Reflective Writing Report On Big Muxima Charity Project

Critical Incident Theory and its benefits

This is a reflective writing report that highlights the experiences and learning from the group project regarding the Big Muxima Charity project. The project concludes six members, with a main purpose of providing a better future to the orphan children of Angola region. In addition, I will provide theories about critical thinking, details about incidents during project and an action plan for future developments,

A critical incident can be described as a certain situation which causes an individual to critically think and contemplate about the events that occurred during certain projects or in the workplace. Individuals try to provide meanings to those incidents, which helps them to reflect on their experiences (Viergever 2019). This helps in identifying whether the past events were a negative experience or a positive experience. Therefore, it can be considered that the critical incidents allow individual to identify their behaviours towards the past events as well as the issues they faced during those situations.

John Flanagan, introduced the critical incident reflection theory which has mainly two benefits. The critical incident reflection helps in identifying broader issues from the past experiences, and highlights new techniques and methods that are beneficial to mitigate the issues (Akda? 2022). The critical incident reflection is mainly used in the healthcare fields; however, currently, it is used in many team situations in order to reflect on the incidents of the group events and its progress (Jenkins, Semple and Bennell 2020). Therefore, it can be considered that the critical incident helps in reflecting on the events that has aa value in terms of determining the outcomes of the group project incidents.

I was assigned with the Big Muxima project, and I participated in this project willingly. I am going to use the Critical Incident Technique model of Flanagan, in order to describe my positive critical incident experience, with maximum details for better comprehension.

Description of the experience: The main purpose of the group project is to provide basic facilities to the orphan children of Angola, so that they can get equal opportunities like other children gets. This charity program was developed with a key objective, which is to ensure that the orphan children are not deprived in any situation and have appropriate opportunities to grow in the future (Cunningham, De Brún, and McAuliffe 2020). During this project, I got the opportunity to contact with the orphans, and learned about their concerns. I learned about many real-life scenarios, and issues of the children, as well as their lifestyle measures despite of getting less opportunities than the privileged children. One of the most positive experiences of me is that I got to communicate with many people, which increased my knowledge regarding practical situations.

Feelings: This experience was significant to me because, I got to meet with different types of children having different types of views about life. Working in a non-profit program like this made me experience different situations (Haussner, Maemura and Matous 2018). In addition, I got to learn about the career preferences of the children, which provided me new perceptions regarding the life. I interacted with so many different children and interacted with them, which also increased my social as well as communication skills. Throughout the group project experience, I got to work in sync with my team members.

Positive Experience Description, Feelings and Evaluation

Evaluation: Initially I faced difficulties regarding understanding the actual concerns of the orphan children; however, the continuous interactions with the children, the orphan centre members and other important associates, I understood the actual reason behind providing them special opportunities and conducting charity programs. Therefore, I can consider that through my positive experiences in the project that my communication skills, social skills and basic lifestyle knowledge has increased, which are beneficial for my future career opportunities. Apart from the positive experience, one of the issues I faced is that I became emotional dealing with the children, after learning about their concerns in life, which I wish I have dealt in a better possible way.

Analysis: I feel that I have handled my interactions in a proper way, as I was polite towards the children, and other clients or associates of this project work. However, I wish, I had better knowledge about the difficulties that the orphan children face, especially the region we worked in, which is Angola.

Learnings/ action plan: Throughout the project work, I learned several factors, such as population rate of the orphan children, due to the interactions. In addition, I learned about several numerical data during the collection of funds or donations, such as per capita income or GDP rate. This overall experience has enhanced my knowledge, and helped me to identify my knowledge gaps, which I will mitigate in the coming future with appropriate strategies. In future, I will attend several conferences, webinars, meetings and workshops regarding this topic in order to increase my knowledge about the various aspects of charity. In addition, I want to participate in this types of charity programs further, in order to help the individuals who are in need of special opportunities or care, in order to grow in life.

I am going to use the critical incident technique of Flanagan, in order to describe my negative experience regarding the group project work.

