In the past exciting semester (AY2020-21), a group of PRAD students from the ORGC3046 Writing for Professional Communication course had a great opportunity to participate in a service-learning project, writing four feature stories for a booklet published by Family Value Foundation of Hong Kong (FVFHK), a local non-profit charitable organization founded in 2007 which proactively promotes the importance of family values for the wellbeing of every individual in our local community.
With the guidance of the course instructor Dr. Michelle HUANG and the help of Family Blessing Missionary Organization（風雨同路人）, each group of students conducted interviews with four interviewees who grew up in divorced families. Based on the interviews, the students applied the skills learned from the course to writing up four feature stories, aiming to raise the reader’s awareness about the essential role of parents in every child’s growth path and to encourage the reader to care for those children who grow up in broken families.
The booklet was published before Father’s Day in June this year. In the end of the project, all the students were invited to the book launch event held on 12 June. 16 local and overseas honored guests participated in the event. They were counselors, paternity educators, and parent-child education experts. During the book launch event, our students shared their journey of writing these four feature articles to all the participants.
“Such a learning opportunity helped us learning how to conduct interviews on sensitive topics, e.g., skills to handle the interviewees’ emotions when they are sharing unpleasant childhood memories, and seeking permission from the interviewees about photo shooting and using their names in the feature story”, said one of the students. “In addition to writing skills, we’ve also learned the importance of good parenting and tips on how to handle family conflicts and avoid hurting children.”
This writing project provided the students with opportunities to obtain hand-on experience in writing feature articles as a reporter in a real-life context. They engaged in the whole process including preparing appropriate interview questions, conducting interviews, photo shooting, video recording, writing up and editing the articles.
(Reporter: Kimmy Kwan ORGC3046)