As part of the Degree Requirements for the EBIT Faculty at the University of Pretoria, it is necessary to complete 80 hours of community based service. 40 of the hours must be done as fieldwork, whereas the other 40 hours are needed for the academic aspects of the course.

Part of the academic aspects of this course is the creation of this blog, where I can give my view and opinions on community based service and more information about the type of community based work that I have done.

My name is David Irving and I am a final year student at the University of Pretoria and I have done my Community Based Service at my old high school, Sutherland High in Centurion. Considering that I left school more than 10 years ago and that I have been out of the country for almost 5 of these years, it is interesting for me to come back and serve the community that produced who I am today.

As I live in Vienna, Austria, I am no stranger to the concept of Community Based Service and view it as an integral part to maturing and growing as a person. This year will be my first year of community based service and next year I will have to complete another year of community based service in Austria.

I have always felt a need to repay the institutions that helped mold me as a person and have a special affinity towards Sutherland High School. Although my time there was rather unpleasant and I did not enjoy the company of my peers, the school nonetheless prepared me for future goals, not by guiding me in the right direction, but by showing me what could happen if I became complacent and accepting of my lot in life.

I have now returned to the school and seen that many things have changed, but at the same time many things have remained the same, however the difference between then and now is that I can contribute to the school actively and make a difference in the lives of the learners that I meet and I hope to be example of what is possible if one puts their mind and will towards a goal.

During my years in Vienna, I worked, amongst others, as an English Language Trainer for English as a Second Language. These skills that I have acquired are the ones that appear most needed at Sutherland High School. I have been given the opportunity to help the learners that do not have English as a First Language.
To this end I have assisted many Chinese and Taiwanese learners with English and have noticed that the basic fundamentals of the English Language are missing. They are unable to formulate sentences using the correct tenses and it was explained to me that this due to the fact that the concept of time is dealt with differently in Chinese. Although this may be a valid point, it also shows that somewhere down the line, the learners missed some important concepts with regards to English and moreover these concepts were not tested properly to ensure that the learners were competent in these areas.
I am fortunate enough to be able to help the learners overcome these barriers and I hope that I will be able to give them the language skills that they need to continue learning English.

As part of the community based assistance that I am giving to Sutherland High School, I am assisting the Librarian with weeding and recatgorising many of the books in the School's reference library. The books that are removed will be donated to a needy school in Pretoria