Description: This group project can be defined as a non-profit organisation; therefore, the only profit returns as well as the success of the program is developing opportunities for the orphan children. Despite of having several positive experiences through the project work, I faced many negative issues. One of the major negative experiences of all is the lack of trust among the orphans and the people who manage them. During the interaction procedures, many people were rude towards us, due to the lack of trust in our programs (McDaniel et al. 2020). It is difficult for a non-profit organisation or program to contact with the people in need because, no one wants to trust a program that do not benefits monetarily from their service. In addition, many people passed multiple negative remarks regarding the achievements or success of the program in the future.

Feelings: The above-mentioned remarks disrupted my motivation, which resulted in the low productivity rate. The main objective of the group project was to raise a fund of 1000 British pound, in order to help the children. Therefore, when I started interacting with people regarding the donation funds, I faced a lot of people who were extremely rude towards me along with my team members. This experience negatively affected me because, the remarks and poor comments of others regarding this beneficial work was discouraging to me. In order to achieve a target, it is important get right amount of support from others, or else there will be no motivation in terms of achieving the desired, resulting in the failure of a project or a task (Kossakowska-Pisarek 2020).

Negative Experience Description, Feelings and Evaluation

Evaluation: I was discouraged, as well as my motivation lessened after I got to learn about the remarks. One of the major problems of mine was that, lack of patience to handle this type of experience more calmly. Therefore, I lost patience and started contemplating about my work and participation in this program. However, one of the good things is that my seniors as well as team members helped me and provided me some tips regarding strategies to handle this type of situation in a calm and proper way (Yang and Northcott 2021). I feel that this experience also has increased my problem solving and decision-making skills, which will also be beneficial for my future career.

Analysis: I feel that through this experience, I have achieved several real time reactions, which has increased my knowledge regarding the behavioural differences of the people. I would have handled the situation better, if I was not that sensitive regarding the rude reactions that many of the people provided towards me and my team. Therefore, I have also identified that, I need to work on my personality trait and handle my emotions in a better way.

Learnings/ action plan: This type of situations can occur again, in every career path that needs to be handled in an appropriate way. I need to work on my soft skills and personal development. Strategic management skills are extremely important in this type of situation, as it helps an individual to create suitable strategies at any given event that helps in mitigating or preventing any issues from occurring (Sayman, Chiu and Lusk 2018). Therefore, I want to develop my strategic management skills in order to create problem solving strategies, which will help me to deal with the difficult situations in a better way.

In the previous section, I have addressed that during the group project work, I have faced both negative and positive experience, which has changed my thought process regarding certain situations. In this part of the assignment, I am going to use the Kolb’s reflective model theory, in order to express my feelings and learning from the two incidents, in details. There are mainly four parts of the Kolb’s reflective model, such as concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation (Bontchev et al. 2018). I will be using this model only, in order to describe my feelings and evaluation regarding both the positive and negative experience incidents of the group project.

Concrete experience: With the help Kolb’s experimental learning theory, I have identified two incidents from the group project that has been significant to me. In terms of the positive experience, I got chance to interact with children belonging from various background, and are orphan. Through the interaction procedures, I learned about various types of perspectives regarding lifestyle and career opportunities. I had to conduct interviews with various orphan children, in order to understand their actual demands and concerns, in order to grow in life (Wymer and Gross 2021). I have learnt from my interactive sessions that every child, irrespective of their social background, financial condition and family status, wants to dream big as well as wants to achieve their individual target with the help of proper opportunities. Therefore, the most positive incident from the overall group project for me was the interactions with the children. Through this incident I realised that I lacked knowledge regarding the lifestyles of an orphan child, and the reason behind the additional support they required (Morris 2020). However, in this group project there were other incidents, which helped me to feel positive regarding the project work, such as the puppy yoga awareness webinar vent in the university.

