Learning for service is the main objective in service learning, students in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) are encouraged to apply their learning outcomes to serve the community for rather long term benefits. This paper will discuss how PolyU students with Geomatics knowledge committed a service learning project with local social enterprises-Hosteling International.
Together with students from both Peking University and Yunnan University with different disciplines, a group of students from PolyU joined a service learning project in Yunnan. These students applied their knowledge in mapping and other professional skills to serve the community at Yuan Jie Township by enhancing guest reception capabilities of a local Youth Hostel. They crossed over between learning and serving. They learnt the difficulties in local community development with SWOT analysis approach to their collected local information and identified focus of their service through the inter-disciplines dialogues in this student group.
They aware that people can use all forms of tools, like web maps to obtain geographical information about the surrounding areas in the well-developed cities, but as the infrastructure was not as well-developed in local as their living community in city. Local community and travelers had no such access in Tuan Jie Township, making the locals difficult to identify the natural resources and assets surrounding them and travelers not able to navigate around during their visits. By using Global Positioning System (GPS) and GeoIT technique, students collected important geographical information, survey the map and painted it on the wall of youth hostel. This helped to empower the local community development in recognizing and promoting their rural assets to visitors and in long-run revitalize the local community for future local cultural conservation and youth development. They also arranged the map application workshop to teach local kids map reading and applications so that they could ascertain the local youth identity and introduce this special community to visitors
