is the period of vacation that we have. It's
not common. Like for us it will be one period of occasion, we usually connect the service-learning
program in July and in December or in January, but that is not a vacation time for many countries. So
that is, I think, one of the challenges that we need to work on, common timing so that we have more
students coming and they're benefiting from intercultural service-learning experiences. Thank you.
Ishihara: Thank you. Yes, there's an issue of timing or schedule when it comes to international
programs. It will be more complex but still we hope this SLAN could be a platform to exchange ourstudents frequently. So, this concerns the third question. Dr. Faith, do you have any? You are preparing
for reporting, but we would like to hear from you as well.
Ong: Yes, I am taking down some notes. Maybe you can just go first, then I can do a summary.
Ishihara: Sure, that's also good. OK, so we have 4 more minutes, so we are almost wrapping up. But
when it comes to the last question, do you have any insights?
Ong: I think we can answer the last question like, how can we, what can we do collectively as SLAN
to make networking in Asia more effective? Are there any ideas? How can we make this networking
session in Asia more effective?

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Samuel: I just feel that we can communicate more frequently. I think sometimes our communication
starts with this SLAN meeting and maybe a couple of meetings after that. It would be really nice ifinterested people can have frequent communication, express what we need, and explore if we can havea connection out there. Then I think that perseverance we need. I know everybody is busy and shortof time, but if that can be done and if one link can be obtained, that will definitely ignite a spark andthat can build a collaboration. So frequent mails maybe. And response to mails. I think that will help
us build better bridges. Thank you.
Ishihara: Thank you. The frequency is yes, actually this morning we had a chat with Carol Ma, and we
discussed that probably conference once a year is not enough. Probably we need a couple of times so
the kind of frequency can be elaborated by the SLAN network. It's almost time, so Dr. Faith can you
rap up?
Ong: Yes, I actually have some screen to share, I took down some notes.
Ishihara: Sorry I don't have the right to permit your screen share.
Ong: I think in the whole session they can enable? It's OK later we can get the host to give me therights to share. Actually, I'm just curious to ask for the last question. How do we collectively as SLAN
do networking? I summarized that we can communicate more often, like what Hannah shared. One of
the things that I thought that Dr. Stephen brought out, which is research in Asia, is really lacking. Likeeven when I'm doing my own research or when we are doing the right thing, it's actually very difficult
to find Asian. So, I'm just wondering if there are even opportunities from such collaboration. We need
Asian network. And I don't understand the ICU and even Carol, they are trying to publish something,and I thought that it is actually very interesting if we could come together and perhaps publish a journal
or a book chapter that is within Asia. So, Dr. Stephen, you can lead this. And then Hannah, I like theidea of frequent emails or even like, I don't know whether in your university you do community ofpractices, which in Singapore we have a Singapore service-learning network where we meet once
every three months just to come and share what we are doing in the Singapore scene so that we don't
duplicate the work and then like what Dr. Stephen is trying to do, so that we can consolidate ideas or
research. We know Singapore, so I'm not sure if we could suggest that later. Yeah, what do you think?
Samuel: Yeah, that's a nice idea. It would be nice if we can check on each other to encourage and sothat it doesn't become repetitive. That's my idea. Thank you.
Ong: So, have joint research opportunities.
Ishihara: Every two years, SLAN has an academic conference and last year Silliman University hosted,
and next year Christ University will host.

-44-Ong: So, we are saying that maybe we can have more frequent conferences instead of once every two
years. They all have conferences in the universities, so you can invite the SLAN network to also bepart of that. That will also be what Dr. Stephen is trying to say, boost up the Asian research in servicelearning.
Ishihara: Great, thank you. So, it's time, so thank you very much for the active discussion. It was quite
exciting, and I hope we had more time. But it's time, so let's go back to the main session. Thank you
everyone.

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Sharing of the Breakout Sessions<Main Room, all back from breakout session>
Nishimura: OK, welcome back everyone. I'm sorry that we were in the middle of discussion, and wewere kind of bounced back to the main room and I'm sure that you haven't exhausted your whole idea.
But let us first share what we have discussed in each breakout session. I hope that each session has
decided rapporteur, or to speak to all of us, as in what you have discussed. OK, so let me first invite
the curriculum development group.
Hon: Hi everyone. Hi, so this is Maode from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. In my group we had a lot of
discussions and there's a common understanding about all the universities, all the different institutions
that in terms of service-learning, service-learning needs to be credit-bearing and needs to be tied tothe academic programs in the different concepts in the different disciplines. So, there is this very strong
understanding there. It's interesting to see how service-learning has developed in different ways in
different institutions. For example, we have Christ University, where actually they started off as being
non-credit-bearing, and organically developed and now, service-learning is taken as a credit-bearing
module for all students for all the different modules. Our colleagues at Petra Christian University as
well, previously it was more treated as a form of community outreach, community engagement, but
our colleague here, service-learning is now under his church, at the institution's Center for Teachingand Learning. So, it is no longer just a method of outreach of engagement with the community, but
now becomes a pedagogy. So that is something that came across all the different institutions in thediscussion. This is something we very much agree on and to highlight.
And maybe I'll touch on some other area of discussion. How do we engage more faculty
members? How do we engage with more faculty members to want to take up service-learning, andwant to use service-learning in their curriculum. So, in terms of the benefits for students and staff, I
think it's highlighted that we all see the impact on students. But personally, I think it will be good if
we can collectively collect some form of data, so that we can share this data, this common set of data
across the different institutions in the region as well, so it forms a bigger set of statistics that issomething more powerful in convincing other faculty members. In terms of faculty benefits, it has
been brought up that it broadens the research areas. It allows for more research to be taken place. But
one big issue that we have touched on is how do we train, how do we equip the faculty to be more to
be able to take on this design integration of service-learning in their curriculum. Different universities
have different approaches, and we see how Lady Doak in India, they are the master in terms of training
other institutions in India, in taking up service-learning as well. And we see that in the other institutionsin the Philippines. In the Philippines and Indonesia as well. So, it is some knowledge, I think Carol
brought up a very important point, in terms of curriculum design, that we need to align. It is importantthat we need to align the learning objectives of the course to the assignments to the assessments and-46-

then to the activities for lessons. And she brought up an interesting idea that, if it would be possible
for the different institution members to share lessons, plans, lesson designs, curriculum designs acrossthe different institutions, so that we can have more examples that we can share our different faculty
members. I think before our colleagues from the University of De La Salle was, a bit interrupted, but
he mentioned champions in the different faculty departments where they were mentors of other faculty
members, who want to try to use service-learning. So, this is the broad gist of some of the key
discussion points in curriculum development. If any other colleagues would like to add on, please.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much Mao for your great report. So now let us invite
institutionalization breakout group. Reporter, please report.
Tang: Hello, this is Joyce, I'm also from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Also appointed to be the reporter. I'mvery happy to do so. We have three questions. The first question is what kind of efforts have been
made to mainstream service-learning in the universities? OK, maybe I just give a little background of
the group comprises of participants from India, Philippines, Singapore and moderated by Yokote fromJapan. So, basically the feedback was from these three countries and actually we all agreed that thevideo that was being shared earlier was all about institutionalization. So, I think I'll just do a very quicksummary. One is that there should be a vision that is not just about vision of service-learning, but abigger vision of the institution, and service-learning is a part of it. So that it really is owned not justby the team that is working on service-learning, but top down and hence in terms of leadership. You
need both top down and bottom up, and you need all stakeholders to be able to be involved, of course
at different levels, especially at the start. So top down could even mean government mandated.
Because we hear from India that recently the government mandated that the schools need to haveservice-learning, or they don't call it service-learning, but community engagement in the curriculum.
So that is top down. That is the highest level so of course at individual institution levels, if the head of
the institution believes and mandates, the chance of it moving, at least in that sphere of his leadershipis high. And then of course it's not just that person and it goes down all the way to the different
leadership of the institution.
So, the other one is bottom up and I agree with what others were talking about, how do you
inspire faculty? So, the inspiration of faculty, even for us, has been a journey, because even if it ismandated that everyone needs to conduct or apply the pedagogy of service-learning, not everyone may
be interested. Not everyone may be equipped. Not everyone may be passionate. And we took this very
seriously. We actually tried to inspire the staff to one to even see the value of service-learning, and thatis where the training, I think one of my colleagues would call it, using service-learning to train servicelearning. And so when the faculty is being trained, they go through the whole experience of engaging
with the community, understanding the descendants that is being caused, and they themselves go
through what a student go through, and then from there we usually have quite a lot of converts, and-47-

some of them we are quite surprised, because when they first turn up, we were thinking or no thisperson may really not be interested, but at the end that person may be the most interested. So thatinspires us as well. So, the buy-in is really quite important. Then of course for students, there is acorrelation. There is no research to this, but there is a correlation to the staff who are very interested
in being able to inspire students more. But there are also those who just apply the pedagogy, and yet
the students are able to catch it and want to do more. So, I'm saying two things. One is staff areimportant, but the pedagogy itself is already powerful in itself. Then of course the other effort would
be the community partners. I think it's also been a journey maybe for us, when we first start off, westart off with whoever is able to take our students. Anybody can, because we had that mandate to haveevery student have that experience. But I think as we journey on, we realized that getting thecommunity partner to be a co-educator with us was really very valuable. And on the reciprocity thatcame from that was something of both sides, yes, reciprocity, that we both gain and the relationshipwith the community partners with some of them actually as developed and they became partners notjust for the module that we had, they became partners with us for many different experiences as well.
So, I think that kind of summarizes the first question. The second question. There is a bit, there's quiteof overlap it. It says who should be involved in decision making, right?
Nishimura: Sorry Joyce, we have a few minutes, so could you wrap up?
Tang: I'm sorry. Then I don't talk about the second question. I talk about that question because thesecond question overlaps. OK, third question, we also just have very little time so I don't have so muchto share. It is about what can we do collectively as SLAN as institutionally sustainable and effective.
OK, so we realize that there are already some initiatives that are already sharing our resources in termsof training, in terms of research, and collaborations. And also, the other very important factor isfunding, and we want to acknowledge the United Board who has really been funding a lot of initiatives.
But I hear that there is still a lot of need for funding. Then the third one is about sharing of resources,
and so that is where I think just want to acknowledge USS, because I remember USS has thisclearinghouse. So, when we were talking or when members were talking about this, I was saying that
actually there is a platform, but maybe it has not yet been fully utilized that it can be something that
we can use for sharing of resources. I won't talk anymore. Thank you very much.
Nishimura: Thank you Joyce for your comprehensive report. A lot of good points, thank you. So now
let us invite the partnership networking building group.
Ong: OK, I'm also from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, it must be a coincidence. OK, so I'm just requesting,I have slides, so is it possible to enable me to share it?
OK. So, I just put down some notes for easy reference so that we can focus. OK. The first question
is about how have we built network and partnership with community partners? So, giving credit to the-48-

people who are sharing at our session, Lady Doak shared about in their university there is a Center forCommunity Engagement, they are the ones that will recommend partners to the different credit-bearing
modules. The focus is usually on the NGOs in India, their areas and local groups. And the kind ofengagement in the form of MOU or they will directly work with the social worker states in theorganization. And this is actually sharing the same sentiment from Trinity University of Asia. They
share the same sentiment that they also have an extension office that has, that will recommend
programs for the universities. And the office itself will blend different kinds of programs that will
engage the student in different community engagement kinds of activity. Ateneo de Manila University
also shared that they have like an Office of Social Concern and Involvement, a kind of an office thatwill help the service-learning office to get their, build their own network of partners, and this office
actually started way before, even before service-learning started in their university. So this issomething quite different from Ngee Ann Polytechnic where I come from. We don't rely on anotheroffice that is looking at partnership or networking. We will be the one to try in the office, or look forpartners and try to link up partners. So, this is something that is quite interesting.
So, in terms of how do we go about building network, Dr. Stevens from Hong Kong Poly sharedsomething that is very interesting with us. He looks a lot now for overseas partnership. And if you see
my notes there, actually most of the overseas partnerships are built through connection. And giving
credit here to the United Board Foundation. So actually, this is something that is new to some of us
that we can tap on the United Board network for overseas partnership. And something that is going to
be linked to the third question, is that Dr. Steven mentioned that they would hope to link up with more
external organization, to build up service-learning research in the Asian Network. So, he is saying that
it is important for Asian universities, who are doing service-learning to come together to build
reputation for service-learning in Asia, to research, so that our work is evidence-based. And that leads
to a summary of the last point about how we can do collectively as SLAN to make networking in Asia
more effective. So, Dr. Hanna actually said that we should try to communicate more and not just meetonce a year, and then we have to start all over again. It'll be good then if we can share more frequently.
And then we shared that, how about having an online community of practice every three months justto share the work we do. Even if we don't have time to meet up, maybe we can e-mail each other on
the work so that it will not just be once a year. Then we have to update our work all over again. And
share invites of conferences, or practices sharing session, so that we are informed of what each
university is doing. And lastly, having joint research opportunities with our SLAN network, so as todraw back to the point that it is important to build the service-learning world in Asia. So that's asummary from the point. I hope I didn't miss any point out. My teammates maybe can add but I don't
know whether we have the time. OK, maybe will pass back to Mikiko.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much I was amazed how skillful you are in terms of note taking andsummarizing in such a short period of time. Thank you so much for your great work. So now let's open-49-the floor. Here we would like to discuss futuristic ideas. You know, in the past, a long time ago when
we held the first SLAN meeting in 2002, we met at the coordinators meeting. We also jointly organized
the Committee for Planning and Evaluation three times, but ever since we left that momentum, we
haven't had a real substantial discussion. We had annual meetings, but we haven't had, so let's discuss
the future. Next 20 years, what? What are we going to do? What can we do as SLAN collectively to
improve our curriculum, to make service-learning institutionally sustainable and effective? And makenetworking in Asia more effective overall. So, let's share some ideas and hopefully we can just compile
a list of suggestions for the future endeavor. Any ideas? Some points may have already been raised in
the breakout room, but you can comment on any issue, regardless of your breakout room. Anybody
want to start? Please use the reaction button and raise-hand function like this one. Yes, Carol.
Ma: Maybe I start. I really like your summary and I think one thing that I actually talked to, Steven ishere also, so Steven sent me an e-mail to talk about whether we can have a community of practice. I
think SLAN, we have been meeting every year. We also have service-learning conference. I think it
may also be good if we can have a monthly meeting. And then it's something that we can actually learn
from each other to create this kind of community of practice. So other than that, I'm also thinking, if
we can think about this system. Because even though we are, we are the one here, because we are very
active in doing service-learning, I understand that United Board try to outreach to a lot of universities,
maybe in remote area of some of the country, and then they try to join us. Would there be any way that
we can use this plan as a platform? And then maybe we can do something about this system, that
university to university, they can pair up, and then have the faculty members and faculty members,
students to students, and then we start from small. And then we can actually expand it. And of course,
if the United Board can support that will be very good. And so this is actually another suggestion.
And last, because we all talk about training, we all talk about faculty development,
institutionalization, but is there a platform that SLAN can work together to even set-up an academy?
Or maybe an institute that we can promote? This is because now it's actually a very piece meal, right?
So, when this group of university, they need help then OK, then United Board will find one university
to go and train the faculty members. But then if we can have an institute, then we can have things
centralized. Or even if you're willing to share resources, because I know Poly U and Silliman
University, you have some curriculum developed already, and even in Taiwan, Service-Learning
Taiwan Association and Ngee Ann Poly and SUSS, why not we take this opportunity to share resources.
So that's actually my idea. But of course, there are lots of things that we can do. And actually, it's goodthat we are thinking about 20 years later because already in the two decades that we want to promote
service-learning and so happy to see all the development.

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Nishimura: Great, thank you very much, Carol. So, let's create an Academy where we come together
and share all the information and opportunities, so we kind of speak the same language at the sametime. Thank you. So, from UB?
Spurgeon: Thank you, Mikiko, and thank you, Carol. Before we start. I agree with Carol Ma because,
as United Board, we are also interested in establishing hubs for training faculty. We are exploring indifferent regions, and as United Board, we work in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.
And we are working with Ngee Ann Polytechnic now at present to develop an online course for thefaculty, to develop a curriculum development course and training for the faculty, and we will open it
for all of Asia. It's for more than just South Asia. We, with Ngee Ann Polytechnic, will send theannouncement perhaps to the SLAN also. And we are also looking for partners in different regions
who can bring together because we have understood from our experience that service-learning is atdifferent levels in different regions. If you take South Asia, it's on a different level. The need is very
different. Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines are major countries where their need seems tobe very different, and the Northeast region is very different. So, we thought we might have somegatherings of Northeast Asia service-learning partners or institutions and create a kind of network.
And maybe for Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia, we already have a very strong network among them.
And then South Asia. Then, we can bring all of them together at the Asia level so that way, United
Board can collaborate with this SLAN and join with the SLAN to do that. We are specifically looking
forward to connecting with Ngee Ann Polytech. And definitely, I'll get in touch with you, Dr. Steven,shortly. Because we want some knowledge sharing, strong institutions in Northeast Asia or Southeast
Asia where we know that in the Philippines, Silliman and Ateneo de Manila, these institutions canhandhold some of the institutions in South Asia because they need lots of training for the faculty, andalso endorse, or agree with, Carol Ma on establishing an Academy we call the hub. We are looking
forward to establishing a hub in different regions. Maybe we will continue to train faculty. It's not one
time, it's not a one-time affair, or it's not two times, but it will be a continuous learning process thatanybody who wants to get trained can approach that hub. So, that kind of plan we already have, andI'm sure that we will collaborate with one another and then develop future plans; the United Board isopen because United Board firmly believes that service-learning is one of the significant contributors
to whole-person education. Our vision is whole-person education, and we firmly believe that servicelearning is an essential contributor to that. So, definitely, United Board will support SLAN and otherorganizations willing to network and support others. Thank you.
Nishimura: OK, thank you very much for your contribution, Spurgeon. Anybody else? Who would
like to suggest the future direction or any concrete ideas about how to strengthen SLAN or beyond?
May I invite Stephen to say a few words? He is a representative of the regional research network ofservice-learning.

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Chan: Sure, sure. I certainly agree with all of these suggestions just raised to us now on the point of
the importance of self-development and training. We have a very strong feeling towards that. Right at
this moment, we are in the middle of offering an annual start development course. This year we havethe largest cohort, we have over 45 people joining online from several different countries. We havequite a number of people from India, from the Northeast, I think, they are from the city group, therefore
most people associated with the solution college over there, and we have a strong contingent comingfrom the Philippines, people coming from Vietnam, and the need is very large and so we certainly
concur that, and also we realize that there are different models of service-learning. Not everybody doesit the same way. We probably need different types of training for different people, even though thebasic principles are probably the same. But adaptation to different country, different cultures would
probably have to be made.
And we certainly agree with the need for a stronger network. Having a conference once every
two years, even once a year, is not enough. We really need to push the scholarship further as I sharedwith our group just now. As much as work we do, unless we back it up with strong research, it is justbusy work, in the sense of, you work hard but you don't really know how good you are, and people
certainly don't know how good you are or how bad you are if we just keep doing it without evaluating
our own work. In our university, we have a very strong need to demonstrate that the work that we dois achieving learning outcomes. Because our university has invested tens of millions of dollars every
year because we have such a large program, and they are entitled to us, after putting in so much money.
Are the students really learning? What are they learning? We owe it to ourselves to demonstrate thatit does work. And so we have to do evaluation. We have to do with research and make sure that what
we are doing is going in the right way. Now that brings up to research. I strongly, strongly believe thatacross Asia there has been a lot of work going on and there are more and more people coming together,
university adopting service-learning. That is very healthy, but we are still lacking very much inresearch. Researching on what we do, researching on the impact researching on effective pedagogies.
How do we actually make it work? What works and what doesn't work? Until we can do that, until we
can demonstrate and prove that we know what we are doing, the worldwide community will not takeus seriously. I think up to now the worldwide community, particularly the Americans, don't take usvery seriously. Because we are not publishing enough. We are not publishing in the highest levels.
How many of us publish at the international education conferences? How many of us published ourservice-learning research in academic higher education journals? Until we do that, people will not takeus seriously. They would say OK, you guys are doing a lot of work, but we don't know what quality it
is. So, and I think we are doing ourselves a great disservice if we don't do that because so much effort
is put into.
Look at the people around here. So many people are working in different countries, working so
hard. Some of us have been working on this for two decades. We owe it to ourselves to show the world-52-

that we are doing good work. That what we are doing is good for the community, good for the students,
good for the world. In fact, I dare say that the Americans do not own service-learning. Up to now, they
still behave as if they own service-learning, and they tell the world how to do service-learning. They
push everybody to do it their way. But that is not always the right way. At least not necessarily forHong Kong, not necessarily for India, Philippines, even Japan, Singapore. We have our own culture
with our own social situation, political situation, a lot of things that the Americans do in their own
countries cannot be done in our own country. I think we owe it to ourselves to do serious research andpublish it and tell the world that this is good work. And this is not necessarily the only way. OK, I
should stop now but because I feel strongly that given the amount of people, the amount of work thatis going into similar setting, all across Asia, we are not doing ourselves great service in terms of letting
the world know what we're doing.
Ma: So, Stephen I just want to echo one thing. I think we gradually have more people know what weare doing. And I think we are also developing our own characteristic of service-learning. If you ask
me. But sometimes we cannot change other people’s mindset, how to see us. But a lot of Americans,they also admire how we do a lot of bottom-up approach of the service-learning, and even thecommunity, I mean the community spirit, I think it's actually quite different from the Americans. So,
this is, in Singapore we call it --- spirit, right? And I'm now speaking like a Singaporean. But I thinkgradually we have people recognize our work. But because we are talking about future, I agree that
we should also challenge ourselves, and also think at a higher level. But how we can make it intoanother level? We need to work together. So, for those, for example, who are experienced researchers,
can we, as I set the budget system, the COP, I think it's a very good platform. And then how we canactually work together. For example, if we have faculty members and you want to publish, then maybe
we should take this platform and then to do some joint research. And so, we have been talking about
that, but I think we don't have a lot of people committed to do it. I know that it's because that not every
university is institutionalized in service-learning, and then I think not every university like Poly U, theuniversity gives a lot of money. But I think with the resources that Poly U are having, maybe they canalso help out. Like the training program, I know Stephen is working on that. And then, so if you know
Stephen, can I ask, if any members of this SLAN are interested to attend the training workshop, canthey enroll? Is it free of charge? Very important, yeah? And so, we are happy to join because some of
the universities also have their own financial limitations, because not every university puts resourcesin training faculty. So, if you think that this is something that Poly U is willing to share, and I think
the members are very happy and I'm now also trying to persuade calling you to become a member of
SLAN. So, Stephen, you go back and talk to Daniel and Grace. I hope that Poly U will be a member,and then so one day you can actually host a regional conference also.
Nishimura: Great, the negotiation had started already.