Analysis of the overall Project Work

There was another significant experience of the group project, which created a negative impact on mee, was the rude behaviours from some of the clients. Due to the collection procedures of donations and funds, I had to contact with several sponsors or potential clients, in order to reach the target of collecting 1000 British pounds for the orphan children. However, some of the interactive calls were not as expected, as some of the individuals discouraged this program with poor choice of words (Fewster-Thuente and Batteson 2018). I even heard curse words and slurs from a client, from whom I demanded a least amount of money. I have also faced trust issues from some of the people, as they backed out from donating money, because according to them, any non-profit program is unauthentic (Kolb and Kolb 2018). Therefore, the negative real time reactions of these people affected me, which I will remember as a bad experience part from the overall group project.

Reflective Observation: Throughout the group project incidents, I recall that one of my team members accepting the fact that the clients or potential sponsors needs to be more polite. With the help of this perspective, I realised that the negative incident that I faced, also affected others (Spaans, Peters and Crone 2019). As a team member, my actions also reflected on others, which means that I have to control my emotions and I also need to handle the situations with much more calmness. That negative incident had manged to decrease my motivation and as a result, lowered the overall productivity rate.

The different types of nature of the different children that I met, has provided me various perspectives regarding certain topics. I have noticed that the orphan children, with whom I have interacted on a frequent basis during the group project, has made me realise that I lack knowledge regarding the basic needs of a person, because of my privileges in the society. I consider this as a positive experience because it helped me to improve my knowledge regarding the real-world factors (Payne 2020).

Abstract conceptualisation: One of the important factors that I have learned from my positive experience is that, success can be determined by helping others, who are in dire needs of the opportunities. With this value, the non-profit organisations are growing gradually in the market. This experience has also helped me to understand that I need to develop my knowledge regarding the real-world factors. I lacked knowledge regarding economy, policies, and societal obligations that the orphan children of Angola face on a frequent basis.

Through the negative incident I have learned that, I lack proper communication and problem-solving skills, because I was unable to handle the difficult situations that came up with the potential funding sponsors. My behaviour also affected my team members, which I want to control in the future. Throughout, the project work, after those incidents happened, I tried to be more patient with my responsibilities, and tried to handle the clients with more politeness (McLeod 2017).

The Learnings and Action Plan for future

Active experimentation: I planning to develop my soft skills as well from what I have learned from my previous experiences. I want to improve my communication skills further my increasing my network, by attending regular charity meetings, In addition, I want to work on the interactive skills, so that I do not have to face difficult situations regarding communicating with beneficial external individuals for the project work. It will also help me to connect with several shareholders and increase the funds or donation percentages. I have realised that I want to interact with more children, who demands special needs because of their lifestyle and conditions. This will help me develop my perspective regarding life, and others. I want to indulge myself into selfcare, which will help me to improve m y thought process and decision-making situations at any given situation (Snowden 2019). These are the learning factors which I want to continue in the upcoming future.

Conclusion

The group project has increased my knowledge in several fields such as communication, patience, sensibility, problem solving and many more. With the help of the experiences that I gathered from the charity project, I felt that I will be able to handle some of the incidents better, if they happen any time in the future now. I have identified several issues of mine through the discussed incidents that happened during the group project. In terms of my future, I want to continue doing the charity work. Helping others especially those who are in needs, provides me a mental satisfaction. Therefore, in future, I will either be joining this same charity team, or any other non-profit organisation, in order to help others. As a result, there are high chances that I will be facing same types of situations, which I need to deal better from this time. I have learned several important factors, like improving problem solving skills, communication skills as well as strategic management skills are beneficial for handling any difficult or happening situations. Through this group project, one of the important lessons that I have learned that is the success comes from achieving the target of helping maximum number of people, which can not be measured by monetary rates.

I want to develop my personality trait, and want to appoint with a mentor, who will be beneficial in terms of providing me with ideas, that are important for personal development. In addition, I want to join some of the famous non-profit organisations as an intern in order to grasp the idea for being successful in this field. In addition, I want to develop my time management skills, because during the project work, I faced difficulties regarding manging the activities, which led to some of the negative incidents and lower productivity. The below table highlights some of the activities, that I want to pursue in order to achieve my own target of developing my knowledge regarding charity and personal trait.

