Waterfalls Student Care Center : Experience and Learning. This post is especially for Priya Sekar. So it was 1:30 pm this Tuesday when I reached the student center. I was the first one to reach. When I reached there were 5-6 kids with special needs in the age group of 7-12 years. It was my first experience to interact with them. So while waiting for other volunteers to join in we played some games like charades, jig-saw puzzle, guess the cartoon etc. Sarala and Sumana joined in soon and started playing with kids. The kids were super happy and excited about more volunteers joining in. Probably every month some volunteers visit kids for some fun and activity stuff. While playing with them I realized one thing We should thank almighty for a fully functional body and mind. We could have been in there place too, life is so difficult for them, and we crib over simple short-comings in our lives. Then some more kids and rest of volunteers joined on. The rest of the kids were normal , just like us, but came from less fortunate backgroud. Parents of some children are prisoners and some are very very poor. And then it was time we start with our activities. We had planned following activities: 1. Magical Balloon Blowing. 2. Secret Message using invisible ink. 3. Mighty Straw and a potato 4. Spray Painitng 5. Leaf Painting 6. Finger Painting 7. Balloon Painting I thought it would be a quite a disciplined set up. I had planned a lot haan..... I will do this i will do that I will make stories around the experiments(science based activities) and make it much more fun and interesting. I thought I shall demonstrate the experiments and volunteers will help kids. But discipline almost vanished from the room as soon as we took out the activity supplies. The kids were super excited and it was difficult for us to match their energy levels. We were 12 volunteers for 20 kids. Even then we found it difficult! Just imagine! Thankfully the volunteers were really super engergetic and handled the things quite well and made sure that kids have lot of fun. Then it was all fun fun (little chaotic though :) ) for next 1-1.5 hours. Some of the kids were super creative and surprised us with their abilities to think differently. A girl after stabbing potato with 6 straws , colored it during art session and said she made a spider out of it. A girl with special need stabbed straw into a potato whithout any guidance from volunteers. Its simply amazing!! Post event I got a chance to interact with all the volunteers. It was wonderful meeting them all. Most of the volunteers there were from India. Some quite happily settled here. the reason they want to stay here is because of the facilities they get here safety, transparency in govt activities, no or less pollution, exposure to kids etc. Some want to go back to India beacuse they feel Life is LIVE there in their own country. I also got a chance to meet Mrs. Raja from another NGO called LIFE. She gave us tips on how to handle such kids in a loving and caring manner. She also pointed out that we should not have used potatoes for the activity. Do you know why? She said: The kids you are addressing dont get to eat sufficient food and you are wasting potatoes in an activity which they would have otherwise happily eaten I was quite touched to hear it. I met another lady named Anuja. She is a researcher at Beyond Social Services. I asked her more about her work profile. She said:Singapore is not as glamorous as it looks, there is a lot of hidden poverty, So we at Beyond help a few backward communities or less fortunate people to get them subsidised facilities etc. While talking to her an idea struck my mind and that is we all moms should conduct a toy donation drive and spread many more smiles. Newlives shall soon coordinate and conduct this toy donation drive. Any interested moms please drop in a message.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:30:50 +0000
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