POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

BANSUD ORIENTAL MINDORO BRANCH

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

COMPILED BY:

SHEIANN N. REYNOSO
2

Module 1

SERVICE LEARNING AND COMMUNITY SERVICE

Unit 1: Service Learning Defined and Its Importance

Service Learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through

a cycle of action and reflection as students work with others through a process of applying
what they are learning to community problems, and at the same time, reflecting upon their
experience as they seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper
understanding for themselves.

It is a flexible pedagogy which can be used

in a variety of classroom and community
settings. Students, Community Partners, and
Instructors are key players in developing
effective service-learning activities.
Service learning is connected to course
content and is organized around
clear learning goals; service learning provides
meaningful service activities which address real community needs as defined by the community;
and service learning provides students opportunities for critical reflection upon their service
experiences.

Effective service-learning practice supports

both student learning and community service goals.
Learning practices are grounded in objectives,
enhance disciplinary skills, engage students in well-
defined tasks, and allow for both formative and
summative assessment. Service activities meet
genuine community needs, provide meaningful tasks
for students, and promote communication and
collaboration with community members. further
discuss these goals.

Service learning provides students with opportunities to develop civic engagement skills. By
working with community members, students can enhance their group, organizational and

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

3

interpersonal skills. They also can gain important experience working with diverse members of
their communities.

Why is Service Learning Important?

For starters, service learning is important because it connects student learning in the classroom
with real-world experiences in the community. Students who participate in it are more deeply
engaged in their local communities, gain practical skills, develop their career and personal
interests, and are usually more engaged citizens.

At a societal level, it is important for people to be involved and aware of their communities so they
can assist each other and be more conscientious individuals. Creating opportunities for young
people increases their involvement.

Finally, it instills the habit of performing a service for others. Students who engage early on often
continue service work for the rest of their lives.

Why Use Service Learning?

Service-learning can benefit all participants, students, faculty, academic institutions and their
communities. Students gain academic knowledge and skills, interpersonal skills, and self-
confidence. Faculty can enhance the quality of their teaching, find opportunities for research and
outlets for professional expertise. Service-learning supports the civic engagement mission of
colleges and universities and improves town/gown relationships. Community members receive
valued service and institutional support.

How Do I Benefit as a Student?

Through service learning, students:

• Learn more about their relationship with the communities they engage with
• Learn more about their capacity for serving others
• Refine their decision-making abilities and acquire other career-related skills
• Better understand the meaning of responsible citizenship
• Grow in their awareness of cultural differences

Service-Learning Enhances Student Learning and Personal Development

Student benefits of service-learning include enhanced opportunities for learning, and personal
and social skill development. Students gain increased knowledge of academic materials, their
communities, and themselves.
Service-learning is a form of experiential education that supports deep learning. Through their
service-learning activities, students apply classroom knowledge in practical settings to enhance
their understanding of class materials.
Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service
4

Service-learning provides students with opportunities to develop civic engagement skills. By

working with community members, students
can enhance their group, organizational and
interpersonal skills. They also can gain
important experience working with diverse
members of their communities. Learn more
about how service learning can be used
to connect classroom learning with societal
issues.

Students can gain better understanding of

themselves as they explore and develop ways
to contribute to their communities. They can
develop self-confidence and an enhanced
commitment to public service.

Service-Learning Benefits Other Constituents

Benefits of service-learning extend to:
• faculty,
• academic institutions
• and their communities.
Service-learning supports faculty teaching by providing a real-world counterpart to the more
theoretical material discussed in the classroom. Structured reflection activities centered on
student experiences, create additional opportunities for faculty to guide student learning. Service-
learning supports faculty research and service interests through faculty participation with their
communities. Increased student and faculty participation in their communities strengthens the
relationship between academic institutions and their communities. Community members gain
valued service hours and opportunities to research agency or community problems they might
otherwise not have the resources to undertake.

Unit 2: Outcomes for the Stakeholders

Service-Learning Outcomes for Learners

 Young people who serve ultimately gain much more in understanding than they
give in serving.
 Learning does not necessarily come from the experience of service alone, but from
reflection and creating meaning from that experience.