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Chan: Let me answer some of the questions from Carol. First of all, we do have to charge a reasonable
fee for the Start Development Workshop because that's a requirement of the university. The university
is saying that we should at least break even in order to offer these kinds of workshops. But having said
that, we do understand that there's some people who may have some financial difficulties, so we arewilling to entertain them if people have special requests, talk to us privately. We do offer discounts. In
fact, that in this one, we have offered significant discounts to some of the people who told us that wewould like to join but we have some difficulties, and so we tried to work it out in a certain way.
But I want to also bring up another point, regarding institutional support. One thing that we feelthat we have been relatively successful is that we have demonstrated to the university that servicelearning is not an end in itself. Now, of course, service-learning achieves certain learning objectives
which are difficult to achieve using other means. But at the same time, service-learning also helped
universities to achieve some very important institutional objectives, for example, internationalization.
Here we take internationalization very, very seriously. In fact, the university has accepted a target thatin about five years’ time, every single student in our university has to have some offshore learning
experience. And they realize that service-learning is a very strong tool to achieve that. And that's partly
why the university is willing to continue to fund many of our activities because we are helping theuniversity to achieve some objective that the university feels very strongly about. So, I would
encourage everybody to look at service-learning not just as an end in itself, but also as a tool to achieve.
So first of all, we need to know what the university wants to do. Every university may be different, so
you have to understand what your university president or the higher level managers, what they arethinking about and see how you can use service-learning to help them to achieve their goals. If you
can demonstrate that, then they will be very willing to do so. OK, I should stop now.
Nishimura: Thank you very much for the wonderful idea for your inspiring comments, Stephen, andfor encouragement, and really moving forward as more collective action to focus on evidence-based
service-learning and consciousness about objectives and learning outcomes and institutionalization ina more substantial manner, not just the presence of service-learning. Thank you, anybody else? Whowould like to suggest the future direction of SLAN and what we could do collectively for further
improvement of service-learning and beyond. Any ideas? OK, go ahead Frolian please?
Alipao: Good afternoon. Nice seeing you again, Stephen. Because the UST and hopefully we have apartnership now with our senior high school, it's part of their international service-learning. I'm justthinking, if it's possible, if we are a Service-Learning Asian Network, can we really make servicelearning an Asian? Can we say that the service-learning in Asia is really an Asian in a broad situationin perspective? Because I'm just wondering that most of our literature that we are using in the servicelearning promotion, even in my literature when it comes to promotion, and orientation with our faculty
members, really came from Western literary term, that is also connected with what Stephen is saying,-54-

that we don't have research in Asia, most of the Asians are practitioners, but we don't document. We
don't write about our experiences. So, I think it's part of the making this as an Asian, how can we make
SLAN as much as an institution, I think the challenge now is producing research. It may be facilitatedby SLAN. If they have the institutional approach of SLAN in the Asian Network, is it possible that we
can also produce our own research? Because of the competition in the international universities topublish in terms of Scopus index, that's also political, I think for most of those who are working within
research. That's the two points that I want to raise.
Then the third one is of course, the context of Asia, especially in the context of my country.
Coming from social advocacy, social justice and books, we see in especially the universities that wehave a very great challenge now in our society, right? So, I'm seeing that service-learning is a good
opportunity. You need to create a new social movement. Not saying that it's very political, but in asense that social movement that really comes up with a new generation that really fight for justice, andhuman rights, through service-learning, through education, coming from universities. Because we are,as universities, always seeking for the truth. And service-learning is a form of doing it and searchingfor truth, because students can really see the realities on the ground, especially in working withgrassroots. Now most of our partner communities are grassroots.
Then the last point I would like to mention, that was also mentioned by Stephen, is what can be
the sustainable mechanisms that will really ensure the programs of service-learning. I think in our case
now in our practice, we see to it that the Community Development Office will ensure the sustainabilityof the program. Because the service-learning, if it will be just in the level of pedagogy or classroom
or course requirement, the tendency is okay, you give importance to the partner community, but how
after the program, after the project, will be the situation of the community? I think that is the main
challenge now for all institutions. How about the communities? Think in the transformative processof doing service-learning. We are also addressing not only the learning but also the service component.
And that service component should lead to development and empowerment of communities of thebasic sectors, especially in our country, in our case. So, thank you, those are the points that I would
like to make. Thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much for all your excellent ideas. So, you have already somehow
proposed the research topics that we could tackle. Like what's Asian-ness in terms of the process ofservice-learning pedagogy and social justice and social impact. What is it that we are really producing
as in social impact? And also, sustainability of the program. How best we could make it moremeaningful for all the partners, not just students and faculty, but also community members and otherorganizations. Great. Thank you so much. Now let me invite Jaime.
Acevedo: Hello, good afternoon, everyone. Once again, maybe just a little following from what
Froilan shared. And also those ideas that were shared before. In Ateneo, service-learning is really-55-

promoted very much by the OSC, the Office for Social Concern Involvement, which is not strictly
speaking, composed of faculty members. Now these are really professionals who connect the Ateneode Manila community to the marginalized communities. And one of our agenda is really to widen thepool of faculty who support this agenda. We do have a very good pool already, but there is really muchthat can still be done or to get faculty more involved. And I do agree with the agenda, this can bejoined to agenda of research, we can really invite faculty not only to engage in service-learning in theirclasses, but to also publish and to document and to publish and to evaluate what we do. And I like thepoint that was raised earlier about evaluating not only the impact on our students, but for us here atAteneo, we do want to evaluate more carefully, our impact on our partner communities and institutions,and to perhaps even fit more strategically of how we can contribute to the well-being, to our partner
communities and institutions. Thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much for excellent ideas, too. Ok, so I think this is the end of thesession. Unless you have a burning thing to say or any suggestion? OK, thank you so much for yourgreat discussion. Carol.
Ma: Yeah, I just see that Mei is here, Mei from De La Salle. Because I know Mei is trying to also build
this Catholic service-learning hub. So, if Mei is here, Mei can also share about the hub. Because I
know that they also offer training to a lot of institutions, and I'm not sure whether Mei can talk about
it but if she can...
Guanzon: Hi Carol, yes, I'm here. I already discussed that during the breakout session but I can shareit again. So currently De La Salle University has been designated as the Service-Learning regional hub
for Asia and Oceania. That's under the Uniservitate Program. It's an Argentinian-based global program
for the institutionalization of service-learning in Catholic Higher Education Institutions. Its focus ison Catholic Higher Education Institutions, but we are expanding our networks. We are expanding our
supported institutions not only in Catholic institutions but also non-Catholic institutions, so that will
be one of the things that we can share. The resources that DLSU currently has may not only be for
SLAN members but for the whole region, Asia and the Pacific or Oceania, specifically. Our networks
could share resources, knowledge sharing, and of course conduct research. We will provide venues forconferences where we can exchange ideas, share resources, and publish research. We are here to
support not only SLAN but also other institutions in the region.
Nishimura: Thank you very much. OK, so let's conclude this session. Thank you so much for youractive participation in discussion.

-56-

Sharing on the upcoming 9th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference,
CHRIST University
Nishimura: Let us move on to the next agenda, which is sharing on the upcoming 9th Asia PacificRegional Conference. So, Dr. Victor Paul, Director of Service Center for Social Action, and Professor
Sharon Valarmathi, Director of Service-Learning from Christ University, India.
Valarmathi: Greetings from CHRIST University. The 9th Asia Pacific Regional Conference on
Service-Learning will be organized at CHRIST University. The theme will be Service-Learning,
Touching lives and Transforming Communities through Innovative Pedagogy, Research andPartnership. We are very happy to know in the discussion forum that many of you have expressed theneed for research in service-learning. And so, one of the focus areas in the 9th Asia Pacific Regional
Conference is research. The tentative dates would be the 19th of July to the 21st of July 2023 if all of
the members of the SLAN can confirm.
The proposed activities for each day would be, on the 19 July, we would have a pre-conference
workshop on research using qualitative analysis. On the 20 July, formal inauguration and tack paper
presentations, and on the 21 July, 2023, the SLAN business meeting will be held. There would bepresentations from all SLAN partners about this service-learning initiative for one year. We lookforward to your presence and participation in the service-learning conference and track presentation.
The conference time will be 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (IST), and we intend to have this conference in a
hybrid mode. The participating institutions willing to join us in person are welcome, but institutions
that would not be able to join us in person can join us online. So, the conference would be a hybridmode, accommodating all the SLAN partners. The sub-themes for the conference are service-learning
curriculum design, pedagogy, and student engagement. Service-learning strategies for community,
partnership, engagement and empowerment service-learning avenues for community-based
participatory research. So, the tracks for each theme would be for service-learning on curriculum
design, pedagogy, and student engagement. We invite papers on this area for proposing new ideas incurriculum development, enhancing students' involvement and engagement in service-learning
activities, innovative pedagogy for teaching service-learning. How do we seek student support andfaculty mentoring in service-learning? Research papers are invited in this area.
The second track will focus on service-learning strategies for facilitating sustainable community
partnership through community engagement. The papers are invited to develop strategies forsustainable partnerships, fostering community engagement to empower the community throughresilience, empowering through social innovation and solutions for a sustainable future, meaningfulcommunity engagement activities and strategies for building resilience in communities. The third track,
the papers, would be invited to service-learning avenues for community-based participatory research.
The theme can be divided further into research on the institutionalization of service-learning practices,-57-

research on the impact of service-learning initiatives in the community, and expanding research
activities through extension in service-learning.
The dates for the call for abstracts will begin on 15th March 2023, and the final submission of
the full paper will be on 5th of July 2023. Registration for the conference will open on 1st of January,
2023, and close on the 15th of July. Registration will close for them on the 10th of July. Registration
fees are mentioned in the USD and Indian currency for participating in the conference room. With us,
it will be used 2000 INR or 20 USD Accommodation, and food charges 2000 INR or 20 USD per day.
For further details, our website already has the previous conference, and you can also e-mail us forfurther details. I like to thank International Christian University, the management and Professor
Mikiko Nishimura, Director of Service-Learning, and Hitomi, Coordinator of Service-Learning, fororganizing the SLAN business meeting and the symposium tomorrow. Looking forward to yourparticipation in the 9th Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning. Waiting to host all of
you at CHRIST University and looking forward to your presentation at this conference. Thank you forthe opportunity.
Nishimura: Thank you very much, Dr. Sharon, for your excellent and very detailed outline of what weare going to have. We are all excited to be part of this conference next year and hopefully we will see
finally each other face to face. Thank you very much.

-58-

Closing Remarks from Director of Service-Learning Center, ICU
Nishimura: Now we are almost towards the end of the program. These are only my closing remarks
left. I'm here to thank you all for your excellent participation. You know we can have endlessconversations on this. I have taken note of some of the important issues for the future. Maybe this
SLAN meeting has been a blessed asset over the past 20 years. But probably we have routinized andstandardized this meeting to the extent that we really don't share the substantial parts of our practiceand for instance, we could share more curriculum in terms of how to teach in what kind of method ofteaching, or we could share more of the training opportunities across the region so that we could update
ourselves regularly and learn from each other more frequently.
And secondly, I noticed that a lot of our practice has been done, but probably we should put more
effort into evidence-based on service-learning. And really, if we promote scholarship and research inthis region so that we can speak up and say even what kind of uniqueness we have in Asia and also
even to improve service-learning at the world level together with other regional partners.
Then thirdly what I have noticed is the purpose driven service-learning. It's very important we asa scholar, we tend to think about curriculum design, how to involve a president or the faculty, but
purpose-driven service-learning at different levels should be thought through. At the individual level,for student, faculty. At institutional level as in the mission of the university and probably the
management. In social levels, in terms of the policy of the government level as well as of course thecommunity level. So, we kind of have to have a multi-dimensional mindset. As in why is it that we are
pursuing this service-learning program altogether?
So, you gave us a lot of insightful comments on this important, constant questioning ourselves,
you know we have to be more critical about ourselves as well as the social justice and other social
challenges that we are confronting in the world. So, thank you so much for the great discussion andI'm pleased to announce that this discussion is going to be captured as a booklet to be able to keep it
as an archive of our discussion for the future purpose. Thank you very much for your great
participation and I hope to see you tomorrow. Also, in the symposium, please speak up also then we
will have open discussion again. Thank you for your long-term commitment. It has been a long day.
Thank you very much everyone and congratulations on your endeavor over the past 20 years, let'scelebrate together. Thank you. Thank you, thank you all.

-59-

Appendix
List of Pre-recorded Presentation
Amity Foundation

https://youtu.be/ZdzDyujPvFo

Ateneo de Manila University

https://youtu.be/LYFpVcNOY-U

Christ University

https://youtu.be/vO58o5rfPz4

Chung Yuan Christian University

https://youtu.be/7sluClNcQ2E

De La Salle University

https://youtu.be/Wr001RTxBvQ

Fu Jen Catholic University

https://youtu.be/q2yZGYXBoH4

Lady Doak College

https://youtu.be/ZTl3TksTC2I

Ngee Ann Polytechnic

https://youtu.be/_KnA0oYJ5rI

Petra Christian University

https://youtu.be/9uR4lTPD0BM

Silliman University

https://youtu.be/JNAjhQywBtE

Singapore University of Social Sciences

https://youtu.be/0XxdXlcIZ6Q

Taiwan Service Learning Association

https://youtu.be/qqclc1DTAS0

Trinity University of Asia

https://youtu.be/VU4BeS6Ddqo

Union Christian College

https://youtu.be/ocmZ0npOxzo

International Christian University

https://youtu.be/Ztcm8xye4r0

Best Practice
Amity Foundation
Ateneo de Manila University
Christ University
Chung Yuan Christian University
De La Salle University
Fu Jen Catholic University
Lady Doak College
Ngee Ann Polytechnic
Petra Christian University
Singapore University of Social Sciences
Taiwan Service Learning Association
Trinity University of Asia
Union Christian College
University of Santo Tomas
International Christian University-60-

Education and International Exchange Division
Amity Foundation

May 25, 2022

Best Practice at Amity Foundation
Service Learning Program
In 2005, Amity initiated Service Learning Program and has been conducting the
program with partners from 17 countries over the years. In year 2019, students from
ICU, volunteers from United Methodist Church and Chinese university students
participated in the program. They worked together in some Chinese international
communities, got involved in Chinese cultural activities, provided services at Amity
social service centers and joined in a camp on environmental protection with students
from Nanjing University.

Distinct Features of Amity Service Learning Program
1. Language and Culture Exchange Based
Working together with people from various backgrounds, students are able to learn
about different languages and culture, based on which they gain a better
understanding of each other and enhance their ability in communication andadaptation.
2. World Social Issues Recognition and Solving Oriented
Participants learn more about the world social issues by working in communities,
social service centers and taking part in exchange salons, and try to put what they
have learned into practice so as to solve the problems accordingly.
3. Social Responsibility and Global Citizen Cultivation Targeted
Through the program activities, participants feel a greater sense of connection withpeople elsewhere on the planet and a stronger sense of social responsibility toshoulder on in the years to come.
-61-

Service-Learning in the Ateneo de Manila University
The school year 2021-2022 marked the fourth year of the expansion of Service-Learning in the Loyola Schools, in the context of
its new curricular framework in which Service-Learning is mandated to be a key component of the education and formation of all
undergraduate students. In the new curricular framework, all undergraduate programs have three basic components: the corecurriculum, the major curriculum, and the co-curriculum.

Best Practices
1.

New Curricular Framework. In the new Loyola Schools curricular framework, all undergraduate programs have threebasic components: the core curriculum, the major curriculum, and the co-curriculum. It is in the last component, theco-curriculum—also referred to as the Integrated Ateneo Formation or InAF program—where Service-Learning activities
are undertaken by students. The third-year formation program, NSTP12-Bigkis, provides students with servicelearning opportunities as requirements of a core curriculum course and as part of a major subject that is based on theiracademic discipline.

2.

Service-Learning (SL) Highways.The new Loyola Schools curricular framework makes possible the continuous
development of discipline-based student community involvement activities. In this regard, SL “highways” (involving SLrelated activities from the first to the fourth year of the concerned students) are already being implemented for studentsof particular courses (Health Science, Development Studies, and Management Honors). In this model, a student isenvisioned to engage with the same community from first year to fourth year in different capacities, based on a major
course, a Core Curriculum course, and a social formation program the student is enrolled in. The long-term engagements
aim to further enhance our impact on our partner communities.

3.

Outstanding Service-Learning Projects. “Hawak Kamay” is an undergraduate group project implemented by thirdyear AB Development Studies students who worked with a community-based organization called “Gawang Kamay”
that is active in Barangay Escopa 3, Quezon City. The students used a comprehensive process of data-gathering andconsultations with “Gawang Kamay” members to identify weak internal organizational capacities as the core problem of
the organization. Consequently, a series of capacity-building interventions were planned and implemented by thestudents towards making “Gawang Kamay” more resilient and sustainable.

-62-

May 31st, 2022

Centre for Service-Learning (CSL)CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) has been conducting Service-Learning courses since 2015.
The University has set up the Centre for Service-Learning in 2022, to coordinate and support
S-L activities across campuses. Some of the key outcomes of S-L activities in the University
are mentioned below:
1. Developing an AI-based machine for sex identification of silkworm, pupa, andcocoon cutting machine by the Department of Computer science and Engineering. The
idea was presented at a national conference that published a research paper and waspatented. They also received financial assistance from the department of science andtechnology, the Government of India.

2. Students from the Department of Media Studies conducted soft skills training throughskits and short plays for a school run by CRY NGO for the children of commercial sex
workers near K.R. Market, Bengaluru.

3. The pandemic posed a unique challenge for the course Service Learning to shift towards
the online function mode. Hence, students of 2020-2021 were given 160 children from
CSA active areas to work on telephonicmentoring. All these students were from the mostunderprivileged regions in Bengaluru and werestudying at government schools that didn’t
conduct online classes till the end of 2021. EachMedia student was paired with a student from thecommunity.
-63-

May 30th, 2022

Service-Learning Center,

Chung Yuan Christian University

Best Practice at Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU)Service-Learning Seeds Group (SLSG)The Service-Learning Seeds Group (SLSG) aiming at “care for the local environment”, works hard to build a local
environment that is healthy for people physically and mentally. By extending care for the local cultural and naturalenvironments, SLSG urge community residents and students to participate in service learning activities and thereby
upgrade their social civic awareness.
Since 2014, SLSG have worked with the Taiwan New Resident Mengya Association to practice the “KnowledgeAction Education Program” and “Confidence Empowerment Program”, in order to improve the knowledge-action
ability and confidence of the second generation of new residents. Meanwhile, SLSG included the concept about naturalenvironmental protection to achieve the purpose of “care for the local environment”.

