A community extension program is a plan made by teachers and even students to a specific or target community aiming to create an organized community service. On the 24th of April 2021, a group of first-year college students from the Asian International School of Aeronautics and Technology created a symposium entitled, “The New Normal Career Guidance”. The symposium was an online community extension program for their NSTP subject. It was a live webinar that can be accessed through a Google meeting link and can also be viewed on Facebook Live. The main objective of this webinar is to raise awareness especially the youth on how to have a career path with the right career choice. The theme of the event was, “Lighting the torch within towards success”. It targets Grade 12 students or anyone who is still doubting the career choices they would choose and want to have in the future. Along with this event, we created an activity where Grade 12 students can participate by creating a creative work either a video, artwork, song, etc. that would talk about their lives as they choose their career paths. The winners then receive cash prizes onwards.
The live webinar started at exactly 9 am with around 70+ students participating. There were three guest speakers who were invited specifically, Dr. John Michael P. Castino, Ms. Maria Cecilia Santander and Ms. Viktorria Villamor. It all started with a prayer, AISAT hymn, and opening remarks. Each speaker was given 30 minutes to present their topics regarding career guidance. Then after every speaker, a mini-game was given to the students to help them participate more and create a lively vibe to the event. The first speaker highlighted the importance of personality, confidence, and proper etiquette and somewhat about being and loving yourself. From the first few hours, everything went well and we were glad that a lot of students were participating. It came to a point that there were about 90+ participants on our google meet and we were really happy. Even with the mini-games, we made for them, they were cooperating well. Then, the second speaker’s turn. The first few minutes were great until one of our participants opened his mic and was speaking a different language. We thought it was just a student who wanted to ask a question or somewhat he just forgot to turn his mic off. But things change when another person was communicating with him. From that point, we knew something was wrong. That was the time we discovered that our google meet was hacked. The incident was shocking and disturbing so all of us had to leave the meeting and create a new one. We, who were responsible for what happened, took full responsibility for our mistake. We took a break and then continued on with the second and last speaker followed by more mini-games. That time, our participants went low because of the incident. However, we were able to finish everything even though it wasn’t perfect. We truly apologized to the participants for what happened. All of us were pretty annoyed yet scared but we still continued. We closed everything with the awarding of winners from the mini-games, Time Capsule Activity, closing remarks, and closing prayer. At the end of the webinar, we were glad because the information that the speakers were able to share was beneficial to the participants and even us as students. In the end, all of us were happy with the outcome but the incident is something that wouldn’t be easy to forget.
To sum it up, the online community extension program entitled, The New Normal Career Guidance, was a successful webinar made by our group. Although there is a little interruption because of hackers, we still were able to continue by making a new google meet link. At first, we were all very nervous thinking about how the program would work even when we had tons of practice. However, we were able to get through it. The speakers were friendly and interesting which made us listen more to their session. They were also nice to speak with and their topics about life and their career advice struck us especially the students. We were happy that we were able to learn new things. One thing we should only be able to handle next time around is the security of our google meeting to avoid such disastrous events happening. Thus, the online webinar was an important event that will help students plan their future careers as it gives you the much-needed path and makes it clear where you can see yourself in the near future. It also makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and of the skills and knowledge needed to achieve your goals and dreams in life.