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

5

 Service learning can help young people grow from the natural dependence and
egocentrism of childhood into mature personal interdependence and engagement
in the community.
 Young people who serve learn wholistically. All functions of personality contribute
to development of the self.
 Students learn and grow as they feel and think about service experiences (i.e.,
through behavior, affect, and cognition). Because learning begins with behavior,
students gain efficacy and self-direction.
 Service learning empower youth to become service-oriented citizens and youth
leaders.

Outcomes for Education: The Teacher

 The curriculum is broadened and deepened to create a richer context for learning.
 As students gain responsibility for their learning, teachers gain new roles as
mentors and guides as well as presenters of information.
 Service learning holds the promise of partnership – quality relationships between
teachers and students.
 Service learning requires performance-based methods of evaluation.
 Staff collegiality improves as staff work together in an interactive learning
environment.
 Mutually beneficial school/community partnerships are formed.

Outcomes for the Community

 Service learning contributes to community development and renewal.
 Recipients of service benefit from direct aid, human involvement, and personal
empowerment.
 Agencies receive an infusion of creativity and enthusiasm from participating youth.
 Service learning helps students become interested in their communities as
community-minded citizens.
 As youth contribute through service to the common good, they are seen to be one
of the community’s greatest resources.

Unit 3: Community and Community Service Defined

A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as

norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place
situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in
virtual space through communication platforms. It is a group of people with diverse
characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in
joint action in geographical locations or settings.

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

6

Community service is the engagement of individuals or groups in an organized

activity that contributes to the local, national or world community. It is also known as
volunteering which is defined as the practice of people working on behalf of others or a
particular cause, without payment, for their time and services.

Unit 4: Types and Examples of Community Service

There are three types of community service and service-learning: direct, in-direct
and advocacy. Once a community need is identified, the project activities that are
developed will align with one or more of the types.

Direct. You can develop direct service activities where students interact with the
recipients of service or the physical environment they have targeted for improvement. You
and your chapter can volunteer at a food kitchen to serve community members in need or
perhaps you can work with your community senior center to create an adopt-a-
grandparent program that lasts for a week.

In-Direct. If you don’t have the ability to come in direct contact with the
beneficiaries of service, you can organize an indirect service activity where students
channel resources to a problem but do not interact with those being served. This can
include organizing a canned food drive to donate to a food pantry in a neighboring
community or participating in a community beautification project.

Advocacy. It is important to always be an advocate for the issues that inspire you.
During advocacy service activities, students bring awareness to an issue and inspire
others to take action. Advocacy can also address the underlying causes of a social
problem by attempting to influence policymakers or elected officials.

Examples of Community Service

General Ideas

• Donate or raise money for your local Red Cross

• Organize a community blood drive
• For your next birthday, ask for charitable donations instead of gifts
• Read books or letters to a person who is visually impaired
• Contact a tree farm about donating Christmas trees to nursing homes, hospitals,
or to families who can't afford to buy their own
• Collect unused makeup and perfume to donate to a center for abused women
• Help register people to vote

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

7

• Organize a car wash and donate the profits to charity

• Help deliver meals and gifts to patients at a local hospital
• Write articles / give speeches advocating financial literarcy. First you should learn
about the topics themselves, like calculating housing costs, or understanding
personal loans, and then give presentations on these topics.

Helping Children and Schools

Tutor children during or after school

• Donate stuffed animals to children in hospitals
• Organize games and activities for children in hospitals or who are visiting
hospitalized relatives
• Knit or crochet baby blankets to be donated to hospitals or homeless shelters
• Collect baby clothes and supplies to donate to new parents
• Organize a Special Olympics event for children and teenagers
• Collect used sports equipment to donate to families and after-school programs
• Volunteer at a summer camp for children who have lost a parent
• Coach a youth sports team
• Put on performances for children in hospitals
• Give free music lessons to schoolchildren
• Organize a summer reading program to encourage kids to read
• Organize an Easter egg hunt for neighborhood children
• Create a new game for children to play
• Organize events to help new students make friends
• Babysit children during a PTA meeting
• Organize a reading hour for children at a local school or library
• Donate used children's books to a school library
• Volunteer to help with Vacation Bible School or other religious camps

