by Dr. Ryan Wong, Civil Engineering
Dec 8, 2015
Project Mingde is a charity project to build schools and facilities in underprivileged areas initiated by the Department of Civil Engineering. It aims to provide education opportunities for children in impoverished villages or disastrous areas and to let the university students contribute their skills and knowledge to the society. Project Mingde has completed five construction projects in China in the past 10 years, in which more than 300 university students have involved. In this year, Project Mingde collaborated with the Faculty of Social Sciences and World Vision, to start up our first overseas project, to build sanitation facilities for a secondary school in Vietnam.
This experiential learning project is mainly funded by the Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Centre, which involved 16 undergraduates (eight from the Department of Civil Engineering and eight from the Faculty of Social Sciences) bringing an innovation small-scale construction project to completion under the supervise of World Vision Vietnam over the course of eight weeks. Students worked as a team to first carry our a needs analysis of the community, then created a design while utilizing their academic training as well as local constraints in capacity, resources and time. The project honed a wide range of skills, which helped develop global leaders with an awareness and passion in global issues.
The program began with core workshops in early June 2015, which enabled students from both disciplines to understand cross-cultural differences and learn about the various development models used to support local communities in rural areas. The seven-week experiential learning took place in the Tien Lu district of Hung Yen Province, Vietnam, under the supervision of the local project management office of World Vision Vietnam (WVV). The project comprised two important components: a needs analysis of two local communes and the small-scale construction of sanitation facilities for a secondary school. Some teaching classes were arranged for our students to interact with local secondary school children to enable inter-cultural learning.
Students under the guidance of WVV staff went to two communes in the Tien Lu district to study child injury problem, malnutrition of children under five, early childhood care development, and water, sanitation, and hygiene situation. Students interviewed the local stakeholders to understand their needs in the studied aspects. The students also worked alongside a local professional construction team on a small construction project, building sanitation facilities for a secondary school in the Tien Lu District. A one-storey-high lavatory had been constructed during their seven-week training. The students had been deeply involved with the project, acting as Assistant Resident Engineers to monitor and record the construction process. They also helped the local workers to complete part of the construction work on site. An inauguration and handover ceremony was held on 28 July 2015. About 300 schoolchildren benefit from this new lavatory and thereby have improved their basic hygienic standard.
Upon completion of the program, our students shared their experiences with others. On 18 August, a sharing session was hosted at the World Vision Hong Kong (WVHK) office. The WVHK team was impressed and motivated by the students’ learning. Two students from the group attended a RTHK1 radio interview on 22 August (十萬八千里). Four student representatives were interviewed by the press and the story was published on 7 September 2015 in both the Sing Tao newspaper and Headlines Daily. The program is expected to be the start of a long-term partnership between WVV and HKU. As the project will continue next year, the impacts that the project has will accumulate and be sustained. The project will create more diverse learning opportunities for our students.
Students helped the local construction workers for ground excavation work
All participated students and the lavatory they helped construct in the past seven weeks
Kenji (left one) and Marcus (left two) shared their stories in Vietnam