In April of 2019, the “Connecting with the World through STEAM” project of Service-learning Center – part of Hoa Sen University won the Fund Calling round of January 2019 of the ‘Narrow the Gap Community Program’ of LIN Center for Community Development’s.

STEAM is an education model that consists of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. STEAM adopts the method of learning through practice, experience, and up-to-date and flexible education methods.

From the idea of connecting STEAM and Service-learning (learning from the community service) to create an opportunity for Hoa Sen students to learn through helping children with difficult - life background whose ages are from 6 to 10 to explore the world around them. Hoa Sen University’s Service-learning Center applied the proposal of ‘Connecting the World through STEAM’ project to the Fund Calling round of January 2019 of the ‘Narrow the Gap Community’ Program and the Center of Community Development – LIN.

After almost two months of assessing, on April of 2019, Service-learning Center’s ‘Connecting the World through STEAM’ project have successfully passed the application round, it is the only Service-learning project to be presented at the “Community Project Briefing and Debate” event and won the Fund Calling round of January, 2019.

The project has successfully persuaded the Funding Councils with the stable goals that the project aims to attain as:

(1) Community Service goal: students developed their skills and their community service spirit through interacting with children with difficult - life background. Through doing community service work, students will get a chance to learn and serve, they will learn practical lessons from real hand – on experiences and they will extend their knowledge of the society they live in as well as their responsibility as citizen;

(2) Community Developing goal: children with difficult - life background from those partnering community will get a chance to develop their STEAM based knowledge, their creativities, their logical thinking ability, a chance to holistically improve their study results and their soft skills.

 Hoa Sen University’s Service-learning Center will organize a group of specialists from Hoa Sen University and business partners for this project. This group of specialists will teach the STEAM based knowledge and STEAM based skill as well as providing additional skill and knowledge in working with children to students and help develop student’s leadership ability. At the same time, the specialists group will assist the students in surveying for the topic that the children like and develop the STEAM education document base upon it.

The students participating in the project will organize industrial field trips which the children would be able to learn STEAM directly through the product, provide appropriate workshops on STEAM that meets the expectation of the children, and also organize Science Fairs and STEAM exhibition at Hoa Sen University for the children.

With the duration of the “Connecting with the World through STEAM” project to be six months, from June 2019 to December 2019, this project will be the “glue” between the higher education institutions - business partners and partnering communities in developing STEAM education for children difficult - life background, develop the ‘Doing Good Index’ for the Universities in creating common value with social organizations.

News: Trương Thị Kim Oanh