Service Program of SLSG

1. The Knowledge-Action Education Program (After-school tutoring service) helps the second generation of newresidents bridge their academic gap, and increases the opportunities to speak Chinese for them, in order to improvetheir knowledge-action ability in combining Chinese proficiency with their life experience.

2. The Confidence Empowerment Program plans the summer vacation camp and mountain cleanup, including theenvironmental protection concept, in order to strengthen the self- awareness and environmental protection actionof the second generation of new residents.

3. The Christmas Care Program calls on youth volunteers to provide services for non-profit- seeking organizations
or elementary school special education classes during the Christmas’ days, in order to improve the self-confidenceof disadvantaged children (students with disabilities) and the youth volunteers’ caring awareness.

-64-

DE LA SALLE UNIVERSITYSERVICE-LEARNING BEST PRACTICES

1. Formation ProgramsContinuous capacity-building activities for students, faculty, and community partners to enhance theirskills and knowledge on Service-Learning. The students receive SL orientations about concepts,
principles, and frameworks on SL and local community situations to prepare them for their field
activities. Select leaders of community partners attend organizational development training, while thefaculty members participate in regular SL training and fora. The formation programs for thesestakeholders were sustained remotely during the pandemic.

2. E-Service-Learning Implementation during the Pandemic
In AY 2021-2022, more than 6000 students and 60
partner organizations participated in electronic or
online SL. Students successfully implemented
projects for their partner communities, such as
advocacy materials, learning materials, donation
drives for hygiene supplies, accounting tutorials,
webinars, livelihood activities, and others.
Synchronous activities were done through live
online meetings/consultations and virtual tours.
3. Incorporation of SL in faculty promotion
In the revised Faculty Manual of 2021, SL involvement particularly in teaching a course will SL earnpoints that are included in faculty promotion. This is the DLSU’s initiative to recognize faculty teachingcourses with SL components and incentivize them for their efforts in contributing to the achievementof the University mandate. As a result, faculty have increased their interest in SL.
-65-

Service-Learning development at Service-Learning Center, Fu Jen
Catholic University
from February 2021 to February 2022
Accomplishments
1.

Service-Learning Curriculum through Community Engagement
Regarding the Service-Learning Center report, the service-learning curricula, including the course of
Introduction to University Life, Philosophy of Life, and Professional Courses incorporated servicelearning, were engaged in the community to have 2339 students from 55 classes instructed by 44teachers and there are collaborated with 146 NGO / NPO.
Table 1. Statistic of Service-Learning Curriculum
Introduction to University Life

Philosophy of Life

Professional Courses

Total

Teachers

12

4

28

44

Students

555

509

1275

2339

Classes

10

9

36

55

24

9

113

146

Collaborated
NGO/ NPO

2.

Volunteering Team
Twelve teams were engaged in domestic and oversea service learning. They crossed theidentification, grades, academics, and areas; they also, met with the people who they needed. 42
students had applied for the course credit for service-learning.

3.

The Faculty Network on Service-Learning

Held the Faculty Study Group (FSG)
There were 20 teachers and staff from the College of Medicine, Communication, Fashion andTextiles, Human Ecology, Management, Education, Foreign Languages and Literatures,
Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, and the Office of Student Affairs who participatedin the FSG. Besides, they had read three books: (1)Learning through Service- Theories andPractices of Service-Learning across the Disciplines, (2)The Faculty Guide to Service
Learning, and (3)Social Praxis-Dialogue Between Education and Social Action.



Held the 13th Service-Learning Conference on October 15th
The theme of the conference is Prevention of COVID-19: Challenge and Change of ServiceLearning and there were 100 participants.

Held the Lectures about Service-Learning, Student Social Responsibility,
and Sustainable Development
Held 11 lectures to empower teachers and students about service-learning, social
responsibility, and sustainable development. There were 892 participants.

Implemented the Interdisciplinary Program: Promoting Life Safety Plan
for At-Risk Children and Youth in Community
Four teachers from the Dept. of Nursing, Nutritional Science, Business Administration, andHolistic Education Center Graduate Institute of Educational Leadership & Development
participated in this program and cooperated with two after-school classes in the communities.

-66-

4.

International Networks
Participating in the UNIVERSITATE-Training for Leader Space
Three teachers participated in the 1st edition (Mar. 23 to June 18) and five teachers
participated in the 2nd edition (Sept. 6 to Dec. 10)

International Sync & Async Online Service-Learning Program

Team

Service Object

Date

Content

Volunteer Team in

School Sisters of Notre

Chinese language teaching

VietnamDame in Vietnam

May 17 to July2, 2021and recognizing TaiwanesecultureVolunteer Team in

Jordan University College

Tanzania

and Kola hill secondary

July 1 to Sept.
10, 2021

Microsoft Word teaching

July 1-31, 2021

Six topics about Taiwan

and typing skill teaching

schoolVolunteer Team in

Holy Light School

Lashio, Myanmar(food and celebration, etc.)

Future Activities
1.

To Publish the Literature About the Projects for Service-Learning
The literature is going to collect the experience and reflection on the process of
implementing the service-learning from teachers to provide the resources andstructural elements in service-learning.

2.

To Apply the UNIVERSITATE AWARD 2022 "Service-learning Experiences in Catholic
Higher Education"
The Uniservitate Award aims at promoting quality service-learning practices, that is, atrecognizing experiences(1) that show measurable contributions to the solution of socio-environmental problems,
identified and addressed in solidarity with organizations and recipients of the community; (2)with the active participation of students in all stages of the project; (3) with a clear articulation
between service and educational planning that includes specific links with the curriculum,
opportunities for skills development, reflection and research.

-67-

SERVICE-LEARNING AT LADY DOAK
CENTRE FOR LIFE FRONTIER ENGAGEMENTSLAN REPORT 2021-2022
Highlights of the Activities of the Life Frontier Engagement (LiFE) @LDC
 Virtual Orientation Programme on “LiFE – An experiential Insight” to orient the new faculty facilitators about the various stages of Community
engagement which enables the students’ engagement in the community meaningful Virtual Workshop on “Addressing Sustainable Development Goals through Life Frontier Engagement Projects” to gain an insight into the 17
SDGs of UN and to address the same through effective community engagement

 UBCHEA project grant of US $10,000 for the proposal - "Capacity Building to Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) byintegrating e-Service Learning and Research" for a period of two years
 Constant and continuous updation of knowledge on the emerging trends such as e-Service Learning by participating in workshops and seminars
organized by other Institutions
 Paper presentation by passed out batch of students at the International conferences – 12 students presented the papers and 2 of them received
best paper awards
 Faculty members of LDC served as S-L consultants by sharing their enriching experience about LiFE during the S-L programmes/conferences
organized by other NGOs/ Institutions/Universities
 Commemoration of significant days such as World and National food Day, International Forest Day through guest lectures and competitions
 Community engagement projects – completed 196 LiFE projects on various themes on solid waste management, Responsibilities of a citizen,
Food Analysis, Web based community project, Development issues in rural economy, Entrepreneurship development, etc., by the active
involvement of 1182 students
 Open House – A Forum to Showcase the Community based projects undertaken by the final year undergraduate students to other discipline
students, faculty members, community people and external members from other Institutions

OPEN HOUSE – SHOWCASING COMMUNITY PROJECTS Consultancy Service to the Faculty team from Maris Stella College, Vijayawada, to help them in Institutionalizing Service-Learning Paper Publication in a peer reviewed Journal – two faculty members jointly published a paper “A study on impact assessment of Life Frontier
Engagement at Lady Doak College” in International Journal of Education and Research – New Frontiers in Education-68-Official (Closed) - Sensitive Normal

Office of Service-Learning
Ngee Ann Polytechnic

30 May 2022
2021 Best Practice at Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP)
Civic Internship Programme

In October 2019, Ngee Ann Polytechnic launched the Civic Internship (CI) programme, a 18 to 22-weekwork attachment where students apply their skills and knowledge for social good, and deepen theirawareness and thinking on social issues. This video gives a short introduction to the CI programme andthis video shows a Business student’s internship journey with a social enterprise. So far, 1,136 students
have completed the Civic Internship programme. Based on the Post Civic Internship Survey conducted,
students have indicated an “Increase in Social Awareness (M= 4.49, SD= .68)” and an “Increase in Civic
Motivation (M= 4.48, SD= .66)”, both above a mean score of 3.5.
The Civic Internship programme includes the following four unique features:
1) Exposure to Social Issues - Students gain insights into how they can use their professional skills for
public good.
2) Inspirational Start - Students are prepared to have the right mindset for their internship through reflective
learning. An example of an Inspirational Start is where guest speaker Ms Jo Tang shared candidly withthe students on her journey as CEO and Founder of the Sustainability Project, a Singapore-based
business that aims to encourage and inspire the adoption of a low or zero waste lifestyle.
3) Fireside Chat - Students get to engage with and be inspired by exemplary civic role models. Take thisas an example: Anbarasi Boopal (Anbu), Co-CEO of ACRES: Animal Concerns Research and Education
Society (Singapore), spoke to 29 interns about her journey with wildlife. She candidly touched on thechallenges faced, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the non-profit’s work, and what keeps hergoing despite the hurdles.
4) Civic Challenge - Students continue the civic journey by delving into solutions to address a social issue.
An example of a Civic Challenge is given in this link where the students completed their post-Civic
Challenge projects with Human-Animal Bond In Ministry - HIM .

A student’s reflection on her Civic Internship Journey-69-Service Learning at Petra Christian University
2022 Service-Learning Asia Network (SLAN) Meeting

Service-Learning (S-L) was first introduced at Petra Christian University (PCU) in 2006 through a seminar.
Since then S-L has been part of PCU and was managed by the Institute for Research and Community
Outreach (IRCO). Various efforts have been initiated by IRCO to increase awareness of S-L among PCU
faculty members, among others are:•••trainings, seminars, and conferences on S-L;
the publication of “Service Learning Implementation Guide” booklet for faculty members; andthe development of a management information system to support the implementation of S-L.

S-L has also been relatively institutionalized at PCU by its inclusion in the Strategic Planning document of the
University. In terms of S-L implementation, in 2011 the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs has issued a circularon the “Implementation of Service Learning.” The circular specifically mentioned the accommodation ofCommunity Outreach Program (COP) as a non-mandatory course in all academic departments at PCU. COP is
Service-Learning program, which aims to give an experiential learning process to students and faculty
members by living in the communities. COP also aims to respond to the real social needs and assists indeveloping local communities using interdisciplinary approach. COP has been a major and sustained
initiative at PCU and its international version, the International COP, has been a flagship initiative at PCU.
More substantively the circular elaborated on how S-L should be implemented and accommodated into thecurriculum of all academic departments at PCU, among others are:
•
•

•
•
•

Each academic department is required to have S-L courses (at least one) where these courses don’t
have to be newly-created courses;
S-L courses in each academic department can be on non-permanent basis but there needs to always
be one in every semester and these courses need to be published to students and reported to the
Faculty level;
S-L courses are required to add “Introduction to Service Learning” content in their syllabi;
every student is required to take at least one S-L course OR the COP as a graduation requirement;
andan additional one credit point (for teaching load) is awarded to the lecturer(s) for each S-L course.

Some challenges that we face at PCU with regards to S-L are lack or differing understanding of S-L which has
resulted in limited buy-in among faculty members. This limited buy-in has been exacerbated by the lack of‘regeneration’ of S-L advocates among the faculty members. The recent pandemic has also added to thechallenge in implementing S-L since most of S-L activities needed to be postponed or cancelled due tohealth reasons. Fortunately, with the improvement of the COVID-19 situation in Indonesia we’ve seen somerestarting in S-L activities.
Despite the challenges above we’ve also seen some opportunities for S-L at PCU worth mentioning. Firstly,
the new curriculum, implemented since 2020, has included four different types of off-campus learning
activities. One of them, Community Engagement, is closely related to S-L activities. Secondly, the launch of
the Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka or Emancipated Learning by the Indonesian Ministry of Education,
Culture, Research, Technology in 2020 has spurred interests in experiential learning activities among
Indonesian universities. These opportunities are believed to be able to increase awareness to S-L.
by: Liauw Toong Tjiek (Aditya Nugraha) – Director of ELTC at PCU – anugraha@petra.ac.id
Excellence in Learning and Teaching Center-70-

SERVICE-LEARNING ASIA NETWORK UPDATES
1 JULY 2022
Good Practices of Service-Learning at Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS)In SUSS, the 5 key elements of the Community Engagement (CE) Framework informs
our programming and students’ learning. Regarding the latter, all full-time
undergraduates undergo a pre-engagement Foundations of Community
Engagement course which emphasises the 5 key elements:
1.

Reciprocity: We recognise that reciprocal partnership among all stakeholders is the key factor forany successful Community Engagement endeavour. In alignment with Stanton’s (1999)
Principle of Reciprocity, “I serve you in order that I may learn from you. You accept my service
in order that you may teach me”, community partners are encouraged to come on board
students’ CE journey as co-educators1. The community is also engaged as trainers for student
capacity-building workshops.

2.

Reflection: Kolb and Fry’s Experiential Learning Cycle is applied when students reflect on theircommunity engagement. Reflection is also incorporated in student assessment whereby students
reflect on their journey and personal philosophy towards social consciousness and civic
responsibility.

3.

Meaningful Service: OSLCE has worked with university and community stakeholders to curate sevenpathways for CE engagement. Each pathway offers opportunities based on community priorities.
A suite of resources (capacity building workshops and funds) is also available for students
enhance their skills and competencies when engaging with communities. The various pathways
informedbycommunity-determined

opportunities

coupledwithresources,enhancemeaningfulness for both students and community partners.
4.

Community Voice: As a community-engaged institution, through strategic networks in Singapore
and beyond, SUSS facilitates unique cross-sector collaboration between learners, educators,
community organisations, government agencies and companies to collaborate for the greater
good, and share resources that help to enhance society’s well- being. Community partners are also
given the annual platform (community engagement fair) to share their opportunities and recruit
students; and are sought for feedback regularly so that our office’s programmes and resources
can be enhanced.

5.

Student Voice: SUSS emphasises student autonomy, empowering students to propose selfdirected, student-driven initiatives. Students may propose a diverse range of project types, be it
individual or group, direct or indirect service, project-based or on-going projects. Importantly,
students are encouraged to balance the needs of the community with a commitment level thatis sustainable for themselves. Also, a suite of University Awards serve as a platform for students toexercise their voice by nominating their peers with outstanding contributions to the community.

1 Chang, C. & Yap, M.S. (2017). Service-Learning: Appreciating the Community as Co-Educator, The Heart of

Learning. Singapore

University of Social Sciences. https://www.suss.edu.sg/docs/default- source/contentdoc/comms/theheartoflearning_suss2017pdf.pdf
Office of Service-Learning & Community Engagement
Centre for Experiential Learning | College of Lifelong & Experiential Learningsuss.edu.sg/oslce | osl@suss.edu.sg-71-

May 30th, 2022
Taiwan Service Learning Association

Best Practice at Taiwan Service Learning Association (TSLA)
Online Practice Forum on Building Friendly Communitiesin Schools Using Art as a Media Teaching experience of picture books for young

children and the elderly in the community.
 Art practice of co-learning and co-creation with specialgroups.
 Music as a Medium for Community Elderly
Rehabilitation.
 Art penetrates the elderly community and revitalizes
local creations .
 We Media Health Communication and Art and Culture
inheritance.
 Art as an Approach to Citizenship and Moral
Education.
Journal of Service Learning and Social Engagement
 RESEARCH PAPERS
1. As Covid-19 happens quickly, urgently, and suddenly,

what can we do in service-learning courses ? A narrative study of a teacher’s observationand practice in the field of senior citizens.
2. Exploring the Experience and Challenges of Community Organizations in College Service-learning

Curriculum.

3. Community Festivals and Regional Revitalization: A Study of Fun Guandu Festival.
 FEATURED CASE REPORTS
1. The practice of digital learning partners under the remote teaching mode under the influenceof the epidemic.
2. English Volunteer Group and Children’s

Picture Book Online Learning Experience.

3. The exploration and discovery of online museum education promotion activities.
-72-

TRINITY UNIVERSITY OF ASIA

Quezon City, Philippines

10th Service-Learning Asia Network (SLAN) Meeting
Institutional Service-Learning Updates 2022

With most classes still held online in the Philippines, Service-Learning activities remained online aswell, with the National Service Training Program (NSTP) as primary implementer of ACES or theAlternative Community Engagement Scheme, which allows students to think of out-of-the-box andoutput-based online projects that would bring development to selected communities. These projects
enabled students to learn from their experiences while rendering service without exposing themselvesto the dangers of the contagion.
Among such projects are webinars on disaster preparedness, environmental conservation andpreservation, women empowerment, and mitigation of fatal diseases such as Dengue fever,leptospirosis, heart diseases and brain stroke, and some degenerative illnesses.
In some major courses, Service-Learning activities were also held online, including a webinar on safe
food handling and preparations as the number of online food businesses mushroomed during the
pandemic, animal welfare advocacy which focused on reducing cases of abuses of dog breeding, and a
campaign for literacy on availing government services among the digitally-challenged segment of the
population.
With the COVID-19 surge in the Philippines last January, 2022 due to the Delta variant of thecoronavirus, the 2022 International Service-Learning Program with the Colleges and Universities of the
Anglican Communion (CUAC) was postponed again for the third straight year but plans for the 2023
program are on the pipeline as the COVID-19 cases dropped significantly in the fast few months.
To keep the faculty updated with the developments in the field of Service-Learning, the university
sent 10 college teachers to the Uniservitate Asia and Oceania and De La salle University ServiceLearning Training for Institutional Stakeholders which is composed of several modules spread in several
months since 2021.
Two researches from the university were also presented during the 8th Asia-Pacific Regional
Conference on Service-Learning last July, 2021, which was hosted by Silliman University. Trinity
University of Asia committed to help Silliman, it’s sister school, during the conference, and a faculty of
TUA was chosen to be a blind reviewer for research presentations.

-73-

Service—Learning Center,
Union Christian College, India

2021 BEST PRACTICE AT UNION CHRISTIAN COLLEGE (UCC)
Since 2012, UCC, India has hosted the International Service-Learning for the students ofInternational Christian University, Japan. 3-4 students participate in the 30-day long ServiceLearning covering over seven partner institutions to perform SL. 2018 Service-Learning was amemorable one as the place experienced great flood and program coordinators had to cover the
program through digital platform such as WhatsApp for a few days. This learning was useful to
conduct the International Student Exchange Service-Learning (ISESL) under the pandemic
induced “new normal” during July-Aug 2021. Three students from ICU, Japan and 12 students
from UCC Aluva, participated in the program. Special focus was given to the woman
empowerment initiative (Kudumbasree) where the ICU students introduced 2 indigenous snacks
for marketing in our region. Service-Learning at the School for the Blind, old age home, primaryschool education, inter-religious understanding and biodiversity study are other area of studies
covered.
The Service initiatives enabled the following.
1. Help students gather a better understanding of community needs that was found to benefit
the community partners. The Service-Learning with Kudumbasree was eye-opener towards
the empowerment initiatives undergoing at the grass-root level in the locality. Working asteams to document the story of women community and firsthand interaction with local
community over virtual platforms opened new vistas to conducting service learning
digitally.
2. Reflections on digital learning: Teaching and interaction with the blind students andstudents from primary school over digital platforms generated dialogue on the possibilities
and challenges of digital learning.
3. Cultural and Bio-diversity – Exposure to cultural and biodiversity of the region throughintroduction to traditional attire, songs, language, cuisine and campus flora.
4. Gender Studies - Students perform gender based observations in Indian scenario andcompares the gender equalities in Japan.

-74-

University of Santo Tomas
Simbahayan Community Development Office
Academic Year 2021-2022
The report comprises four parts: Service-Learning Orientations and Curriculum Development,
Institutionalization, Partnership/network building, and Service-Learning Projects.
Service-Learning Orientations and Curriculum Development
The SCDO conducted several series of Service-Learning orientation/workshops:
1. Faculty of Arts and Letters - June 11, 2021
2. College of Tourism and Hospitality Management - November 25, 2021
3. CITED Training on the Integration of Service-Learning and Sustainable Development Goals
into the College Curricula - January 25, 2022
4. Series of S-L Workshops from Academic Units – January to March 2022
Institutionalization
The Simbahayan Community Development Office (SCDO) initiated the idea of
institutionalization. The SCDO set a meeting with Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs (VRAA)
regarding the plan to tap the academic resources for community engagement. This means,
Service-Learning. The idea and proposal were accepted. During one of their meetings, the SCDO
also presented the concept and proposal to the Deans. The Deans have a good acceptance andare committed to adopting the Service-Learning in their respective academic units.
Several orientations and workshops were conducted at the academic and university levels as
part of the institutionalization.
Partnership/network buildinga. Active member of SLAN
b. Partnership with Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU) in regular study sessions, training,
and international S-L projectc. Partnership with De La Salle University (Manila) under the UNISERVITATE
program. Specifically, these are continuous training, and SCDO Director was tapped as one of
the UNISERVITATE Award Evaluators
d. Partnership with communities for community engagement and Service-Learning
Service-Learning Projects
Thirteen classes and courses implement 45 projects with Service-Learning project
proposals. These projects are funded by the Community Service Fund (CSF). Only one out offorty-five projects were implemented directly by the students in the partner community. In
contrast, 44 projects were implemented online.

