The Challenges Faced by Students in Six-month Voluntary Community Service to Develop Health Programs in School Settings

DOI

10.2991/ahsr.k.201203.016How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Voluntary community service, Field work, Public health students, Public health program management, Service learning

Abstract

In university, students can participate in various community projects, which underserved populations such as in a school. However, several obstacles may arise during these projects. We conducted a qualitative study with the primary aim of understanding the challenges when students in Yogyakarta participate in healthy school projects. For six-months, we attend two-hours regularly meeting on Wednesday to observe how volunteers discuss appropriate articles, make detailed planning, organize tasks among volunteers, and prepare the tools. We then observe two-hours activities in elementary school on weekends. In the end, volunteers are asked to give feedback through Google Form as an evaluation that can be learned for the next action. The students faced three main challenges during their community service projects. First, uncontrollable turnover, we saw many students interested to join as a volunteer but they inconsistently participate for various reasons. Second, unclear professional identity, we found students are confused in determining the area of expertise because they do not have a choice of a specific topic where they want to focus. Third, working with different backgrounds, this program recruits volunteers from students interested in public health, especially medical, dentistry, nursing, midwife, nutrition, public health and other students who collaborate in a team to develop health programs. The six months of voluntary community service provided a good chance for students to develop health programs and learn to engage with the community, but there is difficulty in managing volunteers. Voluntary action manager has to build good engagement among volunteers to ensure sustainability students participation and improve volunteers focus through discussing appropriate articles on the managerial perspective of a public health program in medical and public health journal.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Dian Mawarni
AU  - Zahra Anggita Pratiwi
AU  - Hafidhotun Nabawiyah
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/04
TI  - The Challenges Faced by Students in Six-month Voluntary Community Service to Develop Health Programs in School Settings
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Scientific Meeting on Public Health and Sports (ISMOPHS 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 85
EP  - 89
SN  - 2468-5739
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ahsr.k.201203.016
DO  - 10.2991/ahsr.k.201203.016
ID  - Mawarni2020
ER  -