Table 1: Action Plan

(Source: Created by the author)

This is the logo of the program, with a simple design and simple tagline indicating the main purpose of the program, which is to provide care to the orphan children, who are in need of special opportunities. My contribution in this was to develop the concept for the design.

This picture highlights the purpose of the overall project work. The collaboration of Helping Hands and Big Muxima, are mainly portrayed through this message. The main effort or contribution was that taking responsibility to raise money for another charity company.

This artefact shows the main members behind the Helping Hand group project work. These are the members who are mainly responsible for raising donation funds. My contribution in this factor is that, I played a crucial part in channelling the sponsors who are able to donate a large share of money for the charity.

This poster is regarding the Puppy Yoga Event, which has been conducted in the University of Westminster, on the Marylebone campus, in order to attract the sponsors for the charity. My individual contribution on this part was that I decided the prices of the tickets for the events that is 5 pounds, which will be included in the charity fund.

References

Akda?, E., 2022. Exploring experienced teachers’ attitudes to critical incidents. Reflective Practice, 23(1), pp.103-117.

Bontchev, B., Vassileva, D., Aleksieva-Petrova, A. and Petrov, M., 2018. Playing styles based on experiential learning theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 85, pp.319-328.

Cunningham, U., De Brún, A. and McAuliffe, E., 2020. Application of the critical incident technique in refining a realist initial programme theory. BMC medical research methodology, 20(1), pp.1-16.

Fewster-Thuente, L. and Batteson, T.J., 2018. Kolb’s experiential learning theory as a theoretical underpinning for interprofessional education. Journal of allied health, 47(1), pp.3-8.

Haussner, D., Maemura, Y. and Matous, P., 2018. Exploring internationally operated construction projects through the critical incident technique. Journal of Management in Engineering, 34(5), p.04018025.

Jenkins, B., Semple, T. and Bennell, C., 2020. An evidence-based approach to critical incident scenario development. Policing: An International Journal.

Kolb, A. and Kolb, D., 2018. Eight important things to know about the experiential learning cycle. Australian educational leader, 40(3), pp.8-14.

Kossakowska-Pisarek, S., 2020. Developing reflective practice as part of teacher training with the use of critical incidents. Neofilolog, 55, pp.93-106.

McDaniel, M.M., Borgen, W.A., Buchanan, M.J., Butterfield, L.D. and Amundson, N.E., 2020. The Philosophical Underpinnings of the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique. Canadian Journal of Counselling & Psychotherapy/Revue Canadienne de Counseling et de Psychothérapie, 54(4).

McLeod, S., 2017. Kolb’s learning styles and experiential learning cycle. Simply psychology, 5.

Morris, T.H., 2020. Experiential learning–a systematic review and revision of Kolb’s model. Interactive Learning Environments, 28(8), pp.1064-1077.

Pamungkas, S.F., Widiastuti, I. and Suharno, S., 2019. Kolb’s Experiential Learning As An Effective Learning Model In Creative Product And Entrepreneurship Subjects. Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Vocational Education (JoMEVE), 2(1), pp.27-32.

Payne, M., 2020. The origins of social work: Continuity and change. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Sayman, D., Chiu, C.L. and Lusk, M., 2018. Critical Incident Reviews of Alternatively Certified Special Educators. Journal of the National Association for Alternative Certification, 13(1), pp.3-14.

Snowden, J., 2019. Than One Charity?. Effective altruism: Philosophical issues, p.69.

Spaans, J.P., Peters, S. and Crone, E.A., 2019. Neural reward-related reactions to monetary gains for self and charity. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19(4), pp.845-858.

Viergever, R.F., 2019. The critical incident technique: method or methodology?. Qualitative health research, 29(7), pp.1065-1079.

Wymer, W. and Gross, H., 2021. Charity advertising: A literature review and research agenda. Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing, p.e1723.

Yang, C. and Northcott, D., 2021. How do charity regulators build public trust?. Financial Accountability & Management, 37(4), pp.367-384.

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