-75-

May 19th, 2022
Service-Learning Center,
International Christian University

2021 Best Practice at International Christian University (ICU)
Japan Summer Service-Learning (JSSL)
Since 2016, ICU has hosted a joint program, Japan Summer Service-Learning (JSSL) with Middlebury College(USA) and SLAN universities. Students from various cultural backgrounds gather in Japan, to serve community
needs in both urban and rural contexts in Mitaka city (Tokyo) and Tenryu Village (Nagano) respectively.
International students compare and contrast various local perspectives with reference to the Japanese contexts
while ICU students obtain multiple perspectives by coordinating and serving as an interpreter.

Photos: Service activities in Tenryu village
Distinct features of JSSL
1. Learning with students from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds

・In teamwork with rich cultural diversity, students engage in service activities in Japanese communities,
deepen their understanding of issues through dialogue, and enhance their ability to respect various cultural
backgrounds.

2. Partnership and mutual learning with the Japanese local community

・Local community partnerships in Japan can also generate a mutual exchange of diverse local
perspectives through interaction with students from Japan, the USA, and Asia and community memberswith various backgrounds.

・Continuous implementation of JSSL enables ICU and local communities to develop a partnership withlong-term visions for community development.
3. Reciprocal program with SLAN partners

・ The stereotypical savior complex is avoided and ICU and SLAN partners develop reciprocity in SL
programs through JSSL.

・This explores common challenges and connections among local, national, regional, and global issues.

-76-International Symposium forthe 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia:
A Regional Dialogue on Networking

International Symposium for the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia: A Regional Dialogue on Networking
Program
Date:

Saturday, 2 July, 2022

Time:

1:00-4:00pm (JST)Mode:

Hybrid (online and face-to-face)

Venue:

International Conference Room, Kiyoshi Togasaki Memorial Dialogue House 2nd
floor, International Christian University (ICU), Japan

12:30

Registration

1:00-1:10

Opening Remarks
Shoichiro Iwakiri, President, ICU,

1:10-1:35

Presentation by ICU"Past, Present, and the Future of ICU’s SL: What we learned from networking withpartners in Asia"
Mikiko Nishimura, Director, Service-Learning Center, ICU

1:35-1:40

Q&A Session

1:40-2:20

Panel Discussion
Panel Interactive Discussion on the Future of SL in Asia; post/with Corona, with
Practitioners, changing Socio-Political Context, Ultimate Goals/Outcomes in the
RegionPanel:

Carol Ma, Associate Professor, Singapore University of Social Sciences
Betty McCann, President, Silliman University
Mercy Pushpalatha, Former President, Lady Doak College, India and Consultant,
United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia

Chair:

Mikiko Nishimura, Director, Service-Learning Center, ICU

2:20-2:30

Break

2:30-2:50

Comments from Service-Learning Specialists in other Regions
Tim Stanton, Former Director, Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University(USA)
Florence McCarthy, Former Special Advisor for Service-Learning at ICU (Australia)

2:50-3:35

Open Discussion

3:35-3:45

Closing Remarks
Robert Eskildsen, Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU-79-

Speakers

Guest Speakers
Carol Ma

Associate Professor, Head of Gerontology Program,
Singapore University of Social Sciences

Betty McCann

President, Silliman University
Former President, the Association of Christian Universities and Collegesin Asia (ACUCA)

Mercy Pushpalatha

Consultant
Former President, Lady Doak College, India
Former United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia

Tim Stanton

Former Director, Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University

Florence McCarthy

Former Special Advisor for Service-Learning at ICU
Former Associate Professor & Director, International Development
Education Department, Teachers College, Columbia University

International Christian University
Chair
Mikiko Nishimura

Director, Service-Learning Center
Professor, Sociology of Education and International Educational
Development
Chair, Education and Language Education Department

MC
Hitomi Yokote

Coordinator and Lecturer, Service-Learning Center

Shoichiro Iwakiri

President

Robert Eskildsen

Vice President for Academic Affairs

Takashi Nishio

Professor by Special Appointment,
Former Director, Service-Learning Center (2005-2007, 2015-2017)

Sawa Omori

Senior Associate Professor, Politics and International Studies-80-Special Guests
Kano Yamamoto

Former Professor (Board of Trustees, Managing Trustee and Vice Chair)
Former Director and Advisor, Service-Learning Center, International
Christian University
Former Comptroller, UNICEF Headquarters

Koa Tasaka

Former Chair of Trustee, Asian Rural Institute
Former Professor, International Christian University-81-Transcript of the International Symposium
Introduction
Yokote: Good afternoon, everyone.
Audience: Good afternoon.
Yokote: Or good morning to many of you joining from Asia, and good evening to those of you who
are joining from North America. There are over 100 people joining the online webinar.
So, to all of you welcome, and thank you for joining the international symposium hosted byInternational Christian University. The Future of Service-Learning in Asia: A Regional Dialogue on
Networking. My name is Hitomi Yokote, I am a coordinator and part-time lecturer of Service-Learning
at ICU. Before we start, I would like to mention a few things. First, we are recording the entire
symposium including the Q&A time. This is for internal use only as we plan to make a booklet lateron. Secondly, if you have questions, please use Q&A section of the zoom for those joining online, andthose who are here face-to-face, simply raise your hand. And today we have student volunteerstranslating from English to Japanese in the conference room, for those joining face to face. So, I ask
all speakers to speak slowly, that includes me too, to allow more time. Thank you. And now we haveProf. Kano Yamamoto in person here with us. He is the first director of Service-Learning Center here
at ICU, and he is someone who initiated the SLAN, the Service-Learning Asian Network. So, we arereally honored to have you in our meeting, Prof. Kano. Thank you for coming. It is very hot in Tokyo
today. I think that the temperature is over 35 Celsius. Thank you for those who joined in person as
well. Now in this auspicious occasion, that this year 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of ServiceLearning Asian network or SLAN and also ICU’s Service-Learning Center.

-82-

Opening Remarks by President, ICU
Yokote: We would like to ask the President of ICU, Prof. Shoichiro Iwakiri, to open the symposiumwith his remarks. Iwakiri-sensei, onegai-shimasu.
Iwakiri: Thank you very much for the introduction. It is my great pleasure and honor that ICU hosts
this symposium dedicated to the reflection and discussion on the Future of Service-Learning in Asia.
I’d like to thank Professors Carol Ma, Betty McCann, Mercy Pushpalatha as panelists and Drs. Tim
Stanton and Florence McCarthy as commentators for their precious presence. I'd also like to thank
Mikiko Nishimura, the Director of our Service-Learning Center for her leadership and all staff for
their hard work and devotion. It was twenty years ago, in 2002, that the Service-Learning Center was
established at ICU under the initiative of Prof. Kano Yamamoto, who served as the first director. The
establishment of the Center was linked to the spread of the "service-learning" movement from theUnited States to Asia from around 1995. There was a recognition of the need for an organized
university approach to service-learning in order to make it successful. Professor Yamamoto described
what service-learning would bring to the university curriculum. He emphasized the importance of theprocess of, I cite, "applying what we have learned through experience, learning from reality andincorporating it as our own knowledge". As he said, service-learning is not a simple volunteer andsupportive activity towards those who are in need, but rather an educational process of theestablishment of human relationship and cooperation based on the reality of the political, social andcultural situation. Through the experience, students can gain a deeper mutual understanding and selfunderstanding, as well as an understanding of the meaning of "service" that would include the senseof a work done for the benefit of human rights, dignity and happiness. The liberal arts at our university
value dialogue, diversity, and critical thinking, which are directly related to communication, inclusion,respect of diversity, that are essential, I believe, to the practice of service-learning. I hope ICU, withits mission to cultivate peacebuilders, will contribute to the development of service-learning in Asia.
I wish you success of today’s discussion and dialogue, and a good future of service-learning in Asia.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Yokote: Thank you very much, Sir.

-83-

Presentation by Director of Service-Learning Center, ICU,
"Past, Present, and the Future of ICU’s SL: What We Learned from Networking
with Partners in Asia"
Yokote: Now from ICU, Prof. Mikiko Nishimura will be making a presentation titled “Past, Present,
and the Future of ICU’SL; what we learned from networking with partners in Asia”. Prof. Nishimura
is a Professor of Sociology of Education and International Educational Development, Director ofService-Learning Center and Chair of Education and Language Education Department at International
Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to the current position, she was an Associate Specialist atJapan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a development consultant, and an Associate Professor
at Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies of Kobe University. She obtained her Ed.D.
in International Educational Development from Columbia University in the United States in 2005. She
has worked extensively in education planning and research in developing countries as a development
consultant and researcher. Professor Nishimura, the floor is yours.
Nishimura: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning and good evening to
the audience online. Thank you very much for being here with us to celebrate the 20th year anniversaryof SLAN, and also Service-Learning Center at ICU. Today I'm going to share the past, present, andpossibly we can think about the future together, of service-learning at ICU and beyond, so that we canwork together.
Before going into service-learning, let me share what partnership means in many areas of study.
We have all these kinds of definitions, but what they suggest is that we need to have common goals,
flexible governance, and shared responsibilities. And we sometimes have positive tensions, and also
pains as well as gains. So, what kind of journey we have gone through, and what kind of journey wewant to pursue in the future? Let's talk about it.
ICU started the service-learning program in 1996 as International Internship. And it was in 1999
when we expanded the service-learning as a college wide course, and then we initiated the ServiceLearning Center in 2002. We also initiated the Service-Learning Asian Network with other Asian
institutions. We published a monograph series so that we can share the experience of what we havelearned and developed service-learning. In between 2006 and 2008, we developed the cohortinternational service-learning programs in Asia and Africa. And we also published a monograph series
to document what we have done together. Then since 2009 we standardized and routinized this modelinternational service-learning programs, and we continuously published the monograph. Then in 2016an interesting thing happened. The partner universities in Asia said, “Why are we only accepting ICU
students to do service-learning together in Asian communities? Why not us sending students to you to
do service-learning in Japan together with ICU student? And we found it very interesting and very
meaningful to have more reciprocity in learning and serving for community. So, we developed an-84-

inbound service-learning program in 2016.
When you look at this graph, this is participants in service-learning. The blue one showsinternational service-learning, whereas the orange one shows community service-learning. As ourservice-learning started as an international internship to begin with, we have more student participation
in international service-learning than community service-learning over the past years. However, you
can note the recent upsurge of coronavirus. We suspended international travel last year. And a lot ofstudents have grown attention and interest in serving communities domestically. In 2011 also, we had
the Great East Japan earthquake when students’ awareness has grown to serve for community.
However, we haven't done, or made service-learning as a requirement for students. So, it's only 8 to
10% of the students at ICU who participate in service-learning currently, although we make servicelearning program a credit-bearing course for all students to take.
Let me look at this history of service-learning in Asia network. As you can see here in 2002, we
held the first conference on service-learning with our Asian partners. We discussed what's next. What's
the future endeavor? And today, after 20 years, we are questioning again, what's next in 20 years. In
2004, we had the first coordinators’ meeting and we had several SLAN meetings. We called it SLAN
planning and evaluation committee meetings and we also had evaluation workshop, so we were very
active at the beginning of this SLAN partnership. We also published a joint research publication in2009 to share experiences on what we have learned together. Ever since 2007, we have continuously
held SLAN annual meetings and bi-annual Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning asa platform for sharing knowledge and experiences. And then, as you can see, we developed thisinternational service-learning together, and also inbound international service-learning over the past
years.
So, what made us able to grow this partnership? We identified some enablers of service-learningin Asia. Firstly, in the presence of Prof. Kano Yamamoto. I'm humbly mentioning this. But it's strong
leadership that was very key to initiate this identification of service-learning as one of our mission
goals to serve for God and people, together with communities in Asia. And then he managed to gain
financial support from various organizations, including the United Board of Christian Higher
Education in Asia and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Also,
we were lucky enough to have Dr. Florence McCarthy who is here with us. Thank you very much,
Florence, for being with us, as a Technical Advisor at that time, she was in the United States, so Prof.
Kano invited her, and she kindly accepted to stay in Japan with us for several years to develop the
curriculum, and the survey questionnaires to evaluate the student learning outcome, how to
institutionalize this service-learning, so she contributed a lot to our program now. Also, we had existing
ICU network with other Asian universities. So, we didn't have to start from scratch, so that was an
asset. We also had a bilingual working culture, faculty and staff, and so that was also the foundationthat we had. And most importantly, probably, the students’ readiness and interest in service-learning-85-

programs were already there, so we initiated this program in a very smooth manner and tried toconstantly organize dialogues with partner universities in Asia.
So, when you make it like a graph, as the literature says, the common goal is very important.
Why are we doing service-learning? To serve for community, God, people, together with Asianpartners. And for world peace. So that common goal is very important and is supported by financial
and human resources to create quality learning, backed up with the leadership and institutional support,
and behind all that we have institutional mission and culture of critical inquiry for constantimprovement. I believe that all these factors contributed to our development in the past.
So, what about the learning outcomes of students? What have we made as an impact of students?
In 2009, Dr. Florence McCarthy mentioned several outcomes as evidence. She mentioned, for example,
new ways of behaving with others, skills and techniques developed to contribute to the social issues,feeling empowered as a student and a young person, and also having clearer career goals for the futureendeavors. Also similarly, she found out such learning outcomes as personal growth, social
development, technical or academic applications, and the impact on career choices have been seen in
ICU students’ report as well as in the United States’ institutions. So, she found some commonalities
across the programs in Service-Learning overseas.
More recently, Ms. Atsuko Kuronuma, who is here today also, thank you - she has been serving
as a coordinator for many years at ICU- analyzed the students’ reports and she found that there is a
deep conception of the meaning of doing service for others. So, in our class we emphasize a lot; Why
are you serving? For what purpose? How do you situate the social issues, and how best can you workwith others in the communities? So, students grow personal development, perspective transformation,interpersonal development, avoiding stereotyping, and tolerance. That have been very evident in thestudents’ learning outcome. However, she mentioned that an element of citizenship was somehow
missing, interestingly. And, less discussion or inquiry of social justice, social change, or democracy
was found.
Now, Japan Summer Service-Learning Program, which is the inbound service-learning programin Japan. We analyzed the students’ report together with Hitomi who was chairing today. We foundthat this program fostered students’ rich learning, well-being and also good relationship with thecommunity people. And interestingly, because we had international students serving for community
together with ICU students, ICU students could grow multicultural and reciprocal learning among
student groups, and somehow generated a comparative trans-local lens, which is a tricky word, on
students’ own locality, and link between local and global issues. Because ICU students are serving as
interpreters, sometimes between community and international students, they get very interestingquestions from international students to ask. Or they can see the reactions of the community people tosee all new perspectives. So, by doing so, ICU students could somehow bridge the local lens over andabove Japan and connect to perspectives of the Asian communities, so this JSSL somehow added a-86-new asset to our program.
So, in a nutshell, we have many learning outcomes, but to name a few, we have witnessed; thesensitivity with own biases, openness to multiple perspectives, creativity, connectivity between
multiple local reference points, including ICU students, their own locality be it urban or rural, deepand critical reflection on learning in action, de-framing and re-framing the social issues - this is very
important – often times students are very ready to serve for the community, but they tend to believe,“This is a social issue”, “Here is the poverty”, “Here is environmental degradation”, but once they
chip into the community, they realize the way they visualize the problem is not perceived similarly by
the community people. So, they question, “Am I really right to understand this issue as it is?” Or “Howcan I relate myself to this poverty issue?” They kind of have to question their own perception,
presumption and so forth. So, this is what we mean by de-framing. You de-frame your perspective andagain re-frame together with community people, which is quite interesting and important for academic
pursuit in the future, too. And this will be to search for strategies for social issues and career goals.
Thirty days is often not enough for students to accomplish what she or he wanted to do, but it's more
important for them to grow as a lifelong learner, to really engage themselves to further question andact on social issues in the future. So, career goals and all these strategies, practically for solving thesocial issues, that mindset has been grown by service-learning.
Many academic people here today as an audience, I recognize, and they perhaps know that theBringle et al. identified this SOFAR model in service-learning, whereby we have many stakeholders;
students, administrators, faculty, community organization, community residents. This is a very famousmodel. So, we established reciprocal relations so that we can really make service-learning moremeaningful, sustainable and effective in each community. Now when it comes to inbound servicelearning in Japan, I was thinking, “What kind of reciprocity are we producing?” And I found out,
because of the presence of international students, we have trans-local perspective that each and every
international student brings their own perspective of their community, residents, community
organization and even faculty behind them. They bring new perspective and exchange with ICU
students. They also develop each and every relation with community members and other partners inJapan. So, we could identify 20 reciprocal relationships. So we double the reciprocity that Bringle, et
al identified, and it's a very enriching learning process that we have found.
Having said that, we are not free from some challenges. For example, as Kuronuma mentioned,
probably we have an issue in critical perspective on and structural analysis of social inequality andproblems somehow as weak from Japanese students’ reflection. Our approach is pretty much focusedon students’ whole person development in the context of Christian philosophy, which is very important.
But probably less inquiry into social justice, social change or democracy. I don't know whether it's
good or not, but it's just a tendency that we found. And intended curriculum missed a little bit of abroader analysis of power dynamics in reality, whereby you know we have many times, maybe-87-

students may have savior complex, and say "We are from developed countries. Let's go to find out
what's poverty there. We are the one who help them." That's the kind of positionality they may have,but then, they have to analyze. "Why is this poverty happening?" "How can you situate yourself into
this power politics of social structure?" So that's a kind of power analysis. But on the other hand, somestudents feel that "Oh, because we are students, we don't have expertise. We have never worked before,
so we are very helpless." That's another passive positionality. But then they have to ask, "Why am I
behaving like this?" "How can I be more equal to the partners to really exchange our perspectives?" I
think that kind of power dynamics analysis and how to position yourself to the social issue to negotiate
for the better society, is very critical for the future.
Some other scholars had typology of service-learning. Like progressive, humanistic, and radical
models. It's kind of useful to clarify what it is that we are trying to achieve out of service-learning.
The progressive model normally focuses on individual responsibility or solving problems. The
humanistic approach focuses on self-actualization, enrichment, and psychological development. The
radical approach is more focused on transformation of society and really combating social injusticeand inequality.
When it comes to regional tendencies, some people found that US, UK and Canada tend to focus
on civic engagement, democracy and individual responsibility. Whereas South America and South
Africa tend to focus on social justice, solidarity, or equity. We have unique characteristics of servicelearning in different regions. How about Asia? We haven't documented well enough to say “This iskind of Asian way of doing service-learning”, so Carol and I were discussing we should do it someday,right? But according to the global citizenship education literature, they somehow say, Asia tends tofocus on morality, self-cultivation and compassion, with higher value placed on conformity rather thancritical thinking or social justice or transformation.
Then, what are we learning in Service-Learning? But unless we are clear about what kind of
quality learning we are producing through service-learning, we aren't just doing, you know, whatever
the learning and it's just let students decide what to learn. UNESCO in 1996 had a great report onlearning. It's called Delors report and it says learning is meant to be to know, to do, to live together,and to be. Right, so it opens up the people’s possible opportunities and possibilities to do many things,
and live together, be human, you know, with this self-dignity. But in 2010, they said these four are notenough. Let's add this “learning to transform yourself and the society” here. They added the criticalview. Unless we questioned the knowledge that you were given in schools and elsewhere, you may
just reproduce the knowledge that is given, and you don't question the system. So, if we havechallenges in society, why can't we have education for transformation? So that was proposed in 2010,
12 years ago. And it's last year when UNESCO published another new report. After 25 years, now theysaid “learning for common good” with this uncertain world. Now with all kinds of problems, what is
it that we are aiming at, as the end result of learning? How can I visualize, how can we visualize-88-common good as a collective thing that we are trying to target? So maybe service-learning can bethought through by looking at common good to achieve as communities in Asia and beyond.
Institutional challenges are also many. Although we say students volunteer, so no cost is borne,
that's not true, right? Every activity has a cost. So how can we share the cost for participation is a very
critical question to ask, and who can participate in service-learning, especially international servicelearning? Also, diversity in service-learning programs across Asia is huge. Some universities do creditbearing courses, others do not. Some make it graduation requirements, some do not. Some arepromoting interdisciplinary service-learning, others are mono-disciplinary programs. Some say 6
hours of service-learning is enough for the curriculum, some others like ICU, 30 days. That's longenough to learn. So, what we really can pursue as a learning, is still not very conclusive. Time
restriction, yes. Because of the curriculum, we have to be bound within our university regulations andtime schedule. And sometimes critical thinking skills tend to be fostered quite quickly after one term,
but let's say, well, creativity could take longer than one term, so when it comes to learning assessment,
is it enough for us to do just before and after the course? Or is it possible for us to trace the students,
and to really depict some learning outcomes in the mid- to long-term? That's another question, because
service-learning obviously is not just developing cognitive skills, but it's more to do with the
behavioral and attitudinal transformation of the students.
Lack of involvement of students in inquiry. This is also tricky. The more we institutionalized theservice-learning program with other partners, the more, how can I say, possibility of us taking freedomaway from students, especially in terms of what kind of theme they want to pick, or what kind ofactivities do they want to do, and how they want to identify community needs with the communities,
right? Because when partners already identified the needs, students just apply for the program and justgo and do. Of course, there is thinking, but in the process of pursuing “How can I de-frame myperspective?” or “How can I negotiate with the community to really identify the needs together?”, thatprocess can also generate a lot of rich learning. But we tend to conflict that with institutionalization.
Also, absence of co-teaching aspect of faculty. Our faculty involvement is quite limited as of now, I
would say. We serve as a service-learning advisor to grade students’ papers, we also have dialogue
with them, so it's good. But we don't get involved in curricular design or planning together, or we don't
go to the site with a student. So, co-teaching aspect of faculty has been missing from international
service-learning nowadays.
Lack of joint institutional objectives of doing service-learning together and clarity of social
impact. So, for students, it is 30 days. Great learning. But if we are sending students to the same
destination every year, what kind of social impact can we reach at the end of the day? What are weaiming at by sending students to the community? Maybe institutionally, we can do more than juststudent assessment. And coherence across and connection with different courses is also anotherchallenge when service-learning is not completely integrated into the curriculum.

