WEEK 12 - LAUNCH DAY!

It is finally launch day! The project was coming to an end and to see the project finishing from the 3 month of hard work we did has paid off. All of the semester 6 students were there on launch day, but this week leading up to launch day, there were last minute things that we needed to settle first. One of the things that we had to settle was the decorations for the library during launch day and about the catering.

Me and Darren decided to have two teams to buy two different things and to prepare for, to bring during the launch day on Saturday. The books team decided to volunteer to do the decorations, meaning settling the balloons and ribbons. Jordan helped with the balloons and settled it since he had a business involving balloon decoration already whilst Zeeleng's book team prepared the ribbons to be used for the launching gimmick. Me and Darren, the project managers, decided to go ahead and purchase the utensils, paper cups and plates, and napkins for 100 pax since we were expecting to have a maximum of 100 pax on Saturday.

During the Saturday of launch day, all of the semester 6 students were doing different tasks, which was great because we could get a job done quite fast. One of my main tasks for the day was to take photos for semester 6 students of the whole day. One of the things that Ms Norji has asked Jordan to purchase also was a locker so I helped assemble the cabinet locker first whilst some of the other classmates were putting up balloons on the ceiling and the books team were doing the ribbons.

 

Since me and Darren were project managers, we just went around to make sure everything is going right and most of the time, I went around and helped the different groups if they needed any help. After I finished assembling the locker, we needed to blow up more balloons to decorate the front of the library, creating two lines of balloons on both sides of the bunting, that the boys have put up. We had to blow up the balloons, tie two balloons together, and then tie all of the balloons together in a line to be put in front of library.

After all the decorations were done and prepared already were happy about it, we decided to start platting up the tables to put the food on and for the utensils. We opened all of the paper cups and plates, utensils and napkins and organised it neatly. We then also rearranged the rugs and the beanbags, putting the beanbags on top of the rugs and place it on all corners of the library.

Mr Edwin then needed some help wrapping some presents for the guests that were coming to the event later, for the VIPS and for the people who are speaking. We wrapped the two presents that were for the two speakers with just ribbon since the present had already a nice box wrapping and wrapped the other 5 presents using wrapping papper.

The event was about to start! We have arranged the chairs to face the projector, guests and the orang asli kids were coming in already. The whole event was amazing! It was great to bond, talk and see the orang asli kids and I was so happy to see the kids were happy with the library and playing with the games and looking through the books. Project manager Darren started the opening with a speech, behalf of the class, a very touching speech. We got to watch the finished video made by Group 6 team for this module; it was amazing to see the videos and photos of before the library and its' condition, the overall process, and the amazing outcome that we have today after it is all complete. We listened to two speeches, the guests cut the ribbon and that was it! The library is now open and the project is complete! After the event was done, we had some food for everyone to eat, and then that was the end of the day!

It was an amazing experience to be doing a community project and to give back to the community, helping the kids who are in need and can provide a better education for them. It was a very hard, productive,  and fun 3 months working with the rest of my classmates and would not have achieved what we have achieved today without everyone's help. I am very grateful that I got to be project manager with Darren because it really helped me improved my communication, organisation and leadership skills. In behalf of the project managers, I would like to thank all my classmates and juniors for the help and for our lecturers Mr Edwin and Ms Norji for the guidance. Hopefully in the future, I would be able to do more community service projects.

WEEK 11

This week was a very busy week, execution day on the Saturday which means as part of the furniture group, we needed to purchase all the furniture before the Saturday. 

On the Monday, the stationary team needed help to sharpen all the donated colour pencils and pencils so some of us helped them to sharpen all the pencils and put it back into the coloured categories. At first when we looked at the how much colour pencils there were, we thought that it would take quite long but because a lot of us helped the stationary team, we accomplished the task quite fast. 

The furniture team and as project manager, we were quite confused on what was the status for the furniture, who is purchasing it, where we have to purchase it, how many quantities, because our juniors were suppose to do it but they haven't gotten back to us. When our juniors got back to us, we were a bit confused since they told they needed dimensions of the shelves that were donated by Bryan's church but we thought we weren't using it anymore. To fix all the miscommunication and whatnot, the furniture team decided to go meet Ms Norji and Mr Edwin together and discuss together about what is the next step and what our plan is.

During the actual CSI class, there wasn't really much new updated progress from last week. Paint team was done already, all settled which was good. Stationary team were needed to purchase pin board, a container to put the colour pencils in and a ring of A4 paper. Books team have asked our juniors for one person to donate a book, where some have donated already but some books are not in good condition so they are to filter the books later.

