Our project team met a few times to share ideas on how to approach this VIA project. I captured the main points into a document (attach link). We eventually came up with an idea to have a poster as well as a flip-board to help "sell" the message across to people having lunch while we talked to them.
We also thought about ways to make the messages "stick" with them. One idea we incorporated was to give away tissue packets with a much smaller miniaturized version of our poster pasted on the under-side. However, in our mad rush to complete this project, we only realized at the Hawker Center that we had left the tissues in the classroom! What a pity.
Shortly after we returned from the hawker center, our teacher asked us to reflect on the experience. Dad taught me to use a "3-2-1" approach to better reflect on the experience. Here's mine:
3 things you have learnt most from this experience.
How a simple task like Returning Trays can reap much benefits, yet people still chose not to do it!
Despite all the signage, TV displays and announcements being broadcasted, several people still just leave their trays on the table after meals. It does not work! However, when approached nicely, people do respond to our request to return their trays.
Singaporeans are not really clean and gracious. During research, I was shocked to find out that we have 70,000 people working as cleaners while a much larger country like Taiwan only employs 5,000 people to keep their streets clean.
2 things you have learnt that will benefit yourself or the people around you.
That being a leader is much more difficult than I imagined. i.e. delegating / assigning tasks is not so straight forward. Because when things are not done, I had to "chase" my friends for inputs. Had to overcome the awkwardness of demanding things from my classmates.
Clarity of roles help everyone to do their own tasks better. i.e. next time, when I get involved in another project, the first thing to do would be to clarify exactly what are my roles and responsibilities as well as those of my project mates. This will help reduce confusion and improve teamwork.
1 thing that you will do differently if you had the chance to do it all over again.
In hindsight, there were several mistakes made in this project. The main one that I wish I could do over would be a better time management on our part. I should have gotten my team mates to meet earlier to discuss and set proper milestones ahead of time. Then we would have avoided the mad rush during lunch breaks just days before the deadline.
<!-- Thank goodness for these aunties who help collect our trays. But I am so ashamed that many Singaporeans just walking away after meals, leaving their trays on the tables. -->
Update (10June18): My parents brought me back to Tiong Bahru Hawker Center for breakfast recently. I took some pictures while I was there and am sad to see that the situation has not improved. Trays of food are still left on the tables and poor old aunties have to go around to clean up.
What other ways can we do to help improve this situation? If you have any ideas, please contact me and we can continue to work on this project together!
Chia Howie
5 Diligence, RVPS
18 July 2017
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