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Okay, I think I have to stop soon. Lessons learned. Mutual trust is fundamental, and we managed
to do it, owing to the institutional support and mission. But initial trust relationship should beinstitutionalized for its sustainability. We have to put a lot of resources, human, physical, financial andmoral support continuously. And reciprocity is hard to establish beyond the number of student
exchange, unless we continuously dialogue with the partner institutions and try to make sure whatkind of learning that we are expecting the students to get out of the service-learning. Also, routinizationof the program could take a risk of dependency, and one way study abroad type of service-learning
mindset. And shared leadership and involvement of faculty are necessary, not just dependent on the
person who serves as the Director of SLC, but maybe the general faculty need to be more involved.
Institutional commitment. Further commitment to financial and human resources investment will benecessary, and then further innovation on the learning and social impact assessment is needed.
So, questions for partners. I know the SLAN partners are there online. So, I would like to ask youthese questions. What kind of quality learning can we design together? How can we make sure that
we go beyond international cultural exchange to serve the community? For what purpose? How can
we create purpose-driven service-learning? Do students get enough challenges? Do students getchallenges to question assumption, social inquiry, positionality, and epistemology that leads to deeplearning beyond self-cultivation? How can you visualize social problems? How can you develop a
relationship with others? Who are you to serve the community? What are you in these social issues?
So those quite critical questions must match our students’ learning. And finally, to what extent should
we incorporate critical reflection and positionality and social transformation? As I mentioned, in Asian
service-learning, probably we have been less paying attention to the social transformation, but how
best can we include this together as a common goal? Are we not exploiting community resources forlearning? What common good are we serving with communities?
So, for the next year 20 years, I would like to propose 6 actions if possible. Firstly, joint evaluation
would be very ideal for us to do now because we have developed so many programs. Now let's sit
down together and see what we have achieved, and what kind of framework can we have for
evaluation? Also, financial resources. Let's seek financial resources to really make our experiences
accumulate in a more profound manner and to be able to share our experiences more widely. And also,
research projects on the social impact of the service-learning will be in an ideal area for us to develop
as case studies, plus oral history projects of service-learning leaders in this region, to really say whatis the unique feature of Asia and how can we really dialogue with other regions to develop servicelearning further. And then probably we can compile all the wisdom to publish books on servicelearning in Asia. We are still under-representing in the scholarly work on service-learning. We havelike more than 5000 peer reviewed articles over the past five years only, in the world, so we reallyneed to disseminate information and try to be rigorous to exchange our information with others, andto expand into regional dialogue with other regions. Today we are very happy to invite inter-regional-90-

participants as well.
Thank you very much. That's all from me, and you're welcome to ask me any question. Thank youvery much.
Yokote: Thank you Prof. Nishimura for your stimulating, thought provoking lecture.

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Question and Answer Session
Yokote: We have time for quick questions. Please write your question in the Q&A section of Zoom or
those who are here in person, please raise your hand. Anyone have question? Or comments will bevery nice too.
Nishio: Thank you very much. I'm interested in your presentation on the differences of focus ofservice-learning between Asian countries and Western countries. Asian countries focus more on
personal development rather than social justice, or social common goods, that was quite interesting tome. Is there any other difference between Western countries and Asian countries in terms of social
issues? We are facing the universal poverty issue or the same kind of social problems. But in Asia or
in Japan, there are some unique social issues, such as loneliness of old people and social withdrawalof young people. Low fertility rate are so serious in Japan and maybe in Korea too. If you have any
idea about the challenges or problems of Asian countries that service-learning should do somethingfor?
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much for your wonderful questions. Actually, Carol and I discussed
this issue yesterday. She's working on aging society and how we combat aging society in Singapore.
But of course, Japan and other countries share the same issues, so in the future we could create thematic
service-learning program across Asia to tackle such issues together. That's one aspect. Another aspect
we discussed is what's unique about Asia. Sometimes the way we see problems may be different fromothers, right? Even if there is a problem, we tend not to say there is a problem. Or even students, eventhough they are capable of doing things, they would say “No, I can't do it. That's too much for me. I'm
not an expert.” So that kind of humbleness in a good way, but passivity in other way in the western
framework, could be kind of depicted in service-learning attitude and behaviors and learning process.
So somehow in Asia we need to train students to be able to express themselves and feel safe speaking
up and exchange opinions with others. It is regardless of age, gender or social status, so for that part,
we maybe need some more attention than in Western countries where individuals are really used to
speaking up and exchanging opinions and so forth. But we still need a lot of room to investigate thisin terms of the process and learning outcome in Asia.
Nishio: Thank you, that's an interesting point. Less than 10% of ICU students are engaged in servicelearning programs. They are quite active and mainly women. But we also have a problem with inactive,
isolated, lonely students, especially under the coronavirus. I hope the service-learning program cancontribute to those less active students. That's what I thought. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much for that suggestion. Let us think more, about wider participation.
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Thank you very much, Nishio-sensei.
Yokote: We have a question from an online participant. “Why do you think service-learning is still
under-representing even though there is a strong emphasis on the combination of learning and social
services?”
Nishimura: Representing meaning the number of students, right? We had a dilemma of having very
wonderful comprehensive service-learning program that take 2 terms of one year if you are very
serious about preparation, actual service-learning and reflection process, that could have a conflictwith students with other interests in studying abroad or doing volunteer work or internship in otherflexible ways. So, students have many options so far. That's one reason probably. But we have potential
students who could also participate, like Prof. Nishio pointed out. Those who feel isolated or those
who feel that they are not empowered enough or powerless. They may be able to. So, we have to figureout how to reach those students. Also, some students would say, “Oh the curriculum. There are toomuch restrictions. We have to write a report, we have to decide the service site, an advisor, we have tofinish everything within 30 days during the term. That's too much. I would rather do volunteer freely
over the weekends or anytime we want”. So, we have very active students who are not part of servicelearning but somewhere out there to associate themselves with social issues. And that's fine, too. I
think we can be open to choices of the students as far as the students are engaging themselves throughthe community. But thank you very much. My goal personally is to make 1/3 of the ICU students
engaged to service-learning in the future. By next year, maybe. So, thank you very much for theencouragement.
Yokote: Okay, thank you, Prof. Nishimura. If you have further questions, we have time towards theend of the session today. So, let's move on to the panel discussion. Thank you very much Prof.
Nishimura for your wonderful presentation.

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Panel Interactive Discussion on the Future of SL in Asia: post/with Corona, with
Practitioners, changing Socio-Political Context, Ultimate Goals/Outcomes in the
RegionYokote: Next, let us proceed to the panel discussion. We have invited 3 panelists who contributed
immensely to the development of service-learning in Asia, representing different regions in Asia. I
would like to introduce each one, starting Dr. Ma. Dr. Carol Ma, Associate Professor, Singapore
University of Social Sciences. Dr. Ma is the founding member of S-L at Lingnan University and has
revitalized the Service-Learning Asia Network. As a pioneer of S-L in Hong Kong, she had set up the
S-L Higher Education Network in Hong Kong and was among the first to promote S-L in mainland
China. Dr. Ma obtained her Ph.D. in Social Sciences with focus on Social Gerontology, from Lingnan
University, Hong Kong in 2006. As an energetic and committed scholar, Dr. Ma has published many
books and articles on S-L and aging.
Dr. Betty McCann, President of Silliman University. Dr. McCann assumed the presidency of
Silliman University since June 2018 as the 13th and first woman president of Silliman. In January
2019 to December 2021, she served as President of the Association of Christian Universities andColleges in Asia, known as ACUCA. She is a registered psychologist with the Board of Psychologyof the Professional Regulation Commission of the Philippines and a certified specialist in social
psychology by the Psychological Association of the Philippines. In 1987, she earned her doctorate
degree in Psychology from the Ateneo de Manila University. Dr. McCann served the United Board ofHigher Education from 2002 until 2013 in various capacity including Vice President for programs.
She is one of the pioneers in Service-Learning in Southeast Asia.
Dr. Mercy Pushpalatha, Former President of Lady Doak College, India, and former Consultant
of United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia. Dr. Mercy obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistryfrom Alagappa University in India in 2002. She served as the Principal and Secretary of Lady DoakCollege, India from 2008 until 2017. During her tenure as principal, Dr. Mercy and her colleagues
introduced Life Frontier engagement, a community-based action research and experiential learning
initiative into the curriculum for all the final year undergraduate students. Dr. Mercy was the Program
Consultant for South Asia Programs in the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia from
October 2018 till March 2022. She coordinated the service-learning and peace education programs, inthe United Board.
Now, Prof. Nishimura will moderate the panel discussion. Over to you Nishimura sensei.
Nishimura: Thank you very much, Yokote-san, for your kind introduction and welcome, very
distinguished speakers including Carol, Betty and Mercy. Thank you very much for all the contribution
to service-learning in Asia over the past 20 years. I have prepared three questions to each of you, andI'm going one by one in terms of question.

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My first question. How does regional networking impact service-learning in Asia? Probably both
positively and negatively. Let me ask Carol first.
Ma: Hello everyone. Thank you Mikiko. Before I answer these questions, I just really want tocongratulate ICU, because ICU is, you know, the first university to set up the SLAN. Thank you, Prof.
Kano Yamamoto who is here also. Without you I don't think we have SLAN, so do you mind if we allgive him a big hand again? I think it's very important. The reason why we have today's symposium isbecause of you, Prof. Yamamoto. So, when Mikiko asked me these questions, I actually prepared ascript, but I decide, if you don't mind, I don't go for this. The reason is, I think the most important for
the regional network to impact service-learning in Asia, one thing that I really think that the mostimportant is about people. How does it actually impact the service-learning development in Asia. Why
people? I will give you an example. Because in 2004, in January, as Prof. Kano Yamamoto justreminded me, is our first meet-up in Chiang Mai, Thailand to attend a conference by IPSL International Partnership for Service Leadership. And at that time Betty was at the conference. So, thismeeting actually impacted a lot of people because at that time I was a student. Remember in 2004?
That means after two years from set-up of ICU Center and also the setup of SLAN. So, I was a student
there, but I met with Betty and Prof. Kano Yamamoto, and other service-learning practitioners. And
they inspired me a lot.
And then in 2006, I remember we organized the first Asia Pacific Regional Conference on
service-learning at Lingnan University. At that time, I got to know more about our SLAN members.
And I got a chance to have a coffee with Prof. Kano Yamamoto. And then he asked me, “Carol, canyou take care of the SLAN? How about you revitalize the SLAN?” And why I set the positive impact,
right? Is because of he and I, our conversation you can imagine, actually, it's a kind of anintergenerational conversation. I study about aging right? And I respect seniors. I also respect at thattime, Prof. Kano Yamamoto who is really a leader in the field, and I learned a lot from him. Becauseof him, right? He actually impacted me to take over the SLAN, as a babysitter. Because the SLAN is
actually based in ICU, Japan. But because, I took care of this, and then this actually impacted me, andalso impacted my students, and impacted the faculty members at Lingnan University and also impacted
lots of leadership. The senior management people at Lingnan University at that time, and we actually
set-up the Office of Service-Learning in 2006. And then, we promote service-learning not only inHong Kong but also regionally. So, I can tell that this is one of the very important impacts to the region.
With this SLAN network, we actually, if we remember, we mentioned about that SLAN started
in 2002, as a platform to promote regional service-learning research project, after the revitalization ofthis SLAN, the rules of SLAN are getting clear and focused. We, including students, faculty exchange,
regional service-learning project and research collaboration. I actually intended to bring this here, so
I don't think a lot of people get a chance to touch this service-learning in Asia, creating networks andcurricula in higher education. The date is 30th of June to 3rd of July in 2002. This is actually very-106-

important to document the first day of the SLAN meeting yet in Japan. Because of this meeting, it let
us have a lot of development of service-learning in the region. I can tell you the regular SLAN meetinghas enabled institutions to share and update their institutional development in service-learning andcommunity engagement. At the beginning in 2002, we have around 10 members. And now we haveover 50 members in the region. So, President of ICU, I think you need to be very proud of youruniversity. Because of ICU, we can actually support a lot of other member institutions in the region to
do service-learning.
It also created a regular dialogue to exchange ideas and discuss the best practice of servicelearning. And I want to tell you we are also very proud of, especially now, we have a lot of SLAN
member here, and we have increased the number of publications other than this one, right? We have a
lot of books, journal articles. And because we want to showcase it and let others know what we aredoing. Then we even have different steps, issue in service-learning published in the region or eveninternational journals. And we also increase the number of funding for both locally and internationallyto support cross-border service-learning and research projects. Of course, if you ask me, is thatenough? I think it is not enough. We need to have more. And also, we have a lot of partnerships andconferences and a number of local service-learning networks. I know Japan, we actually have a local
service-learning network. And Hong Kong, we have network. In Taiwan we have a Taiwan ServiceLearning Association. In Philippines, they also have their network. Because of the SLAN development,
we also inspire a lot of local development.
And besides that, we are also strengthening the momentum to do service-learning and building
friendship within the region. One of the reasons why I come here in Japan. You know the pandemic,
we actually cannot see a lot of people. I'm actually very happy that I can get a chance to come here. I
talked to Mikiko and said that if I come, I hope I can meet with my friend, Prof. Kano Yamamoto. So,
I really want to say thank you that today I can see you. It is really, really my honor to see you again
here. And I can also see Yoshito, the former Director of Service-Learning Center and our friends, Markand also Atsuko here, and of course Mikiko. And all the friends you know from ICU.
And if you ask me about the negative part of the SLAN, I think we are too humble as well. We
always talk about we are very humble Asian. We need to actually challenge ourselves. We need toquestion ourselves, whether we are, doing enough or not. From faculty perspective, while you are
actually doing service-learning, we have to ask ourselves whether our students they do servicelearning, whether they are equal to the discipline or not, whether it is actually linked to the learning
objective of the curriculum. As students, we don't just see doing service-learning just in the institute.
We are all here to provide a platform to create a whole person of our students. So, what we want is,
we want our students to equip this service-learning attitude as a life-long learner. It's not just because
they are in the university, that we need to serve. We hope that this actually is a life-long learning ofskills and attitude for our students. So as faculty members and also institutions, the leadership is very-107-

important because the senior management group with the institutionalization of service-learning plan,
will actually make the whole university better and also do more or related to university social
responsibility. Curriculum decide for social good because we always talk about curriculum design,
right? Whether our curriculum design is that for social good or not. UNESCO talking about learningfor social good. I always ask myself when we talk about service-learning curriculum development.
Are we doing curriculum development for social good? So, purpose of education and communityuniversity partnership. So, are we doing enough? We need to continue to challenge ourselves. I don't
use the term negative, but I use the term challenge. Whether we have challenged ourselves enough, todo more in the region, so this is actually my humble ideas, thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much for your presentation. Also, your humble and yet challenging
comments. Thank you. So let us move on to Betty. May I invite Betty to say a few words on this point?
Impact of service-learning Asian network, please.
McCann: Hello everyone. First of all, let me join the group in greeting ICU for the celebration of its
20th work in the field of service-learning. Also, to greet my personal greetings to Prof. Kano
Yamamoto, also former trustee of United Board and together we had been promoting service-learningin Asia. I note that Carol has already answered all the three questions, and I just would like to focus
now on some of those elements. While she mentioned about people themselves as a key component in
the promotion, development, and success of service-learning, we may also have to go back into theparticular label of programs, like service-learning as a program of the institution, should really be seen
and viewed in relation to the institutional vision and mission of the institution. And when we talk about
regional networking that allows us to be in partnership with other colleges and universities in Asia.
Mention was made about the preliminary results on the outcome of service-learning, and also making
a comparison between service-learning as applied in Asia and its outcome compared to other parts ofthe globe. I must say, though, that it may be too early for us to come up with those generalizations,because, as we have already admitted, we have to do more generation of knowledge here in Asia, andas pointed out by one of those who wrote in the chat box, Asia is so diverse. As an area and as a people.
And therefore, we can expect diverse results in the responses of our students and faculty members
who are directly involved in service-learning.
Also as a program, while we mentioned about some of the challenges, it may also have to dowhen we do not have a grasp of the social impact or the concept of common good, for instance. Thatmay also be because of the way a program of service-learning has been presented or cultivated andpracticed in the field. We know that a curriculum design has to take care of those objectives of the
program or of the course, all the way to the evaluation and assessment of the program and there in thepast we did focus on reflection questions because students may not be able to articulate a lot of thosethat we think are important, but the students may have not also been guided in their exposure in-108-

