Prospective service leaders enhancement project: Achievements, impacts, and critical success factors

This paper elucidates the experiences of service leadership development at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). Aligning with the vision and mission of the Fung Service Leadership Initiative, EdUHK launched the 'Achiever' project in September 2012. The project aimed to develop service leadership qualities in students. In September 2015, this 'Achiever' project was completed but the learning achievements generated from it will sustain. 'Achiever' was developed in a co-curricular context and its development was based on three core beliefs of service leadership as well as a road map which comprised a threephase training structure and a five-level student leadership development model. In the three years during which the project was active, over 1,000 students from various disciplines accumulated a total of 73,698 learning hours in 13 designated co-curricular activities. Over 90% of the participating students reported that taking part in 'Achiever' had enhanced their self-understanding, their goal-setting skills and their abilities to appreciate others. Meanwhile, over 70% of the students believed that caring and compassion were essential personal qualities of a service leader. We believe that recognition of such important qualities by our younger generation is beneficial to societal development as it shows their compassion to s erve. The project was student-oriented. EdUHK created an environment conducive to peer learning and built a sharing platform on which students could share thoughts and experiences openly and freely. Students who had participated in 'Achiever' were encouraged to actively apply their newly-acquired service leadership knowledge and skills to the community service projects in which they engaged. Copyright © 2018 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.