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Delivered at Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan at the conference on “Project-Based Service-Learning: International Perspectives”.

Service-Learning: ‘Playing Basketball and Washing Dishes’

Playing basketball, soccer, volleyball is fun. We look forward to it every time.

Washing the dishes at home, doing the laundry, taking the garbage out of the house is not fun. We hate to do it all the time.

Is there any difference at all between playing basketball, which you love, and washing dishes, which you hate?

You would say, definitely, there are differences. (1) You play basketball on the court, while you wash dishes in the sink. (2) You keep the ball dry as you dribble it to make a shot, while you have to keep the plates wet as you soap them. (3) And the huge difference is in the fact that you love basketball but hate washing dishes.

Now, let me flip the coin and ask you: Is there any similarity between the two?

You might say, “None.” But I say, yes, there are similarities. The fact that, (one) it is you who do it – there is one person doing it,  makes them similar; (two) both require the hands for the mission to be accomplished, makes them similar; and (three) both take time, sweat and hard work to finish, makes something that you hate and something that you love similar.

Service-learning is both playing basketball and washing dishes. To some, we hate it at first then we love it eventually. To others, we love it at first then we start to hate it eventually. But for me, it is something that I hate and love at the same time.

Service-learning is both playing basketball and washing dishes because you have to work. You have to exert effort. You have to sweat out or perspire. It is both because you have a goal: to win the basketball game or to have clean plates to put food on for the next meal.

Hard work and goal are the two things that make service-learning both playing basketball and washing dishes.

But if basketball and washing dishes are the same, why do I love basketball but hate washing dishes?

It is passion. You have the passion for playing basketball but you have none for washing dishes.

Passion is what the youth has to develop nowadays. …The passion for service-learning; the passion for helping communities. The passion for knowing why millions in Asia are poor – who cannot eat; who stay in the streets; who are malnourished – while only a few are rich, able to enjoy life’s blessings to the fullest. The passion for understanding what makes the Chinese culture the same with the Filipino culture, with the Japanese culture, with the Indian culture. The passion for knowing how we can achieve peace even in the face of language barriers – how without speaking Mandarin, the Japanese is able to understand a Taiwanese; how without knowing Nipponggo, the Filipino is able to work together and make friends with the Japanese.

This is the passion that breaks the barriers to cultural understanding and regional peace. 

In August this year at

Silliman

University

in the

Philippines

, we conducted the Silliman University-International Christian University International Service-Learning Model Program 2006. We joined hands with the

International

Christian

University

of

Japan

to bring in 20 student-participants from six countries:

Taiwan

(

Soochow

University

),

Japan

(

International

Christian

University

),

India

(

Lady

Doak

College

), Hong Kong (

Chung

Chi

College

of the

Chinese

University

of Hong Kong),

Korea

(Seoul Women’s University) and the

Philippines

(

Silliman

University

).

We assigned the participants in eight different communities. It was an exposure to the Filipino way of life and culture. It was their opportunity to know what makes the Filipino culture different from theirs, and yet how, even if it is different from theirs, they still are able to relate with it, understand it and find it a bit the same as theirs.

We divided the participants into eight groups. Each group had a Filipino student who was with them as a co-learner and who was there to facilitate communication in the Cebuano dialect. We, however, selected the host community and the host family which had members who could speak at least a little English. 

The participants spent roughly three weeks with their host communities. They slept with their host families four nights every week. Every Monday morning, they went back to their host communities where they took part in community activities such as teaching little children, giving health care and medical assistance, planting and harvesting vegetables, crops and bamboos, making tiles out of clay or mud, and doing household chores, like cleaning the house, cooking and, yes, washing dishes. Every Friday, they came back to the Silliman campus for the reflection sessions on Saturdays. At the reflection sessions, their experiences, insights and concerns were shared and processed.

Although Filipinos are very hospitable that you are always treated as guests in our homes, the participants were made to feel like they were members of the community, part of the family; that they were children – the sons and daughters – of the host family. It was the best arrangement to make the participants feel that they had a home away from home.

But they were in communities that did not have all the luxuries in life, all the conveniences that we enjoy. There was no heater, so they had to bathe in cold water. There was no air-conditioning unit. Some beds were not as comfortable as the mattresses that we have now. Some had to cook using firewood. There were no taxi cabs that you could flag down; others had to walk long distances to get a ride.

Their fears and all the new things to them made service-learning at this point similar to washing dishes:

o       there was brownout or no electricity

o       the water for taking a bath was brownish, and there was no heater

o       there were mosquitoes and there were ants on the table

o       they had to wake up earlier than the time they used to wake up to do community activities

o       they had to walk

o       the Filipinos are lazy

o       the beds were not comfortable and soft

o       they had to stay under the heat of the sun

o       their partners always spoke in the dialect, making it hard for them to understand each other

o       their partners didn’t seem to work as hard as they did

They had a goal of cultural understanding, but their passion deteriorated because of their fears, their apprehensions, the things that they did not like doing, the things that they simply did not like.

Because of this, in the first week of their experience, they “hated” service-learning. It was, however, understandable, because it was their first time. They were still adjusting to the change in environment.

But in the second week up to the end of the program, that was when service-learning became playing basketball. They saw ants and mosquitoes, they experienced no electricity, they walked long distances…they were tired and sweating, but they started to love it because they saw a smile on the faces of the Filipinos that they helped and worked with – indicative of how the participants had silently contributed to and touched lives of the members of their respective host communities.

They taught children origami, mathematics, geography. They played and sang with them. They attended fiestas or festivals. They attended meetings with officials of communities. They visited rehabilitation centers and brought the needs of the centers to the attention of the appropriate authorities.

Yes, they hated the fact that there was heavy corruption in the

Philippines

, that there were poor people, that there were children who could not afford college education. But they worked hard nonetheless and loved it because their goal changed from simply wanting to finish the program and go home to wanting to know more about the Filipinos, to work with them, to be of help to them.

The experience also affirmed the kind of profession that the participants wanted after they graduate from college. A Korean said that she now wants to become medical doctor to give free medical services to the poor, after seeing a Filipino baby suffering from a severe heart ailment. Another participant said she made a right choice to become a social worker after bringing to the attention of the Department of Social Welfare and Development the case of a mentally challenged woman who was placed inside a pig pen.  And several others were touched that a Japanese student expressed desire to look for a scholarship for one of the children of her host family, so that he could go to college someday.

This is when you hate and at the same time love service-learning. This is when service-learning starts to touch and transform lives of people – your life, my life and that of the rest of our brothers and sisters out there.

Allow me to end by sharing some quotes with you that reflect the learning and transformative impact of service-learning on the participants:

Japanese:

“The worst experience is the best experience”

Korean:

“What we have is paradise, but this is heaven”

Taiwanese:

“You should not only do the things that you like; on the contrary, you should enjoy what you do”.

Together, let us play basketball and wash dishes as we do service-learning!