service-learning. So, beyond the personal development, that we say is what is being emphasized, it
may also be a question of not being able to have a higher level of questioning. Or, going down, goingup to the reflection points and focusing on social justice, positionality or even what's happening topeople in the community and how they view some of those issues.
Definitely regional networking will allow us to do more and not just look at our own institution
but view the program, especially if we consider the Sustainable Development Goals as adopted bymany countries all over the globe. Like where are we, insofar as those thematic concerns are, and if
one university in a partnership, for example, is interested in life underwater, for instance, we knowthat looking at life underwater will have an interaction with the 16 other development goals. Like
women issues or something about employment or freedom from hunger, no poverty. All those are
actually interrelated, so we focus on one theme but in the partnership itself we will be able to see how
is life underwater being explored and being considered as a source of learning in Indonesia, in thePhilippines or in Hong Kong or in India and several other parts in Asia. So, if we go thematically, thenour unit of analysis would be more or less organized, rather than being here and there, and therefore
we are not able to grasp a specific social impact. So regional networking to me offers opportunities
for the academic enhancement of the conduct of service-learning. And I always talk about breaking
down the silos in higher education, where we say the silo of instruction and then we have the silo of
research and the silo of community engagement. Through service-learning, we will be able to break
down those silos, where a teacher and the students go to the community, engaged in some social andeconomic activities, in fact, but at the same time use that as an occasion to conduct research for needs
assessment for documentation and even about project evaluation. So, all the three, what is called pillarsof higher education are also being handled by the service-learning as a methodology, as a method andpractice of education. Then we can say that service-learning is a tool for change in the region of Asiaand other parts of the globe, by focusing on what needs to be changed, how can we bring about thechange through service-learning, and then go through the process of using the different elements intheir curriculum design. So, I'm all for regional networking, but also being more purposive and goingfor also faculty partnerships and even joint curriculum designs. So, a lot more can be done, but we justhave to handle them in bite size pieces. Otherwise, we get to be so overwhelmed that in the end we
may not be able to measure what we intend to do. So thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Betty for your very productive suggestion of having a regional
thematic service-learning program. And we also need to enhance the linkage among education,
research, and social engagement through service-learning. How can we make higher education moretransformational by introducing service? Thank you so much, so now let me invite Mercy, please.
Pushpalatha: It's my pleasant experience to be with you this morning and late night for our friends inSouth and North America, good morning to my friends in Asia. And good evening to our colleagues-109-and friends from the other parts of the world. And it's really an excitement to me to see Kano-sensei
virtually today, and Nishio-sensei virtually today. And Mikiko and Atsuko, really I'm so thankful forthis opportunity that you extended to be with you this morning. As I was being introduced, I wasserving in a college called Lady Doak. In the Asian Network, S-L was introduced, way back in theyear 2004. So, I'm so happy to be part of the celebration of the 20th year of service-learning of ICU.
In the year 2002, I was part of the United Board Fellows Program placement in ICU. For one semester
I stayed in the guest house of ICU. The guest house of ICU, where Dr. Florence McCarthy was also
staying over there and she offered a course in ICU. At that time, Introduction to Service-Learning,which was one of the few courses which were offered in English. So, I audited her course during mystay over there, and at that time she connected me with some of her students in the class who had anidea of coming to India for their international service-learning program. So, that is how the wholenetworking of ICU and Lady Doak College service-learning networking started. The journey beganwith my United Board Fellows Program way back in 2002. So, when I came back to my homeinstitution, I discussed with my then principal Dr. Jeyaraj and then it came into force. Implemented
the first batch of two ICU students coming to Lady Doak College in the year 2004. And then in theyear 2007 we had that international service-learning model program which was sponsored by the Japan
Government, hosted by Lady Doak Collage. I think that was the time Mutsuko and Kano Sensei, they
all visited Lady Doak College campus for the final sessions of that particular program. And that
introduced our service-learning program to the other Asian institutions like Soul Women University
and then Lingnan University and then Chung Chi College. The students of service-learning were allpart of that international conference. So, after 2007 our networking with the other Asian institutions
started. So, every year in Lady Doak College we used to have the summer service-learning programby the ICU students for about 6 weeks and the other Asian country like Korea and Hong Kong students
for about 3 weeks, one batch in January and one batch in June. So that is how it has been going.
Now reflecting on the question that Mikiko asks, what are the positive impacts and what are thechallenges. So, when I was reflecting on this experience is, in the past few years like nearly 15 years
or so with these Asian universities, some of the aspects which came to my mind, I should say, definitely
the vision of our networking of the institutional leaders only paved way for this network. Of course,
the students may want to go, and the faculty may want to send their students. So, unless theadministration and the leadership of the college, gives a support system for this kind of networking,regional networking was not possible and that was made possible with all those institutions with whom
we had networking then. Almost all batches of students said it had been a personal, transformative
experiences for them. In Lady Doak College we used to do before the students used to come forexchange program, we used to identify what is the special area of interest, which kind of community
service they want to undertake. And we used to place them in such places and in the city called Madurai
where we have Lady Doak College, there is a place called Mazhalai Illam in Tamil. And what is the-110-meaning? It is the place where the kids, the infants, babies, the girl babies who were attacked by female
infanticide issue, they were gathered. People used to save those babies, bring and leave them in thiscenter. And these girls used to go there for their service-learning program. So that had changed a lot.
Because the baby wouldn't have been there alive unless somebody took an initiative to save them, andthese girls had an opportunity to hold these babies in their hands to keep them on their lap. So, mostof them said, and similarly visiting to old age homes, visiting to orphanages, so invariably they all
used to say it had been a personally transformative experience since they come from developed
countries to a country like India, that had a rich impact in them I could say. And what we used to do
like once in a week, the faculty of the service-learning from Lady Doak College, we used to have areflective session with them, so during which we used to raise some reflection questions, that reallyenabled them to identify what kind of personal learning or personal benefits they were able to gainfrom the community. And they also used to go to the community always with the buddies. Because
the communities they go, they go and interact only if they know the local language. So, they had totake a student from the college, which is the host institution so they become buddies, and I have seenlots of these students their friendship became long lasting after the years they left their institutions.
They continue to be their friends and this experience on the whole, I could say, it's more of a sociocultural learning for them. Because it's completely the societal challenges which are different in India
and the cultural aspects are different in India from their own cultures, so this is one aspect that all thesestudents really appreciate it invariably. And we used to have an international night during that timethey stay on campus for the exchange program. And during that time they used to come in theirtraditional dresses and they used to depict the traditional dances. So it used to be really an enrichingexperience for the students of home institution and host institution. And with ICU I could say thisservice-learning networking initiated, later resulted in one semester study abroad program for Lady
Doak students. Because service-learning students used to come from Japan, ICU to Lady Doak, andLady Doak students used to go to ICU for semester abroad study programs.
But what was the challenge that we faced? I mean from our perspective, we all learned servicelearning as academics classroom learning, linked to community service. And then on reflection youracademic knowledge is enhanced. Because when we started with service-learning, I remember very
well Dr. Florence McCarthy was invited to Lady Doak College. She used to teach us how your hardcore science is, you will talk to a person who is a farmer on the streets, and that helped us to understandthe right concept of service-learning. So, our service-learning programs were completely academic
service-learning but with respect to these exchange students, what we could see is it was more of asocio-cultural learning only. But for some of them it had helped them to select their career options.
Because in the final day in the exit meeting, we used to ask them to share what was their learning. A
few international students have shared, it had helped them to make options for their career, andotherwise it was more of a socio-cultural exchange. And we even used to give them a certificate saying-111-

it's a socio-cultural exchange program. Not exactly a service-learning program. So, it's more for the
personal learning that they had. And in many of the cases, we wondered whether the international
service-learning was a credit-bearing experience for them. And if it was a credit- bearing experience,then it would have been really a concrete, dependable experience and when it is not credit-bearing,
mostly what happens, it's like a visit to another country. Visit to India. And I mean you taste the Indian
food, you see the Indian culture, Indian community. So, I feel that is another challenge that needs tobe addressed, if the international exchange programs networking results in a credit-bearing. Then it
could really be a concrete experience. And I think it was Nishio-sensei, he was asking about under
representation. Under representation of students in service-learning, I would say, if the servicelearning programs are related to the academics, and the students will learn how their academic
knowledge is enhanced through community service, then naturally, their interest to community
service-learning may also become more. But otherwise, it's not just the community getting benefitedalone. It's a professional development and personal development that needs to be focused in the
networking service-learning programs also, not focusing only on social transformation, social justice,and it is also the student academic knowledge is enhanced. Then that might encourage many of thestudents to register for service-learning programs. For that, I was also thinking as Dr. Betty suggested,institutions can work on courses like joint online courses, designing online courses, focusing onsustainable development goals. Because that's a common goal for all countries and therefore it could
be like an online course where the content could be a hybrid pedagogy, the instructions could be online,
but the community service could be on site offline, under the reflections and the videos could be sharedin the discussion forum. I have a feeling, even we do it that way, and it is a credit-bearing course, thenthat would encourage many of the students to really register for service-learning, and that might resultin their personal development and in their professional development. So, these are my reflections on
the positives, and the challenge is how it will be addressed. Thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much, Mercy. Also, for your wonderful reflection of what had beenachieved. It's very impressive to see how interpersonal relationships actually start a great partnershipregionally, like Carol and Mercy mentioned, and also the role of reflection in service-learning. Whatkind of critical questions can we ask, to simulate everybody’s thinking and transformational thinking?
Maybe for that, a pedagogical methodology we can develop further together. Thank you. Because you
have given us comprehensive answers to cover all three questions, we kind of changed our plan so wego for Plan B so quickly because of the interest of time. I would like to ask just one quick question.
Now we have developed various kinds of programs over the past 20 years, what is the next 20 years?
What should we set as a goal in the next 20 years? What do you think is the most important goal orgoals that we can set as SLAN? Sorry, this is a new question. I know you are not prepared to answer
this, but if you can say something, quickly, maybe 2 minutes each, please, thank you.

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Ma: You want me to start first? Or we invite Betty to start first?
McCann: Okay. In the next 20 years, I think we need to have a handle as to what we have achieved in
the 20 years up to now. So there has to be some kind of dialogue, assessment, planning among the key
partner institutions, so that together we can decide what will be the next steps, and make those specificsteps doable. Of course, we have so many great ideas, but if we look at specific steps to take, we
identified a good number of them. Like enhancing the teaching of service-learning, integrating
research and community engagement, a thematic approach to service-learning, so that we will be able
to measure social impact or whether we have obtained common good or not. All these can be discussed
and maybe tasking, like which subgroups can do one thing, rather than just one doing everything. And
we know that that kind of approach will just be too overwhelming and in the end, we don't haveanything concrete that can be expected of this partnership. So, so many to do in the next 20 years.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Betty for your wonderful suggestions.
Ma: Actually, I agree a lot. The reason why I said let Betty answer first, is because Betty is the Presidentof Silliman University, and I remember that few years ago we actually had a presidential meeting inIndonesia, Petra Christian University. I think when I look back again, 20 years ago, I actually use thisbook again… I hope I can keep this, but I don't know whether Mikiko you allow me to keep this. Oneof the agenda 20 years ago, actually, the topic is where do we go from here? So, 20 years ago we asked
exactly the same questions, and now we have to ask ourselves. I remember that in 2015 Lingnan
University at that time, we were at the university, we actually sent out a survey to our member
institutions, how many institutions are doing academic service-learning. At that time 44% of themembers said that they are growing academic service-learning. Now it's 2022. And yesterday we had
our SLAN meeting. We had around 16 members attending the meeting, and many of them actually
eager to do a few things. And one is about research collaboration. So, we talked about this researchcollaboration. We have a platform as what Betty mentioned, right? We need a dialogue. We need a
dialogue to ask ourselves what are the issues that we want to do as a research partnership. And second,
we also talked about the curriculum design. And I think 20 years ago we also had one session talking
about forms of service-learning curricula. Because I have all the evidence here. So, somehow we haveto ask ourselves now again. How much curriculum development is related to service-learning andcommunity engagement nowadays? And what we want to see in 20 years-time.
So as Mercy mentioned about SDGs. I think we have to ask ourselves, right? Which area, whichpart that we need to focus? And I actually have a dream, but I don't know whether this dream can cometrue or not. We need a powerful donor that can support the development of service-learning in Asia.
We may have some crazy ideas, to think of creating the Asia Pacific Service-Learning Institute or
economy that we can actually centralize some of the work that we are doing or even share with otherpeople. But again, we need time to sit together, because now we are all meeting online. I think we can-113-

have one day that we can meet face to face, and really keep track of our wisdom, and also think ofwhat we can do in the next 20 years.
And then one last thing that I actually really want to say is, a lot of things that we have been doingin these 20 years. And I really, really hope that we can continue to do this collaboration. And we needmore support to this SLAN. And currently every member here, we are all volunteers. I know next year,
our regional conference, the 9th regional conference. will be at Christ University in India. So, after wehave to rotate to another university again or another country. We need more support. We need more
people, more committed people. I hope in 20 years' time we can also grow with more young people,
because we need more young people to join us. And that's the reason why I come to Japan today, thisweek, because of Kano Yamamoto. Because I really learned a lot from him, and I hope that we cangrow more Carol Ma because at that time I was a student. I hope we can have more students who cantake up Service-Learning Asian Network. So, this is the 20 years. And I hope we have many, many 20
years ahead. And I think that's the most important. I think that's it. But again, Mikiko, I think we havea lot of things that we can do together. It's not easy because I know that some of the universities, they
have not even fully institutionalized service-learning because they face a lot of area, I don't knowwhether we can have another crazy ideas to organize another presidential meeting. And then Betty,
you are the leader in the region also. I don't know whether this is a right time to talk about this, but if
we can gather more presidents together, maybe we can do something for the upcoming 20 years. Thankyou.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much for your wonderful ambition to share with us. So, Mercy?
Pushpalatha: I look at it as a hitherto and henceforth. So, 20 years, we have come hitherto andhenceforth, how are we now moving ahead? This is a very crucial time I believe, wherein I strongly
feel we need to make a kind of, as Dr. Betty suggested, I could return it in my notes, as says “why nota data-based research study?” Wherein you identify the institutions which are involved in networking,and what are all the different types of networking under service-learning? Whether it is academic
service-learning, networking or socio-cultural or social transformative. So, what kind of, and what are
the outcomes or competencies developed? Because that's actually the impact, right? We can say, likewhole person development is one of the outcomes for this student who participate in the servicelearning program. So how are those competencies developed? So, if it is a research study, kind of adatabase is done, based on that data, we can move ahead how we need to strengthen it if there is aparticular networking which we find is not impactful. We can try to truly modify it in terms of theother impactful service-learning programs. Because in international service-learning so much of time,energy and resources, financial resources, everything are being put in. So, it should be a high payoff
activity. It should not be a low payoff activity. And the networking should become stronger andstronger. If that is the case, based on a database research study, how are we going to strengthen up-114-

those service-learning programs? Networking programs which could result in a high payoff impact?
So that could be one.
And another one, again, I go back to my earlier suggestion. Identifying strategy-focused courses.
I had actually written it in my notes. For example, good health and well-being. It is common whether
it's a developed country or developing country like India. It's a common theme. So, in which, we haveto really identify the faculty members, but this is a challenge for the institution. Faculty members whoare interested in offering such kind of an interdisciplinary course. It cannot be one particulardepartment that can offer. It has to be an interdisciplinary course with the home institution, as well aswith the host institution, and usually they say in the effective online courses should have adequate
number of synchronous sessions and asynchronous sessions. Asynchronous session is, lot of activities
being given, the students can do it by themselves, and then they post their questions and doubts andreflections, in a discussion forum. So, the faculty can be trained accordingly to evolve this kind of adesign, an interdisciplinary online course. They call it as 3C's in one of the programs I learned. It iscontent, coach and community. So, what kind of a content need to be created? Coach is the instructor,
the teachers who are involved. And community is the learning community. Service-learning students
from the networking institutions, not the community wherein they are going to work. They all need tobe considered while evolving this kind of thematic common goals, Sustainable Development Goalsbased courses. And there is an attraction in it. In fact, Times Higher Education seems to be giving
some impact award that is based on the institutions which have been offering Sustainable Development
Goals’ courses so that can also be an attractive point for the institutions, to go for such kind of courses
to be designed. So, maybe at the regional level, Asian level, we can promote many institutions to movein this direction. That's my humble suggestion. Thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you so much Mercy, for your suggestion for evidence-based or databasedplanning. It will also impact assessment of the service-learning together. Make it visible. Thank you
so much. So now let us close this panel session. Audience, please hold your questions. You are given
the opportunity to make any comments or questions later through Q&A. So, Hitomi back to you.
Yokote: Thank you very much Prof. Nishimura for chairing the panel discussion, and thank you for all
the panelists. Dr. Ma, Dr. Betty and Dr. Mercy, you all are such legendary people in South Asia andSoutheast Asia, and we are so honored to have you as our panelists. Now let's have a break for about
10 minutes. Thank you. We also have some entertainment for you, ICU students performing somemusic during the break time. Have a nice break. See you in 10 minutes.

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Comments from Service-Learning Specialists in other Regions
Yokote: Welcome back. Now we would like to invite two experts of service-learning, from different
regions for their comments on the panel discussions.
Dr. Tim Stanton, Former Director, Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University (USA).
Over 30 years at Stanford University he established and directed the Bing Overseas Studies Programin Cape Town; co-founded and directed the Community Health concentration at Stanford Medical
School; served as Associate Director and Director of the Haas Center for Public Service. Prior to
Stanford, he directed Human Ecology Field Studies at Cornell University. As consultant, Dr. Stanton
assisted Campus Compact in organizing national faculty institutes on service-learning curriculum
development, coordinated the Research Universities Civic Engagement Network (TRUCEN), and coauthored the online Research University Engaged Scholarship Toolkit. He served as academic advisor
and trainer for South Africa's Community-Higher Education-Service Partnerships (CHESP)
programme. He earned his Ph.D. in human and organization systems at Fielding Graduate University.
Dr. Florence McCarthy, Former Special Advisor for Service-Learning at ICU. She resides inAustralia. Dr. McCarthy obtained her Ph.D. in Comparative Sociology, Michigan State University in
the United States. She has been closely associated with the Service-Learning Asia Network since 2000.
She has supported the introduction of service-learning in 14 institutions in 11 Asian and South Asian
countries encouraging the inclusion of service-learning in their institutional curriculum and practice.
In the 1990's, she was Associate Professor and Director of the International Educational Development
Department, Teachers College, Columbia University, and from 2000, was Visiting Professor inManagement and Consultant in Service-Learning, International Christian University. Working inSouth and Southeast Asia, her work focused on education and societal change, the role of women, andmigration and refugee issues.
Now, over to you Prof. Nishimura.
Nishimura: Thank you very much. And thank you very much Tim and Florence for being there with
us today with such deep and broad wisdom from all parts of the world. So let us hear your comment
on what we have discussed so far. Any suggestion for the future to come in service-learning in Asia.
So, may I invite Tim first to speak, please?
Stanton: Yes, and good evening to you or afternoon. I'm delighted to be here, thank you Mikiko for
inviting me. And congratulations to ICU and all the SLAN folks for the great progress that we heard
about so far today and I'm very aware what you've accomplished over the years. I was very fortunate
to be invited by Carol to the 2006, I think it was, SLAN meeting at Lingnan. Carol can correct myhazy memory, but then and at several meetings after that I followed SLAN quite closely. I've always
enjoyed attending your meetings and have learned a great deal doing so. So, commenting on the richconversation that's transpired so far and challenges… so many good ideas have been thrown around I-116-

can't do justice to them all for sure. I have a few comments that I'll make and some questions to raisethat may lead to some suggestions.
First of all, in this conversation, we've heard many different, what I might call tracks of
networking activity. People have commented on your ambitions to strengthen and develop that going
forward. That's all terrific, and I wish you the best in all of it. I think Mikiko's comment early on, that
it will be important to prioritize those ideas and focus on just a few of them, to make sure you are able
to accomplish things as you get started. I would just add, that whatever initiatives you do undertake,what I've found in my experience that I wonder about yours is, to what extent are you applying what
we think of is critical reflection to your networking activities, as well as to your student programmingand service-learning courses? We talk always and then try to practice and teach our students to reflect
critically, as many of you have mentioned here today, but we often don't do that ourselves in our own
practice. Collaboration is hard, particularly over a long distance and across regions and even languages.
If you don't take time and structure time to sit together and just talk about “How is this process
working? What are we learning from it?” Some things can go awry. I think that's true. In the
networking tracks that SLAN is conducting now, student exchange programs for example, iseverybody from the different institutions who are working together benefiting? And what about thecommunity partners?
There's another issue that came up in the remarks; your interest in strengthening pedagogy inservice-learning, which is always a challenge for all of us, and particularly a challenge when you're
working across very diverse programs. I've had long experience at Stanford University and otherplaces trying to develop the capacity of our faculty partners or administrators and community partners
in a tremendously diverse variety of programs. We came up with a framework in our work there that
I'll briefly layout here that you may find useful. That is, what we quickly realized is that even thoughservice-learning practice was so diverse across our campus, there are many things in service-learning,
I hope you will agree, that are common to whatever kind of service-learning you're conducting. How
do we help students learn how to learn from experience? Experiential learning skills are a challenge
for all of us throughout our lives, and they are especially challenging for young people going into
communities very different from their own. And how do we help them figure out what to focus on in
there, learning in these intense experiences? Especially in your programs most of which sound likethey're pretty short-term. How do students make the best use of their time? Whether the programs are
humanistic service-learning or, to use Mikiko’s terms, radical or civic focused, whatever it is, all theseexperiential learning challenges are there and can be addressed in common with practitioners acrossthose diverse programs. But then there are the content specific aspects of these different programs,
and those can be sorted out and separated out, and then you can bring in expertise, to assist faculty, toassist the students in those specific content areas. Those people are likely to come from the disciplines
from various academic arenas around your institutions, and certainly from professionals and others in-117-

your community partner organization and region. So, I just offer that as a possible suggestion, and I'm
glad to elaborate on it, because it really helped our work at Stanford immensely.
Service-learning in the USA is now 50 plus years old. Yet as I look back over that history, we still
have some unexamined assumptions about our work. For one it's generally assumed that if
communities and higher education institutions join together, something good will happen for both ofthem. I'm not sure if this is always the case. At least in my experience, service-learning can be an
extractive activity. Higher education institutions often benefit far more than their community partners
and there are all kinds of reasons why this can happen. But it's something that we need to watch out
for. I hope, as SLAN network moves forward, that you'll really look hard at the community impacts’aspects of your work, how to strengthen that and how to assure that. Those reciprocal relationshipsthat Mikiko talked about in the beginning of this session often aren't actually expressed, carried out
and work well for everybody involved.
The other aspect of this, which has been of interest me particularly over the last several years, is
how do we move our community impact target or broaden it? Maybe a better way to say this, how do
we move from direct service kind of practice, to more looking what I would call upstream from the
problems that people suffer from, to try to address where these problems come from? Why are people
suffering and what can we and our students do and learn to address those upstream questions which
may be more policy oriented or may have to do with the kind of the rules that communities must abide
by. Where do the inequities come from and what causes our communities to be less than socially just?
I urge you to keep pushing yourselves along this line. We all need to do this. It's a challenge in the US
just as much as anywhere else. But I think it's critically important, especially in the world we live intoday.
Finally, I've been a historian of service-learning development in the US for a long time. With
colleagues. We've put together a history of service-learning in the United States and I hope that SLAN
will take it upon itself to begin to carefully conduct a similar kind of historical analysis of how the
work has developed in the Asian region. Shamefully promoting for a brief moment, a lot of our work
has been oral histories with the early pioneers all the way up through current practitioners. We havenumerous interviews that are videotaped and placed in an online archive at Stanford University(https://exhibits.stanford.edu/servicelearning/). It's all available and accessible, and it's an amazing
history. Have people talk about how they got into this work, what kept them in the work, what kind ofwork they did, how they taught their students and what did the pedagogy look like. All kinds of issues
came up at two conferences that we had that we were able to video bringing people together, to analyze
all these interviews and begin to make sense of what this history is all about and what it has to say forthe future. Just as you all are asking right now. I'll stop there trying to be brief, I hope this is a little bit
helpful. Thank you all for listening and again thanks to Mikiko and all the other organizers for inviting
me to be here. I've really enjoyed my evening. Thank you.

