One Day With SAFEL or ODWS is a community service program held by the FOLT department of UKM Bahasa Asing SAFEL UNY. This program aims to give SAFEL’s crew an opportunity to do social activities to support the targeted community. The activities in ODWS consist of foreign language and cultural training for the community. This year, ODWS was working with the Relawan Pengajar Pinggir Sungai or P3S community. This community mainly focuses on teaching children that live around the Code River. This year’s ODWS was held on September 3, 2022, and it was able to be conducted offline at the community place, Omah Sinau Masyarakat, Karangwaru River Side.
The first activity of ODWS is open recruitment for volunteers. This year, we were able to gather 31 volunteers from SAFEL crews. Next, the volunteers are required to do an online campaign in the form of uploading Twibbon, infographics about the community, and captions on the Instagram platform. This year, we were able to gain 18 posts from the online campaign. After the online campaign is done, the offline activity is carried out.
We have more or less 35 kids participants, 20 people from P3S community, and 30 volunteers attending the offline activity. The event was opened with a speech from the head of the UKM Bahasa Asing “SAFEL” UNY and P3S communities. Then, we have the volunteer and committee introductions. After that, we moved on to the main event, which is the costume display. Volunteers who took part in this activity as costume models explained the costumes from each of the countries to the participants. Our goal during this session is that the participants will gain new knowledge about foreign culture, especially about the traditional clothes of the country. We had a lot of fun during this session because the participants were very active and enthusiastic to see and know each of the costumes.
After the costume display is done, we move on to the second main event, which is the game session. For this session, we planned four games: red light, green light, Simon says, word act, and find me. The volunteers also play a big part in this session. They introduce the game, give instructions, and play with the participants. Our goal in a game session is to introduce games from foreign countries to the participants and to teach them English in the form of game instructions and expression.
Then, we moved to the last event, which is the handover of mementos and a donation from UKM Bahasa Asing “SAFEL” UNY to the P3S community. Finally, we close the activity with a photo session. Overall, the event went really well, and I also want to say thank you to all the volunteers and committee for making ODWS run smoothly. Also, special thanks to the P3S community for trusting and being able to work with UKM Bahasa Asing “SAFEL” UNY in this program. I hope that we can continue our collaboration in the future. See you in ODWS 2023! – Sara
