Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Review

Time flies! I left Chicago for several weeks. The new semester will begin on 4 September. It begins my busy life again. I register the subjects that I will take in the coming semester recently.

I keep on watching the website of the Tutor Mentor Connection and Dan's blog. I review my job duties after coming to Hong Kong. I serve as an on- line learning, collaboration and communications intern. Using different forms of Internet collaboration to make peoples around the world understand the Tutor Mentor Connection and connect all volunteers is the strategy that I use. For example, I use this blog to share my understanding of the T/MC concepts and use the T/MC forum to encourage more people to participate in the discussion. I hope I will have the chance to meet the next intern to exchange our experience and ideas by using different kinds of Internet collaboration that I mentioned.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

I'm now in H.K.

Hello everyone. After fifteen-hour flight, I am now in Hong Kong. I miss Chicago very much. It is surely an unforgettable experience to me. Though I am not living in Chicago, I can still work for the Tutor Mentor Connection and keep in touch with you all by using Internet. It shows the magic of Internet, which eliminates the geographic barrier between two places.

After telling my relatives and friends about my job duties and the concept of the T/MC, they think that I had a meaningful experience in Chicago. Daniel’s teachings broaden my horizon. I still remember his teachings, which are important to my life.

I will try to find some suitable resources for the T/MC website and keep you all posted.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Volunteers Recruitment & Advertising Skills

Before coming to Chicago, I did not think that I would learn so many new things in my internship. Universities told me that my job duty is to do research by using Internet for a community service organization. After working in the T/MC, I find that I learn some advertising skills and strategies. They are all important to small organizations without too much money.

Some institutions can be employed as our strategies for advertising and achieving T/MC’s mission. University is an example. It nurtures a huge amount of talents each year. Students can use their knowledge to help the kids academically. In fact, our community provides the best place for hands-on learning. Structured community service experiences provide students an opportunity to learn about community needs and enhance their commitment to their community, while developing leadership skills at the same time. Therefore, university and the T/MC can cooperate with each other for the volunteer program. It is beneficial to both institutions.

Apart from volunteer recruitment, our advertising strategy can be achieved by giving students a talk or a series of lectures so that they can understand the T/MC’s concepts. We should make them know such concept can apply to other fields like business and schools.

Hospital is another targeted institution. It plays an important role in a community and assisting our program. Hospitals represent love and care. Their goal is similar to us. In fact, they can help teaching the youths the health knowledge. Recruiting interns for the teens in order to let them exposed to different working environments and lower the cost of the hospitals. Moreover, it lightens our financial burden by sharing their resources

I have been tried my best to share my understanding of the T/MC concepts and advertising strategies with you all in this blog. Potential volunteers and donors can read more at the following website.
http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/

Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Daniel and colleagues for providing a chance for me to be an intern and give me lots of assistance respectively.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Summary

Time flies! It is my last week in Chicago. I have been working in the Tutor Mentor Connection for seven weeks. It’s the right time for me to summarize the experience that I gained during the journey.

It is a valuable and meaningful experience to me indeed. All the things that I learnt here are new to me. It makes me feel satisfied after the journey. I still remember that I have difficulties in understanding the concepts behind the T/MC at the first week of the internship. It is good that Daniel and other colleagues give me lots of help in overcoming that problem.

After several discussions with Dan, I realize such idea is lacking in Hong Kong. I think the thought cannot be rooted because the citizens rely on different kinds of pension and the current social security system very much. The adverse effect is that it increases government’s financial burden. More importantly, it does not mean that these measures can solve the fundamental social problems in the city. Being a business city, most Hong Kong people can access to the Internet easily. In addition to this, the community services can be supported by the business sector financially. There is a huge amount of social workers graduated from universities each year, which provide sufficient workforce in community services. Therefore, the concept of T/MC can be introduced and applied to Hong Kong.

T/MC devotes to cooperating with other related organizations to discuss strategies for solving the common social problems that we are facing now. The organization also believes education saves children from going astray. It further reveals that more volunteers are needed. I hope there will be more interns or volunteers coming from different countries, professions and disciplines. It is hoped that they help spreading the concept within their network.