Helping Senior Citizens

• Read to residents at a nursing home

• Deliver groceries and meals to elderly neighbors
• Teach computer skills to the elderly
• Host a bingo night for nursing home residents
• Host a holiday meal for senior citizens
• Make birthday cards for the elderly
• Donate and decorate a Christmas tree at a nursing home
• Organize a family day for residents of a retirement home and relatives to play
games together
• Ask residents of a retirement home to tell you about their lives
• Pick up medicine for an elderly neighbor

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

8

• Perform a concert or play at a senior center

• Help elderly neighbors clean their homes and organize their belongings
• Rake leaves, shovel snow, or wash windows for a senior citizen
• Deliver cookies to a homebound senior citizen

Unit 5: Steps in a Successful Community Service Project

Steps in a Successful Community Service Project

Step 1: Find Out What Is Needed in Your Community

Step 2: See What You Have the Ability to Do

Step 3: Choose a Project

Step 4: Develop a Plan

Step 5: Recruit Your Volunteers

Step 6: Make a Budget

Step 7: Make a Timeline

Step 8: Raise Money

Step 9: Do the Project

Step 10: Evaluate and Celebrate

Step 1: Find Out What Is Needed in Your Community

There are many ways to do this. Start out by asking your friends and family
members if there are things that they have seen that need a solution. Talk to neighbors.
Talk to community officials (local government) and police officers, and speak with non-
profit groups in the area.

Once you have an idea of the issues present in your area, spend some time
researching them. What is the history of the issue? Is it a new thing or has it been around
a long time? What realistic steps can be taken to address it? What, if anything, have other
groups done in the past to fix the issue?

It’s also a good idea to research what kind of events have taken place in your
community in the past. What projects were successful? What sort of activities had nobody
show up? You can do this by talking to your local city government or local non-profit groups

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

9

that have held events. You may also know from personal experience of events that you
have attended. Which were the most engaging and resonated with your community?

Step 2: See What You Have the Ability to Do

It's time to start asking yourself the tough, specific questions. Remember to be honest and realistic
as you answer them:

What skills and talents do you have?

How many people do you realistically think you will be able to get to help you?
What skills and talents will they have?
How many hours per week can you devote to the project?
How soon do you want to do the project?
What is a realistic amount of money you will be able to raise for the project?
Do you have any materials at hand that will be helpful?

Step 3: Choose a Project

List your activity ideas. If you have a group of people you're going to work with,
allow them to help you rank the ideas from most to least important. Vote on or decide
which activity you want to do. Make sure it is reasonable, within your means, and that you
can actually make an impact.

Be honest with yourself and your group when assessing how to make the most
impact. Be realistic with your expectations and honest about the best way to reach your
end goal.

Step 4: Develop a Plan

To start, write down exactly what you are hoping to accomplish. This will include a
bigpicture goal as well as the specific smaller tasks that you will need to do in order to get
to that main goal.

You also need to go into the practicalities of the project. How much equipment will
you need? How many people will you need to successfully complete each part of the
project? How much time can each person commit to the project? How will you organize
different volunteers?

Remember that you're responsible for the success of the project and one large
part of that is that it takes place safely and legally. Do some background work to check

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

10

out your liabilities and research the potential complications that can arise from the project
you're planning.

Step 5: Recruit Your Volunteers

If you don’t already have a group of people helping you, now is the time to get
some people involved. Also, ask friends and family if they know people who would like to
be involved.

For each person, make sure that you have their contact information (email and
phone number), as well as what areas they are best able to help in (making food, publicity,
etc.).

Get specific time commitments from your members. How much time can they
contribute every week? How much time can they contribute on the day of the event? Make
sure they are realistic and don’t commit more than their schedules will allow.

Step 6: Make a Budget

Now that you know your goals, you have to get specific with how much money is
going to be needed to make your plan come to life.