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Nishimura: Thank you so much Tim for your insightful and comprehensive comments on concrete
steps to take in the future years to come. Thank you so much. So now let us invite Florence to give us
comments please.
McCarthy: Thank you very much. I'm quite honored to be included in this symposium today, and I am
particularly pleased to see that Prof. Yamamoto is here, and Prof. Nishio. Of course, it’s a real pleasure
to see that Mutsuko Murakami and Atsuko Kuronuma are here as well. It feels a bit like having an oldhome week, and I deeply appreciate that you all made the effort to come.
My remarks today are made with reference to both individual service-learning programs and topossible SLAN cooperative ventures. Initially, I would like to comment on what I think are the main
themes that have emerged from the comments made by our distinguished panelists. From these themes
we clarify our practice and the aspects of service-learning we're trying to pursue. Betty mentioned“tools” for example. In that sense service-learning becomes a tool for change and for how we relate toeach other and to others in communities and organizations in society.
Research, also will remain critically important. Whether its research projects focusing on students’evaluation of their experiences, or with a local community or joint projects among the institutions thatparticipate in SLAN, research provides markers for consideration and change. From research, as
Kuronuma has shown, comes results that indicate issues that have been overlooked or areas suggesting
new directions to follow.
The theme of Reflection remains central to all stakeholders and participants in service-learning.
This, of course, goes back to one of the central questions of pedagogy and curriculum development.
That is, what are the processes within the service-learning curriculum that help students create
feedback loops between what they've learned in the classroom and the experiences they have in thefield? Essential elements that promote feedback loops are the reflections students do as they attempt
to apply classroom learning to their experience in their placements, and the questions they bring backto the class from their experiences in the field. Classroom learning --- Experience---Reflection theseare essential ingredients in sustaining the learning processes inherent in service-learning. So, it's anongoing process, by which reflection is built into all that we do. And perhaps as faculty, we don't doquite enough of it.
Turning to issues that service-learning will continually confront are the issues of pandemics andclimate change. These are realities that are not going to disappear. Consequently, changes are likely tobe required in our approach to service-learning. Service-learning initiatives have always been
responsive to student's interests, yet in the future, educational institutions may find it necessary to takegreater initiative in framing the classes, the pedagogy and the issues of what's possible for us to pursue.
The pandemic, for example, and the concurrent lockdowns prohibiting social operations on a grandscale, imposed great challenges for service-learning faculty and programs. Faculty rose to the occasion
by creating amazing and creative service-learning activities, including generating alternative digital-119-

forms of relating students to communities. These initiatives illustrate that new forms of interaction bywhich students, teachers and community people can be connected are possible and quite effective.
This is the new normal.
The point is that we need to be more innovative and take the initiative in becoming more effectivein the projects we create. The creative use of urban space, the greening of local programs of Mitaka
City, for example, illustrate how new program alternatives are meeting the challenges of climatechange. Such initiatives are likely to stimulate new interests among students to participate in servicelearning, just as new academic classes added to course offerings may encourage faculty to consider
service-learning options as a means of encouraging student engagement.
Additionally, we need to be much more proactive in having discussions with our community
partners and service-learning organizations about how they are faring. What's different now than it
was two years ago? How is the pandemic changing their program activities? How is climate change
influencing their communities and their own existence? How can universities assist them? Currently,
there are new problems being created that no one has had to deal with in the past. In Australia, a landof drought, bush fires and flooding rain, a new issue is landslides. Australians have all kinds ofexperience related to bushfires and to floods. But landslides are something about which the country
knows very little, and new responses have to be created. While landslides are an extreme example, thepoint is that new, unforeseen circumstances require new, innovative responses. Many such issues could
be integrated and addressed in service-learning initiatives. One outcome is that new forms of linkage
and connection could be forged among service-learning partners.
A topic for thought I call synergies of practice. To illustrate this: chemistry as taught at ICU, forexample, may be very much the same as chemistry taught at Lady Doak College in terms of theories,
concepts, and experiments. The examples or applications of chemistry principles could be different.
But is there is a way that zoom meetings could be created so that these groups of chemistry students
could share the kinds of field experiences they are having in the projects they undertake? This could
be a way of building collaborative understanding about what common interests multiculturalcommunities have around environmental chemistry. Topics, for example, such as water purity, or soil
degradation. And if you're talking to communities about what the issues are, you might find that there
would be synergies of interest among the communities themselves, to know what other communities
are doing to meet local climate change issues.
Increasingly, I think organized collective action is likely to become more salient in how servicelearning is presented. Up until the present, what we’ve focused on is “singular service” that is,
individually based placements, encouraging individual learning. The future, however, is likely to needinitiatives that address how people can operate as groups and what collective actions fit into servicelearning networks. In this regard, I think much more could be done to add a digital or social media
component to many service-learning classes to show what the actual work on the ground is. Of course,-120-this has to meet the very careful permissions that you have to gain before you include people in videos,but it's an important way to illustrate and document what community people are doing and theimportance of the actions that they are undertaking. Moreover, there could be many more case studies
added to the classes and reflective essays. That is, in the preparation classes or in publicizing servicelearning, much more could be done to include the actual field experiences of students. Seeing students
in the context of their placements is likely to locate them in collective structures of community
organizations. This illustrates the “both-and” nature of service: it is both an individual as well as acollective undertaking.
Expanding faculty participation is always an issue. I think if the initiative changes in what you're
trying to do and how you're going to do about it, this may be a way by which increased faculty
participation can be encouraged. In the long run, as we know, it all comes back to what theadministration will support. So the need to bring the administration along with what we want to do isa constant reality, and represents the mediating efforts required of us to be innovative on the one hand,
yet meet academic and administration considerations on the other.
I want to thank you for including me today. I found it a very worthwhile and interesting
experience. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Florence and very futuristic and new and creative ideas aboutalternative forms in future service-learning to make sure that social impact is really in line with what
people really need in this very rapidly changing society. Thank you so much.

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Open Discussion
Nishimura: So now I would like to open the floor, and we have received a comment. I wonder whether
there's any question. I’ll just read the comment.
“The pandemic is a challenge and also an opportunity. Online service-learning is not only possible
but also offers new forms of service, as Florence mentioned. If we can teach our own students online,
we can teach students in far-away countries and there is more that can be done. In our university wetake to online service-learning massively. Our service-learning program actually expanded throughthe pandemic. ”
Another comment is: “Huge diversity in Asia. We need more cross-country understanding andfor example, low fertility in Japan, but too high in other Asian countries.”
Very good comments. Thank you very much audience online. Is there any question from the floor
here? Yes, Prof. Yamamoto, please.
Yamamoto: Well, thank you very much, especially, well, I'm glad that I can meet with a lot of people
from the early stage. I'm so glad Carol, thank you very much for inviting me. Also, I would like tothank Florence McCarthy. I have to also say, I came across the service-learning idea in late 90s, I feltthat this is what we should do at ICU. And I told Prof. Kinukawa, that time President, to develop thisand then asked him to invite somebody to develop this program so in order to do that, I first met with
Florence, and then asked her to come to ICU at the very end of December in New York, by eating
hamburger or something like that. But anyways, that created the initiative of having the first servicelearning conference as posted in that monograph. Well, hearing all the discussions, I think everythingis important, but I think the most important thing is how to educate students. Educate students’ hearts
and behavior by doing service, and then getting knowledge, contributing to the society improving thissociety. That is a very important thing and that was essential from the beginning.
And if you read that one also how to institutionalize that, was one of the issues. But in order todo that, it's very useful to have, what I say, partnership institutions. In this case Asia. And so that's the
beginning of how we formed a service-learning network. Because unless you know partner institution,
understand each other, what we should do, then you cannot produce a good program over there. So, I
think that is also important. But the content is different from time to time, pandemic is one. So, what
we should do from next 20 years is one of the big issues, but that is not due to the service-learning
program itself, but also you know how society changed and then what is needed. So, I think that isvery important. So, in this step, it's okay to have what I say, internet conversation is also very important,but at the same time, basic issue is person-to-person communication, and how to learn it, how to dothat. So, I think the basic situation of what we should do, is not so changed from the earlier stages.
Well, it's just a comment, but I think what we should do next. But you know, we have to adjust to thesesocial issues and also I think it is very important from my experience to make good partnership with-122-

other institutions. ICU conducted some kind of, say, a model program. And then doing that in thePhilippines, doing that in India, quite different, and also we did that in Malawi, Africa. That was avery hard program, but I think what we were able to learn was quite a lot. And so how to keep that, if
chance is coming, is quite also important. So, keeping the good record and then share with the partneris quite important. Model is different from one to the others. Well anyway just I wanted to say thankyou for everybody. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you very much for your presence, Prof. Yamamoto and for your insightful and also
futuristic comments. Thank you. We have some questions from the floor.
“When service-learning is made a graduate requirement, many young students start their servicelearning journey with low motivation and demonstrate limited engagement and reflection. Would you
please share your perspectives on how to better link service-learning with other university learning at
the institutional level to better motivate and nurture students?”
I think it's related to also strengthening pedagogy. How we ask critical questions right? And how
can we relate questions to upstream impact of society? Or like how to create feedback loops according
to Florence, and also how to update ourselves to analyzing the updated social change that we are seeing
to tackle? Carol, would you?
Ma: I remember when Lingnan University wanted to make service-learning as a graduate requirement.
First time that we want to make it as a graduate requirement, then we talked to the senior management,
which we needed to have two more years to prepare for that. Because you cannot push if youratmosphere and culture are not there, especially the buy-in from the faculty members and also, whether
students are ready or not. So, we decided to postpone it. The reason is because we want to prepare
ourselves. When we make service-learning as a graduate requirement, I think we have to ask ourselves
whether we have enough choices for our students. Because otherwise, students will think that you arepushing them to do service-learning and then at the end may not be good learning process.
Second, we have to ask ourselves whether we have enough training to our students or not. How
to identify the need from the community? Or you are the one that actually tell them what they need to
do? As young people nowadays, they want to discover the issue, they want to actually try new things,
they want to tell you what they can actually also do. But we have to tell them, you cannot change therole within one semester. There are a lot of things that we need to do because the whole society, we
have to understand, that it's not only from the university perspective, but also government perspective,
community perspective. How we can actually have this change making process. It is not easy. So how
we actually provide training to our students from identifying the needs, how to ask questions, how towork with the community partners, sometimes we may actually forget that, actually we are the one toserve, but actually community partners are the ones who could serve us, because we are learning a lot
from them and actually it's a two way, where we talk about our recent policies. And then what the team-123-

actually mentioned about, in review of our twenty year, it's about our critical reflection. This issomething that we also need to teach our students. Today I had a conversation with Mikiko and thenwe actually talk about whether we have to teach our students how to ask questions. And we tend tocomplain a lot, right? And then when we complain, whether we make constructive proposal or we justcomplain? So, this all came back to the training. And then so you know the questions about the servicelearning. Make it as a requirement will actually impact the quality of the work, but I really think thatis a matter of how. And it's a matter of what you tell the students and it's a matter of whether the
students are aware that you know those issues are important or not.
I give you an example. Everywhere we face the aging population issue other than pandemic. Thatmay actually impact a lot of elderly, because pandemic, we talked about the social restriction, a lot ofelderly stays at home. They don't go out. It creates a lot of social isolation, and a lot of elderly havedepression, so this is actually, the big thing of the pandemic that create a lot of social issues. But how
many of our young people know about it. And if we have to show them about the evidence, the data,
and you tell them about the seriousness of the issue. So, King's College, one of the professors contacted
me and they said that in UK they want to do service-learning and that professor is teaching positive
psychology. And then she said “I don't know how to link with the community, with our students.” ThenI said, because of pandemic, a lot of restrictions. But we can organize virtual, meet-up with the elderly.
But we noticed that a lot of elderlies don't know how to use a computer. Then, we give them a call.
We can call them and start a conversation with them. So, this is something that you think. That way
it's very easy to give a call to the elderly. But when I read their reflection, the students said that theyfound it difficult to start a conversation with the elderly at the nursing home. It's actually because of
the training. So, we asked ourselves, but this is also for the students to learn. And then they have a lotof critical reflection throughout the process. So, again, whether we make it as a requirement or not,we have to ask ourselves as a service-learning director, as an administrator, whether we have enoughchoices for our students to choose, whether we have prepared them enough to go to the community so
we cannot just send them to the community, you identify the needs by yourself, we need to work withthem as a faculty member.
And then we facilitate the learning. I think the whole process of the learning journey is not only
student on the journey. Learning journey is actually we as educators, together with the community
partners and students and faculty members. And if you ask me, even our university senior management
group, we are here. The reason is we are facilitating the learning journey for our students, and I think
this part is very important. So again, for those universities, I know that some of you are very struggling
to make service-learning as a graduation requirement or not, and before you really want to do it, youhave to ask yourself about the questions that I just raised.
Nishimura: Thank you Carol. Tim or Florence? Do you have any comments on that point?

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Stanton: I'll make a brief comment. Thanks, Mikiko. Building on Carol’s comments, at Stanford wewere asked to think about making service-learning a graduation requirement fairly early on and ouruniversity president decided the way to address this was to pull together a group of faculty members,
who he thought were the opinion leaders on the campus. We should organize a seminar for them onthese questions and let them think it through. And it turned into a very rich two-day meeting. By theend of it, we had arrived at the resolution of the question and we answered it this way. We're not goingto have a service-learning graduation requirement, but what we were going to do is to establish servicelearning so fully across the curriculum that every student would run into it wherever they went in theirstudies and their study journey.
Thinking about the requirement question kicked off this conversation. My experience has beenthat when students find ways to connect their service-learning with their personal and academic
interests, and when they begin to see that these community experiences can deeply enrich and evenchallenge their academic learning, it helps build their motivation. And then of course I think as Caroland others have mentioned, if you have a diversity of opportunities, there's usually something out therethat overlaps with the interests or concerns that young people have, because they all live incommunities and they all know what seems to work well and what may not be working so well in theircommunities. We should ask them, what do you want to do about it, and with whom might you partner
to make some positive change? It was a long process for us at Stanford, but the direction we took
worked for us. I'm not saying it should work for all institutions, or even most institutions. But it did
work for us.
McCarthy: I just wanted to add a brief comment. A slightly different, I think. I'm not sure that servicelearning is for everyone. And that is that a number of students just aren't interested. They would quite
resent having being forced to do that as some kind of requirement for graduation. So, I think that there
has to be some other alternatives for students to meet that kind of requirement. That is, if it is somekind of requirement for graduation, you have to do in the Philippines, it used to be military training orin the states it was RDC. I think there has to be something for people to do that would engage theirinterest. And perhaps, even to a greater extent than being forced to do a service-learning in a halfhearted way it becomes a very difficult thing in a class. That is, you have a class and service-learning
is part of it, then people need to understand that's part of the requirements, which is a slightly different
issue. But even with that, I've known situations where people, students have been so reluctant to deal
with other people, that this issue of being isolated, that how you get them engaged in a more social
activity may have to do something with the library, and they stack books, or there are some activity
that you wouldn't think of as being socially oriented, but at least bring them out of themselves. So, I
leave that thought with you that service-learning isn't for everyone and that just like service-learning
isn't an interest of all faculty. And I think the issue for all of us then is to learn to work around thosesituations and create alternatives so that you can have that disagreement on campus. Because that's-125-reality, and that's what we have to deal with. I think what you have to do is, try to create environments
where more and more faculty would find it in their interest to participate, but it's a matter of choice
and in that regard, I think it should be the same for students.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much. Is Mercy there? Or we have just received the comments. I
will read Mercy’s comments. “Faculty members can be…” Oh, are you there? Okay, please go ahead.
Pushpalatha: When I was a faculty member in Lady Doak College, she introduced us to servicelearning concepts and then we wanted to introduce service-learning. There were many objections frommembers, asking why should we have to? Because we were talking about academic service-learning,they said the academics will be diluted. That was one question. On another question raised, in the casein India, lots of universities do various service-related programs. Like what we call national service,social outreach programs, like that. Lots of extension activities are there. So why another community
service? That was the question. At that time, I was again doing my United Board fellows program. I
was placed in the university in North America, it was a college in Virginia. I used to go there and likewe go to the library, and look into some of the journals. I came across an article of a faculty member
from environmental chemistry. I was faculty member in chemistry, and that article was inenvironmental chemistry, where that person has very clearly given how the service-learning hasenhanced the learning capacity of the students. And then I took a copy of that article, I brought it to
my department, I showed it to my colleagues and I could really convince them how service-learning
helped the students in their learning capacity, and also how the institutional mission could be achieved
through service-learning. That was also another way by which our college was taking initiative.
Because all our colleges have service as part of the institutional mission statement. So how institutional
mission could be achieved through service-learning.
But to begin with, we never made it mandatory for everybody. We started with a flexible program
like Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3. Only interested faculty first introduced. So slowly we werespreading up. And once a good number of students and the number of faculty were attracted to this,we were able to use that as a data to convince the rest of the faculty members. Because at that time it
was only an extra credit program. Then we wanted to bring it as a component in the regular academic
chart to be made mandatory. So, we were able to share success stories of the students who have taken
extra credit service-learning program. That helped the other faculty members to bring in that program
then onwards it was that time that Betty came to Lady Doak College and she stayed with us for about
3 days. She talked to all of us about how it truly enhances the whole person education, which is also
the mission of the college, and then every department started evolving a curriculum linking servicelearning component with it. So, it may have to be done stage wise, I believe. And sharing your successstories that can be one another way. Thank you, thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much Mercy. Now Betty, do you have anything to add to this-126-

question?
McCann: Well, most of the ideas have actually been presented, and in the past 20 years those points
raised have already been tried and tested and that's why it's good for us to learn our lessons from thosepast experiences, and how we can move forward and really enrich service-learning as a program. As
to students here at Silliman, as mentioned by Florence, we also have the national service training
program, but we are not mandating all the students to take the NSTP program in the service-learningway, but it's one of the choices. But it turns out to be the most popular choice among the students. So,
the concept that it's mandatory or really required may also be something that students don't like, but if
they're given that choice, then they really prefer to be in a program that brings them closer to thecommunity and learn from them.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much, Betty, for sharing your experience. We have another question
from the floor and online people.
“In this symposium participants are probably believers of service-learning, but there is notenough of us. What strategies do people find effective in gaining more support from colleagues anduniversity management?”
Who would like to start answering this question?
McCann: I'd like to start with a brief response. As what Florence said, service-learning may not be foreveryone, and that applies to teachers as well. But we do find out that if a department likes social workor let's say health and nutrition, if one faculty member starts doing service-learning, and that person
tends to be playing the leading role, and other faculty members then follow what the other faculty
members are doing. So, we need good role models in the university or in colleagues, because they
themselves become the inspiration for other teachers to do the same. Especially if they hear goodreports from the students’ experiences.
Nishimura: Great thank you, Betty. Anybody else? Prof. Tasaka, please go ahead.
Tasaka: I'm very happy to attend this meeting and as it is pointed out, especially as the faculty ofnatural science it is very difficult to make them get involved in this type of thing. But I, myself, by the
influence of Prof. Florence McCarthy at ICU, it was great chance for faculty members to get out of
the only research on academic things, into the real world, to see the real world, and to have interaction
with the real world with students, is a big joy. So, I hope that in ICU it already started, but still there
is a difficulty to make, more faculty members to get involved, and especially to get out of the academic
place to the real world. But I am very thankful to Florence McCarthy that you made many of us faculty
members to get the joy of getting involved in this type of program. Thank you.
Nishimura: Great, thank you very much Tasaka sensei, for your very positive comment and experience.