From the meeting with Mr Edwin and Ms Norji, the furniture team had a lot to do still. Our juniors were supposed to be purchasing the shelves but somehow they weren't able to do it so we decided to just purchase all the furniture in IKEA to save some time, and because Mr Edwin has a member card so able to get discount.

Thursday night I went with the boys, Darren, Patrick and Bryan, and met Mr Edwin at IKEA to purchase all the furniture that we needed. Luckily, the furntiure team had already gone to IKEA few weeks back so already knew what furniture we needed to buy and therefore was not needed to go through all the furniture in IKEA and picking one by one again. Our budget that the finance team has given us was 3700rm, to purchase shelves, tables, kids stool, and rug.

One problem that we found while finding the furniture was that the kids stool that we wanted, there were only one colour and all the other colours that we wanted was out of stock and that it was only available at IKEA Cheras branch so Mr Edwin decided that he will help purchase for us on the next day and bring to site for us.

We were quite close to finding all the furniture and were only left 4 tables but when we looked at the how much furniture we have already, we were afraid that we wouldn't be able to fit into the 3 cars we have. So we decided to purchase these first, then try to put it into the car. Ms Norji met us afte we were done since she was taking most of the big furniture in her car and transporting it into site on the Saturday. After putting the furniture in the cars, we looked at the amount of space left and we decide that we were able to fit in the tables so we went back up to IKEA , purchase the leftover tables and packed it in the car. Thankfully we bought IKEA furniture as it is flat-packed and easier for transport or else would've needed to rent a lorry which would have been more costly. 

 

 It was a very tiring trip, but a very successful trip, finally had all the furniture purchased and now all we needed to do was to build it on the site. As project manager, we would like to thank Patrick for the help because he wasn't part of furniture team but was willing to help out.

On the Saturday itself, it was execution day so we drove up together and met in site. It was my first time to see the library and to go to the site so I was quite excited to see how we would change the lives of these orang asli children. I saw the condition the library was in before and it wasn't good, so I was very glad that we were able to give these kids a new library to learn in. 

It was quite a hectic day. The semester 6 students, which were 7 of us who were willing to help us assemble the furniture, we were assembling the furniture as a team. We automatically new what we had to do and whilst we were assembling the furniture, we ended up working into teams here and there, helping each other when we needed a hand. We assembled the chairs first because it was the easiest and also because we can use these chairs after we assembled it. We then assembled the small shelves, tall shelves, the tall and small tables, and the kids stool. The whole process took from 11am to 4pm so it was quite a long process, with a lunch break in between, but we had it all done. The only thing we had to wait for was the lorry to come with the donated furniture from Bryan's church and the 5 bean bags that were donated. 

Whilst waiting for the lorry to come, some of the semester 6 decided to help our juniors with the painting. There were too many people painting and not enough brushes already so I decide that I would just help take photos for my classmates to put into their blog. 

Overall, it was a very successful day. We got all the furniture built, moved all the furniture into the library already and now all we had to do was wait for next week to handover the libary. As project manager, I would like to thank the paint team, Aisyah, Patrick and Janson, and Jordan from finance team, for helping me, Darren, and Bryan with assembling the furniture. Without their help, the whole process would've taken much longer so we were thankful for their help. 

 

WEEK 10

RAYA BREAK

WEEK 9

For this week, we just had a quick update with the whole class on what has been achieved since last week. I then again wrote down the notes for the updates. One of the biggest achievement we had as a group was from stationary group, which was getting donations from Caitlin's friend, donating notebook, ruler, whiteboard marker and eraser, colour marker, glue, scissor, push-pin,
paperclip, origami, watercolour brush and palette, hole puncher, clear tape, stapler and drawing A4. For books, we have collected more books but need to inform the other groups for CSI to donate books also. The books team also went around to other classes to talk about the project infront of other students to inform them about donation. For paint, all the paint has been collected but we think that there is not enough paint so perhaps, we need to get more sponsors for paint or purchase it ourselves. For furniture, we have received the 1000rm back from Ms Norji, collected the 1500rm cheque already, received 100rm donation already and 90rm. Overall, we have about 3690rm.

I think we have done quite well this week, with a little bit of progress, with furniture team done surveying in IKEA but did not end up purchasing anything because we think that it might be a little bit over the budget so we are waiting for now to move forward.