Community Service Project: Become a Changemaker

Jodee Fok Wing Tung

This year, we kick off the Community Service Project with a panel of changemakers that are leading social change to create a sustainable future. The Community Service Project is one of the core components of Vision Youth Leadership Program. It gives opportunities for our participants to conceive and execute a project, so that they can understand the social environment and identify the need in our community.

The event took place in the DMZ of the Ryerson University. The DMZ helps tech startups build great businesses by connecting them with customers, capital and experts. It is ranked the top business incubator in the world by UBI Global and over 400 startups have graduated since 2010.

The first speaker, Ness Kenalty, is a Program Manager of Rumie LearnCloud. The Learncloud is created by The Rumie Initiative, which is a non-profit from Canada that makes access to free digital education possible for remote, disconnected and underserved communities worldwide. Founded on a belief of equal access to education, Rumie provides tablets and offline usable learning content to learners around the world. To date, Rumie has been implemented in partnership with local NGO’s in 29 countries and these programs have impacted over 35,000 learners.

Ness shared the story of Rumie and her own work experiences in education with us. She has been working on innovative learning strategies for years and is passionate about bringing high quality and culturally appropriate learning resources to the needy. At the end of the sharing, she encouraged our participants to take risks, overcome the fear of making mistakes and make social change initiatives together.

Followed by Ness’ sharing, Barbara from the Board of Directors and Jason from the Executive Committee gave participants an introduction of project management. Through the presentation, participants have learnt the management basics as well as the knowledge areas, which facilitate them to plan the project step by step. After acquiring further management knowledge, participants discussed topics they are interested in doing in groups and did research on that.