Make sure you list the type of items that you need – be specific! How many will
you need of each item? What is the cost per item? What is the total cost?

Don’t forget that your budget has to include more than just the physical items
involved in your project. If you need a license to have an event or if you are going to pay
someone to make an appearance, that will need to be factored into the budget as well.

Finally, be sure to consider practical needs, like the cost of transportation and food
on the day of the event for your volunteers.

Step 7: Make a Timeline

You should already have a rough idea of how long your project will take, but now
you need to narrow it down to the specifics.

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

11

Pick an end date for your project that will give you enough time to put it together.
Make sure that the date is approved by all necessary authorities.

Make specific schedules for each of your volunteers based on how much time each
can contribute. This is important – you don’t want to end up having to do everything
yourself at the last minute because you assumed that people would be putting in more
hours than they actually can! Try to be realistic with your expectations of what can be
accomplished every hour.

Mark specific goals on your timeline. By a certain date, a certain amount of the
project should be completed, etc.

Step 8: Raise Money

There are a number of ways to raise money: street collection, organized events
like raffles or an auction, direct mail donations, asking for contributions through church
newsletters, and more.

You can also contact local businesses for sponsorship. Offer them some sort of
advertisement in return.

Whatever you choose to do, you will need to develop a strategy. Decide what your
plan of attack will be to raise the amount needed.

Step 10: Do the Project

Now it's time to execute all of your planning!

It may seem like the hard work is done at this point, but the actual event needs to
go off without a hitch!

Make sure that as much as possible every preparation is done and set up the day
before the event. Don’t stress yourself out more than you need to on that day. It’s also
good to send out lots of reminders the day before to volunteers, participants, media, and
anyone else who is important.

Make sure you have a detailed schedule for what you will do the day of the event.
Also, make a list of volunteer contact info, vendor contact info, and who will help in
emergencies. Keep this with you at all times.
Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service
12

Try to enjoy yourself, but stay on top of how things are progressing!

Don’t forget to take pictures and stay active on social media during the event.

Step 10: Evaluate and Celebrate

What to Do Afterward

Once your project is over, you hopefully have experienced and learned new things.
Take some time to reflect on this on your own and also get feedback from the volunteers
and participants.

What didn’t go to plan? Consider how you could have done things differently and
avoided problems. What went well? Why were those things successful? What have you
learned about yourself? This can be many things like teamwork, leadership, or planning
skills.

Also, make sure you stop and consider if you actually were successful in your
goals. Did you help your target group? How can you tell that you have made progress
and an impact? Take notes of these things.

Finally, take some time to celebrate. You’ve just undertaken and accomplished
something that many people would shy away from.

For more information you can watch this video:

Stages of Service Learning Retrieved from [Link]

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

13

ASSESSMENTS

Task 1:

Answer the following:

1. Define service learning and explain advantages to students, teachers, and

communities. Explain two advantages to each group.

____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.

2. Describe the three types of community service.

____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.

3. Explain why self-reflection is important to community service.

____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.

Task 2:

Create a plan for the community service you and your group have chosen. Identify a problem

in the community that you feel you could make a difference in solving if you could organize a

group of people to work on it. Who would be your beneficiaries? What would you need to do

in preparation for the activity? Who could be your teammates in the service? Could your

school implement the project? Prepare also the program for this activity.

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service

14

REFERENCES

Bucao, A. et. al. Modules in National Service Training Program, PUP Sta. Mesa.

Definition of Community. Retrieved from

[Link]
%20space%20through%20communication%20platforms.
Definition of Community. Retrieved from

[Link]

Definition of Community Service. Retrieved from

[Link]
Definition of Service Learning. Retrieved from
[Link]
Examples of Community Service Projects. Retrieved from
[Link]
Importance of Service Learning. Retrieved from
[Link]

Steps in a Successful Community Service. Retrieved from

[Link]

Types of Community Service. Retrieved from

[Link]

Why Use Service Learning? Retrieved from

[Link]

Stages of Service Learning Retrieved from

[Link]

Module 1: Service Learning and Community Service