This year I was fortunate enough to be a part of a service-learning group, the Amana Advocates. Our original purpose was to help and befriend the elderly, however, due to the pandemic, Amana living has restrictions on who they let visit their residence. As Amana Advocates, we are unable to take part in our service-learning activities, although, we still want to get involved and help out wherever possible. Furthermore, we came up with a proposal for the year seven and eight coordinators of our college, Mr. Green, to run an enjoyable activity for students, whilst raising awareness about Amana living at the same time. We used effective collaboration to brainstorm the idea of an Amazing Race and the details surrounding it.

Essentially, each tutor group was divided into two teams to compete in a series of challenges in the fastest time possible, and the team with the fastest time was to win a prize. The games included an ‘unscramble the letters’, with words including isolation, dementia, and disability, and a three-legged obstacle course race with a twist. One person would be the designated leader who had to navigate the rest of the group around various obstacles. The aim of this was to get students to understand the troubles that Amana Residence goes through every day. In the end, the event ran smoothly resulting in great success. However, this wasn’t possible without various tools and values, one of them being effective communication. There were multiple layers to the project’s requirements, details, and decisions, each of which needed to be approved by Mr. Green and our service coordinator, Mr. Corbet. Every step required new tasks to be discussed, with each task dependent on other tasks, decisions, or people. As a result, effective communication was essential throughout the whole project.

In the beginning, we set clear project expectations, where everyone knew what was required of them. We did this by developing a project purpose, setting goals, creating a project timeline, and discussing how the goals would be achieved. Then we discussed project deliverables. When outlining our plan, we ensured we built in time to review, discuss, and critique the team deliverables. This generated more confidence in what we were building and will also kept team members accountable for project decisions. By just having a short review and discussion, we were taking steps to eliminate the risk that a current deliverable will have a negative impact on the scope later. Throughout the year, we held regular meetings, which was necessary to keep everyone informed about progress and the next thing to complete. Using effective communication also required great listening skills and respect for one another.