Growing Together: Advancing Networks for Service-learning Actors in Asia

This paper traces the history of United Board‘s engagement with service-learning through higher education in Asia and reflects on the recent discussion about the relevancy of service-learning activities to today‘s higher education system. Through a close review of the experience shared in recent projects sponsored and organized by United Board in the last five years, service learners from colleges and universities around Asia all testified an process that deepens both cognitive and affective learning, generating in service-learning actors-faculty, students and community members-a connection that could inspire and sustain their vision and passion for life. Despite the seemingly still marginalized status of service learning programs and faculty in most higher education institutions, educators believing in whole person education only find service-learning ever more important in the face of higher education that has been increasingly trapped by the ranking race