Service Learning Week 9? I forget - Society

Right now we are in the middle of our project for Sao Mai which is painting the out door playground of Sao Mai. In trying to paint the columns, we're faced with the dilemna of what exactly it is that we want to paint. We've had many ideas and swapped visions a lot. We finally came up with with one that incorporated the theme and name of Sao Mai within the playground. Sao Mai means morning star, so we had this idea that we would paint the columns full of clouds and shooting star to go with the theme, and to incorporate the children, have grass on the ground that would be made up of the children hands. We went up to the office to ask permission again if we could just use the children help in doing this and they said that it probably would turn out ugly because they had done the whole hand thing once before and it didn't look good. However, they liked the idea of the theme of Sao Mai being incorporated into the painting. One of the ladies who worked there walked us over to her computer where we found out she knew english and was the one doing all the translation, brochures, and presentation slides. She showed us a picture of a star that was being formed out of the hands of people where they would do like a peace sign and connect the together and that created a star. She told us the symbol behind this hand star was that society and Sao Mai want to work together and create this school, so it was a symbolic of the helping hands of society. This got me thinking about in terms of society, who helps who. I wonder who the presentation of So Mai is for because it's in English, so therefore, it probably for other people from foreign countries. Thus, it looks to the society of foreign countries for support, but just because it is from somewhere outside of Vietnam doesn't mean that the support from that society is any less. I think it terms of society, vietnam's society and foriegn countries' society work together to create on big society in order to help Sao Mai.