-127-Prof. Tasaka attended the first conference of SLAN in 2002. Anybody else? Okay Carol, go ahead.
Ma: I remember that when I set-up the Office of Service-Learning at Lingnan in 2006. I can share withyou. We only had a few faculty members who were willing to join us to do service-learning, because
many of them, they don't know what is the meaning of service-learning. So that's the reason why atthat time our president, President Edward Chen, and he is very committed because the mission of
Lingnan University is education for service. And then in 2004, we have around 14 faculty staff andalso students to attend the conference. So, the university funded the faculty members and students tojoin international conference to learn about what is service-learning. And then we came back, we dida pilot program. Then so in 2006, the university designed to set-up the Office of Service-Learning witha donation of 10 million. So even though during my time 10 years at Lingnan University, the first year
we tried to go to different departments and tried to ask and persuade the faculty members to do servicelearning. But not easy. And then afterwards I tried to identify some champions from the faculties. So,
I go and talk to the social science faculty members.
I got two faculty members who were very keen to do it, and then we actually worked together,and ended up publishing a book. I don't know whether you remember SARS period in Hong Kong
before this pandemic. Actually, we had SARS period also. I talked to the professor from the history
department and I said it is a critical moment. Why not we recorded an oral history of a medical doctor
and patient, about the experience during the SARS. And then what we did is, we actually had ourstudents take a course in oral history course in the Lingnan University, and they got together tointerview medical doctors and patients about SARS period. And then we published a book. So again,
I think you need to show case, you need to find champions in the faculty and I even talked to some of
the faculty members to create poster boy and poster girl. We decided, you know, a really a human-size
poster and put in the campus and our students will take pictures with the poster, and we pulled more
service-learning, and build up a community of practice at the university. So, we attracted faculty
members to join us, and before I left, we had more than 30 faculty members at Lingnan University doservice-learning. It is not easy, but we have to do it step by step, and then also strategically how to
attract the faculty members to do the project together. So, I understand that the journey is not easy
because I have gone through it. But I always believe. I learned one thing from one of my Taiwanese
partners in service-learning and she shared with me, that the journey is very difficult, but if you believein what you are doing, you can do it. Nothing is impossible. So, I know that if you only haveexperienced it then you can share about the experience. But now we have this SLAN network and I
also hope that we can also put this scope not only in our institution, maybe within our local contacts
or maybe regional contexts. Then we have this COP and then we can continue to learn together andalso have a joint partnership. I think we need to really create, showcase and champions if we want to
attract more people to join us. But again, I believe, some people if you talk to them for many years,
and they will also tell you they cannot do it. And you have to respect. You cannot force them also. So-128-

that's the reality.
Nishimura: Thank you Carol, for also sharing your experience. Yes, Prof. Omori.
Omori: Thank you very much for your very interesting insights from a variety of countries and varietyof the long-term commitment to service-learning program. I have a question because for instance, in
our university, service-learning is running parallel to usual courses as course credits. So even thoughlike development studies offer service-learning as part of opportunities for them to be a mandatory, or
not mandatory but electoral academic credits, sorry, selective academic projects, but actually thesefaculties are not interested, so we don't, we are just supervising those students interested and enrolled
in service-learning. So, if we can interact more in classes, for instance, like when I offer Introduction
to Development Studies, but have a chance for getting them to know what other Indian universities
are doing in service-learning, to see realities of Indian community and then how they can contributeto alleviate poverty under the SDG goals, for instance, then, that would be tremendous opportunities
for students who are interested in development studies at ICU, for instance. So, but in order to do that,
we need to go beyond academic curriculum. So are there any kind of attempts or efforts, more flexible
curriculum design? I would like to know.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Prof. Omori. In fact, in many parts of Asia you have incorporated
service-learning component within the major courses. So, it is actually the faculty members who
implement service-learning as part of their courses, right? I wonder ICU is a kind of special case inthat sense, to operate it like separate from the major. But now we have faculty-led service-learning,but that is not part of the major course per se. Carol, do you have any?
Ma: OK, I think later on Betty and Mercy can also talk about it. Because what I know, the developmentof service-learning in the region, some of the university at the beginning, when they do servicelearning, it was actually separate. Because faculty found it very difficult, at the beginning when they
started, essentially administrator, they actually started first. Maybe they are actually in the Office ofService-Learning or Student Affairs Office. So that's why it's very difficult for them to incorporate
service-learning into the academic course. So, while the development of a service-learning, but ofcourse some of the universities at the beginning, they actually, put service-learning into theircurriculum. So, it's a development process.
So, for us in Lingnan, when we first do service-learning, we make it just as a community service.
While after we set-up the Office of Service-Learning, we said that we need to do academic servicelearning. So, how we do academic service-learning? It is not sufficient yet. We want this to be driven
by the faculty member. For example, you mentioned about development studies. So, in development
studies you have a lot of learning objectives. A lot of content. So how we can embed service-learning
into development studies? And this development studies can link to a lot of Asian countries or even-129-South Africa. And so, we see how this can link to the SDG by looking at the themes of SDG goals. So
with this, it becomes a project that students can do, so it goes back to how we embed the service
element into the whole curriculum and how this can echo to the learning outcomes or objectives ofyour courses and also how you actually design the assignment for the students. So, when we firstlaunched it, a lot of faculty members, they didn't know how to do it, so we advised them, and we also
invited different advisors from other universities like Tim Stanton. Or maybe other people who areexperienced in doing academic service-learning and then to talk to our faculty. And then we teachthem how to incorporate this, but we cannot do it for all university courses. We have to do it step bystep. For example, at the beginning we only have around 10 courses, and gradually we expand it to 20
and then to 30. But again, as we mentioned, not every person like to do service-learning. It is also thesame. Not every course is that we can embed service-learning, too. So, we have to really carefully
think about how we want to invest the service-learning into the curriculum.
Nishimura: Thank you very much Carol for sharing your experience. Anybody else who can shareexperience of developing service-learning programs in different ways?
Pushpalatha: Mikiko, can I share based on my experience? As Carol said, in Lady Doak College also
we started it as a flexible pattern. Not all of a sudden, all departments offering it, because it was notpossible. So in fact I was a teacher doing environmental chemistry at that time, so if 40 students haveregistered for that elective program, we had like 2 credits to be earned through this particular course.
We said there will be another component of extra credit of 1 if the students integrate service-learningwith the environmental chemistry. So, they were not all registered for SL, only 20 or 25 registered, sothey used to get 3 credits when they completed service-learning, and the others get only 2 credits since
they did not do service-learning. So, as a very flexible way we started it. And for us, it became easierat that time, for a flexible curricular framework could be adopted, because the institutional leadership,
my then Principal was very much convinced of service-learning. So, she was the one who introduced
service-learning to all of us, and Dr. Florence came, and she explained the concepts, to all. But laterbecause I was a faculty member who taught service-learning, when I became the Principal, I was
thoroughly convinced of service-learning, how it needs to become mandatory. At that time only, we
made all departments adopting service-learning as part of the curriculum. As I shared earlier, Dr. Betty
at that time, she was the Vice President in the United Board, and she came and helped us, in all
departments. And today all departments offer service-learning. So, my suggestion to SLAN is, as aquestion that was raised, unless the institutional leadership was convinced of it, it cannot be taken
through. So, can you think of any means by which the SLAN could have a session, on how theinstitutional mission and vision could be achieved through service-learning? Because the institutional
leaders will embrace it only if it aligns with the mission of the institution. And also, how the positive
impact in the students, community, and in the faculty members. In fact, I used to say I am a person-130-who is an outcome of, who has a strong impact of service-learning. Because I was a hard-corechemistry teacher, so I used to be very strict. But after I dealt service-learning, I became truly
transformed. Really a friendly kind of a chemistry teacher. So, it really convinced me how it is essential
even for faculty members to change as a teacher through service-learning programs. So, this kind of amarketing strategies may have to be used at all levels, but definitely not all of a sudden. Slowly it may
have to be taken up in the institution. Thank you.
Nishimura: Thank you Mercy. That's a very great and honest sharing. Thank you so much.
So now for the interests of time we have to rush, but is there anybody on the panel andcommentator who would like to say a few words, as the last word.
Stanton: Mikiko, I can speak briefly. I hope I'm not the last word though. Just building on theconversation we've just had, I totally support what Carol was talking about with the incremental
approach to including faculty. You really have to go almost one by one depending on your resources.
But I also want to point out again the two-part framework I talked about in my remarks earlier. It wasa way for us to work with faculty members on our campus without demanding too much of them. In
other words, that first part of the framework, the generic learning, how to learn from experiencing
service-learning, pedagogical skills. Often, we would train graduate students and experienced
undergrads and give them to a faculty member as a teaching assistant in their class. Those students
could help conduct the reflection sessions and do all the things that seemed to matter. Faculty areprestigious academics, but they were rather petrified by running a reflection session with
undergraduates. So just whatever we could do to make it easier for them to begin to get engaged wasvery important.
And the other thing that really worked well for us in building faculty interest, was simply to wind
up the deeply engaged students who are really passionate and excited about their service-learning andsend them out to talk to faculty members. They are often much more effective than I, for instance. We
would discover through those interactions that the faculty members actually had a secret community
service life of their own, which they never brought to work with them because they didn't think there
was a place for it in the academic culture in their departments. One of our first service-learning faculty
was a historian who in his private life was on the board of a homeless shelter in the local community.
He never talked about that on campus. I didn't know anything about it when the students banged on
his door and said we really need a course in this university on homelessness. Because a lot of us arevolunteering in homeless shelters and we don't know anything about homelessness. The faculty
member thought, well neither do I know very much. But that's actually an interest of mine and he set
out to design what was our first service-learning course. He taught this course for the rest of his careerand he is still teaching it now in retirement. So, students can have a very powerful impact in this workand be your allies.

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Nishimura: Great thank you Tim. Anybody else would like to say some final word? Okay. So, thankyou so much for your wonderful and very intensive and great discussion. And thank you participants
for raising good questions, too. We have covered so many issues here and today we have discussed
partnership being very effective in the years to come. Also, collective action can be made in the areaof data collection or creating academy to share experiences and documenting them as a collective
action. We could also create regional thematic service-learning together to tackle the issues outlined
in SDGs and beyond. We could also explore new or alternative forms of service-learning under the
pandemic and climate change.
Also, we talked about pedagogy and basically, we really re-emphasized the importance ofreflection through asking critical questions so that we can stimulate not just personal but also academic
and social perspective of students and how to link pedagogy with the social impact and upstream issues,
not just hands-on working experience will be very important. And also, how to create reflective loops
and circles. Because the service-learning is just an endeavor to be a beginner of lifelong learner. So,
what we are aiming at is not just the course taking of the student. Finally, institutionalization. We
talked a lot. First, it seems that patience is very important to really recognize service-learning as theinstitutional endeavor, but many people said that variation and option should be granted. Second,
students as well as faculty and of course, linking education, research and community engagement has
become a very important issue in higher education fields, especially now under learning for common
good concept. But for enabling that we need a lot of transformation of faculty, students and community,
but not by force, but by joy to share together. Having summarized, I hope I have highlighted thediscussion. Thank you very much for your participation and great discussion. I hope to keep ourpartnership for a better future together. Thank you so much partners online and offline. Thank you.
Yokote: Thank you for the engaging discussion and nice summary, Prof. Nishimura, and once again
thank you for the panelists joining from United States. There are many of you in the United Stateswith big time difference, so it must be very late at night. So, thank you for staying up and then engaging
in a discussion. Thank you, Dr. Stanton and Dr. Mercy and Dr. Betty and Florence, who is in Australia,
Florence thank you so much, and Dr. Carol Ma here. Thank you so much.

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Closing Remarks by Vice President for Academic Affairs, ICU
Yokote: Time flies quickly, so it is now time for closing remarks. May we ask, Vice President for
Academic Affairs of International Christian University, Prof. Robert Eskildsen?
Eskildsen: Okay, can you hear me? The first thing I would like to say is thank you to all of theparticipants. It's really been an interesting symposium. I've really benefited from hearing your ideas
and I'm very happy that ICU was able to host this symposium. I spoke briefly at the beginning of theSLAN business meeting yesterday. I said the same thing. I had originally hoped to greet all of you in
person. I'm very happy to greet some of you in person, although most of the people in the room where
I am now I already know, but a few there are a few new faces. For those of you who are participating
online, we're joined together through this tremendous tool called Zoom. It's a blessing and a curse. A
blessing, because it can bring us together, but a curse because we don't have the opportunity to talk toeach other in person. Which for me makes a big difference if you're going to talk about the importanceof experience, the first-hand experience of meeting people and talking to them is really important. So
I regret that I can't greet you in person.
It has been 20 years since the first meeting of SLAN and the ICU Service-Learning Center was
also founded 20 years ago. I personally am a historian, that's my academic field. I study Modern
Japanese history. And 20 years, I remember 20 years ago. It doesn't seem that long ago to me, but ininstitutional terms, in terms of the university and in terms of the center, that's a long time. And in 20
years people will change. There will be a complete changeover in personnel. Now, and it's remarkable,
and I think also a real credit to the people involved, that service-learning is still flourishing at ICU 20
years later. Prof. Yamamoto thank you for helping get this started, and thanks to ICU several former
leaders of the Service-Learning Center and then also Prof. Nishimura who is here. Thanks to all of
you for keeping service-learning going at ICU.
Now it's time for me to admit the truth. There are two points I have to admit first. Yes, I am an
administrator. So I'm the kind of person you have to come to convince to give you more resources. I'll
talk about that in a moment. A second thing that I wanted to, and this is really inspired, I wasn't goingto talk about this, but Tim Stanton was mentioning how people have other lives. And I am actually
very deeply embedded in service outside of my life at ICU. Nobody, well, very few people in ICU
know what I do outside but my wife runs an NPO. I am the number one enabler and supporter of theentire NPO to keep it going, because I keep her going, because she has to work so hard and I knowhow hard it is to start those kinds of volunteer organizations and to keep them going, and the kind of
passion and daily attention to details and the lack of sleep and everything that goes with that.
And I understand when Prof. Nishimura talks to me about how difficult it is to build relationships
with organizations that can become the basis of a service-learning program. I know what that means
because I can imagine what it would take to get my wife to cooperate in that kind of endeavor. It's a-133-really difficult, difficult thing to do, so at a personal level, I really understand and greatly appreciateservice-learning.
But also at a professional level, I have to look really carefully at things like costs. So let me talka little bit about that. First of all, the problems is how to justify the costs of service-learning in theuniversity. This is just my personal opinion. Don't hold me to it six months from now. Don't say well
you told me if we did this that you would support it. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying
to give you some ideas about how I think about the problem of service-learning, and then I also wantto talk a little bit about this university and its history. One of the big issues in service-learning is
expense. And we have to think about expense in multiple ways. Obviously it requires funding or
requires money to keep the center going. It requires money to run a lot of programs, and that money
is limited. I think the largest expense, however, is time. The amount of time and effort that is required
to do anything in service-learning is great, and I've heard many of you talk about how it's difficult to
get people motivated to participate. You don't want to force people because it's hard work. You reallyhave to care about it. You have to want to do this work. So the expense of time and effort that's involved
is really an important issue, and the number one thing that's always in the back of my mind about notjust service-learning, but many programs in general.
How can you reduce the barriers to participation, both for the community organizations that you
want to make connections with, but also for the faculty members and for the students? How can you
reduce those barriers? Because if you can reduce the barriers, when you ask faculty to participate theanswer will be no a little less frequently. It will be a little easier to get people to say yes, so that's thekind of the theoretical question that I would like to throw out as an administrator. How can you reducebarriers to participation? Because the barriers almost always will be a matter of expense, either timeor money or effort or something like that.
The second issue is contribution. What is being contributed and by whom to whom, and you
know the contribution is really multifaceted. It works in many directions, there are many kinds ofcontributions that are taking place, so how do we understand that contribution? How do we explainthat contribution? Trust me, as an administrator, I have paid attention to good explanations ofcontribution.
And then the third thing I would suggest, I don't know how this is going to sound, but I'll risk it.
Think in terms of reward structures. Think in terms of the reward structures that exist in yourorganizations. If, for example, somebody asked me, well, you have to give professors credit forteaching service-learning courses. What you're asking me to do is to change the reward structure to fit
your needs. Sometimes that's possible.
But sometimes it's not going to work. If you're going to talk about making service-learning arequirement at a university or at a college, it's the same sort of thing. What are the rewards structures
for the students? How does that fit their understanding of the curriculum? So the reward structures are-134-the things that people will be rewarded for doing. And it's probably more effective to change what
you're asking for so that it fits existing reward structures rather than asking to change the reward
structures. It's a lot harder to change the reward structures, so if you can work within the existing
infrastructure somehow, you're probably going to be more successful at the same time.
Now I'm going to speak out of the other side of my mouth.
I see this as an act of democracy. Democracy can be uncomfortable. What I'm saying is, if wewant to practice democracy, we have to listen. And if we listen, if we really listen, and someone asks
me or you to do something different, you might have to change. So what I'm saying here today is I'mlistening to what you're saying. Maybe I have to change, but maybe not, right? So that's the discussionthat has to come in the future. So the point is that what I think one of the most important if we're goingto talk about values, and I think we should talk about values when we talk about service-learning,right? Service is really important. And I think that you know the idea of engaging in society, being
democratic, listening, and being open to change. These are values that make society stronger. These
are things that will make universities stronger. They will make people stronger.
This is where I want to talk briefly about the history of ICU. This university was founded in, I
forget exactly when, I think its next year is going to be the 70th anniversary of the founding of theuniversity. It was founded in response to the terrible destruction of the Second World War. And it was
founded explicitly as a Christian university, and one of the things that I know from my secret life as aservice-oriented person is that, especially in Japan, is that Christians seem more open to service thanother people. That's both good and bad. It's good in the sense that somebody will step up to do service.
It's bad in the sense that not enough people in Japan share that value at the same time. I know frommy own experience as a teacher that many students want to work for NPOs and NGOs after they
graduate. Those students are an important resource. I never want to tell them the truth which is, youwill be poor for the rest of your life. You will be poor and you'll be overworked for the rest of yourlife. But at least your life will be worth living. I mean, there's real value in that kind of a job. How can
we take advantage of that sort of thinking among students and use it to create more interest in servicelearning to create more opportunities for students to learn through their experiences with society sothat they don't actually have to work for those? They can work for a corporation, but they can bringthose values of service into the corporations. We can do this as people who work at universities whoteach young people.
And I suppose the last comment that I will make, I've gone a little bit too long, but one of thethings that I have always sort of gotten hung up on is the distinction between activism, especiallysocial activism, and academics. We really should keep them separate. We need to keep them separate
because if we don't, it creates a lot of political problems in our teaching. So when you're being an
academic, it's better to think and speak academically. When you're being a social activist, it's better tobe a social activist. And that's why I do my service as a hidden project that doesn't involve the-135-university. But service-learning provides a very safe and healthy way to bring those two things together.
That's of real value to the university. It's of real value to society. It's of value to students.
When I'm talking about contribution to society, that's what I'm talking about. How can we bring some
sort of service to society, some kind of activism into the curriculum and use the knowledge thatprofessors have to help students understand what activism really is about, what it really means. Thisis something that service-learning can do, so I look forward to hearing from many of you. I shouldn't
say that, but because now you're going to be encouraged to share your honest opinions with me and I
might have to change what I think, but still I will welcome hearing from any of you. I appreciate
having the opportunity to talk to you today and thank you for this really interesting symposium. So
thank you all.
Yokote: Thank you, Prof. Robert Eskildsen for your very inspiring speech and closing remarks. So,
this concludes the symposium today. Thank you all for joining face-to-face or online. We'd like to ask
you for your feedback for today's symposium. For those joining online, as you exit zoom, the feedback
opportunity will show. And those who are joining face-to-face, e-mail asking you for feedback will be
sent. So, thank you for your time and thank you to our student volunteers translating today as well.
Thank you again to our panelists staying up so late and staying with us until the end. So, thank you
again, Dr. Tim and Dr. Mercy, Dr. Betty and Dr. Florence, thank you all and thank you once again, so
let's give a hand for our panelists and commentators. Thank you, Carol as well.

-136-Service-Learning in Asia Network (SLAN) Business Meeting
Friday, 1 July, 2022
International Symposium for the 20th Anniversary of SLANThe Future of Service-Learning in Asia:
A Regional Dialogue on Networking
Saturday, 2 July, 2022
2023 年 3 月 16 日 発行

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国際基督教大学 サービス・ラーニング・センター
センター長 西村 幹子

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西村 幹子
〒181-8585 東京都三鷹市大沢 3-10-2
TEL: 0422-33-3687 FAX: 0422-33-3685
URL: http://office.icu.ac.jp/slc/

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