Below, you can find reflections of the Summer Job Program 2021 written by Edith Chan & Neil Yang.

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Reflections by Edith Chan

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          Over the past ten weeks, I worked with Community Transcultural Support Services (CTSS) as a Summer Job Student (SJP). At CTSS, we provided primary health care programs and services to both seniors and immigrants of ethnic minority groups. Throughout my time at CTSS, I have interacted with over 400 individuals through virtual presentations, delivering handouts to seniors, contacting community members via phone calls and emails and other outreach programs. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we could not meet with the individuals personally but have found various ways to have meaningful connections with the community. As the Socio Health Promotion Coordinator, I was responsible for creating material that would help improve and increase community member’s knowledge regarding their health.

 

          Through the Health promotion presentation, I enhance my public speaking, communication skills as well as my coordinating and leading skills. It helped me refine my interpretation skills and learned to problem-solve and use critical thinking when situations arose. I formulated the Health Promotion Presentation, as well as created resources for ethnic minority community members that may have difficulty accessing health information. Communicating and working on this project was very significant to my project and taught me much about community health and what it means to serve others.

 

          In addition to the Health Promotion program, I experienced many other learning opportunities through SJP and CTSS. We participated in workshops, such as Leadership, Mental Health, etc. I was able to gain a deeper understanding of many topics from professionals. We had opportunities to outreach and create promotional materials. It allowed me to develop essential life skills. I learned how to thrive in a professional environment, proper communication, good work ethics, and teamwork. With the SJP team, we developed great teamwork, aiding one another in performing tasks and brainstorming. I was able to help my teammates with Cantonese interpretation and translation when required.

 

          Overall, I have learned so much during this Summer Job Program. I have gained much knowledge, experience and wisdom regarding primary healthcare and working in the community. Our goal as a primary health organization is to help encourage healthy lifestyles. We can help improve community health through educating and helping access services and programs. CTSS and the Summer Job Program have been life-changing, and I have gained many new perspectives, irreplaceable work experiences and many new skills. I’m very excited to put what I have learned this summer to further my education and aid my future career. Hopefully, I can contribute more to the health sector in the future.

 

Edith Chan (Primary Health Promotion Coordinator of CTSS)

 

Reflections by Neil Yang

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          For the last two months, I was allowed to be in the summer job program and work on various projects with my colleagues. When I joined this program, I expected myself to learn different skills and overcome numerous obstacles. However, this program was way beyond those expectations. I was able to utilize my bilingual capability, apply my graphics design knowledge and social connections to this job. 

 

          Throughout the summer program, there were many skillsets that I learned. For example, public speaking was a skill set I developed. Throughout the program, we had to give out multiple online presentations to the seniors and mentees. As the mandarin speaker for the senior health presentations, I had to overcome my nerves and stutters to perform my best in front of the elders. In the end, we successfully presented multiple online health presentations regarding active living, health promotion and nutrition, in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Even though the presentations were online, we tried our very best to create as many audience interactions as possible. We held Q&A sessions with the seniors, made phone calls and asked about their well-being, participated in the group stretching and so on. These presentations helped me grow my skills on how to present in public and speak in front of a large group of audiences. Another would be on-the-fly translation, which was something I have never done before. Although there was a huge requirement for it, I was able to practice it during the Q&A sessions and the phone call sessions. 

         

          While doing translation works, I was also assigned to create infographics for both social media and physical banners/pamphlets for both the SDG program and health presentations. This gave me a unique opportunity to showcase my graphic design skills and gave me the freedom to express myself. Thanks to this specific role, it allowed me to work on my communication skills with my colleagues. Whenever I would finish my design, the first ones to see it was my colleagues. We would discuss the draft, find both disagreements and flaws together, lastly, create the best possible infographic for the programs that are being presented. 

 

          During the time where I was assigned to produce infographics, I also had the chance to connect with high schoolers and mentor them about my position here at the summer job program. Spending a whole day with the high schoolers allowed me to practice my teaching skills, showing them what my workflow looks like and how to manage my time. It was super interactive between the mentors and the mentees, both parties learned a lot from each other. 

 

          There were many obstacles that we had to overcome throughout our work, the most notable one was the COVID-19 restrictions. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to create over 200 interactions within the community through phone calls, emails, social media and personal connections. In the end, we were able to provide primary health services to seniors and youths across the city. Given the unique situation presented to us, our team worked hard to overcome the restrictions of COVID-19. We wanted to make sure that those who we serve will receive the quality of service before the pandemic, so those who we serve will feel safe and at home. Even though we were unable to work in person for the first half of the program, we used ZOOM for daily meetings to keep track of our progress. 

 

          We currently live in a world full of touch screens and digital connections, hence, social media plays a big part in our daily lives. As a part of the marketing team, I was able to bring something new to Community Transcultural Support Services (CTSS), which is social media. We were able to try a new method of marketing that the organization has never done before. Creating social media posts and have them posted on various high school accounts, allowed us to spread the word of the SDG 2030 program. It was a huge step into modernizing the marketing strategy for CTSS whereas before, we would rely on posters and banners. 

Community Transcultural Support Services shone a light to me on how primary health care services are being provided to the general public across all genders, age groups, and ethnic communities. There was so much information about the well-rounded health care system, amazing opportunities for youth learning that I wished I attended when I had the chance to, lastly having public interaction with my colleagues made me feel like I belong in this society. All these great learning opportunities will be engraved in my head forever. I will have no issues returning to CTSS as a volunteer or an employee as I would love to continue serving our community.

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Neil Yang (Marketing and Communication Assistant of CTSS)