A couple of weeks ago, a group of us A-Level students from Sunway University went to a small Indian community in Balakong, Selangor for the Reading Bus project, which is part of our Moral Studies assignment.
Our Moral Studies class which comprised of 3 A-Level classes (S1, S2 & A1) were separated into 2 groups for this project, namely Bubblegum and Mint. I'm in the Mint group, thank goodness XD According to our lecturer, Sunway University is by far the first university participating in this project.
In the bus, departing from Sunway.
My sampat friend Mel and I were (obviously) sampat-ing at the back of the bus. Only 2 of us at the back row so yeah :D Even small and stupid things can make us burst into laughter which was darn crazy. This photo very cacat though :(
We arrived at their flats a little after noon (after getting lost for awhile), and were greeted by curious children together with the intermittent ringing of the bell from the ice-cream man.
So this is where the Indian kids stay!
All of us were blur on what to do and just stood there outside while some of them got ice-creams. Even our lecturer got one! -.-
There were about sixty Indian children, their age ranging from pre-school to secondary school. They're not orphans so don't be mistaken! Although some may have lost either one parent..
Most of them were at a very young age which means hyper activeness, so imagine the chaos that ensued as we stepped into the community hall. These kids were running towards a small bookshelf and crowding around it, each grabbing a book that interests them.
Their enthusiasm struck me, because even though they are not enrolled in a proper school with good classroom environment and quality teachers, they cherish knowledge and are eager for it.
Those guys look like gangsters bullying the kids huh :p
As we were thrown in the middle of a bunch of excited kids, we felt like fish out of water at first and were unsure of what to do. But luckily for us, the person-in-charge managed to calm the children down and got them to sit in order.
We started with icebreakers, playing ‘Kumar Says’ (as in ‘Simon Says’). Some of the young kids did not understand simple English, so we pitched in to help by demonstrating the actions.
It was a fun time connecting with the children before we started the Reading Bus.
Basically, the aim of Reading Bus is to guide these underprivileged children in reading.
Heheh, the two shy-iest guys in my class :p
After each of the children settled down in groups with a book that was sponsored by Reading Bus, we made ourselves comfortable in between them.
Each of us had our own creative ways in teaching them how to read, and the children were eager to follow after us, pronouncing each word clearly.
Here's Jolene with the group of kids she was in-charged of. I assisted her :D Notice that boy?
He's the 5-year-old boy whom I “took under my care”. Unfortunately, he did not understand a single word of English but only Tamil, as I saw a hint of comprehension in his face when his elder sister spoke to him in Tamil. I kind of gave up reading to him halfway through since he was uninterested in the book, and also to prevent him from running away from this weird girl yakking away in gibberish.
In the end, I immersed myself in his world and started doing all sorts of actions while making animal sounds. Well you know, to keep him entertained. And he reciprocated by crawling over my lap, doing a spider-crawly thing with his fingers. I am truly touched!
Now is my turn with the kids :D See his blank face!
He became my favourite kid, and during break time where all the children munched on cupcakes provided by us, I made sure to keep an eye on him. Yes, I am biased like that. I found him a book about T-Rexes from the bookshelf (I got to know he likes dinosaurs), and I was pleased to see him get entranced by the colourful pictures as he flipped through the pages.
This photo is blur and I think I wasn't ready lol :/ He loves the T-Rex book so much! :p
Moving on, we played more games with them, sang nursery rhymes complete with actions and generally having a great time bonding with the kids. Later, we had a spelling competition and the words were extracted from the books we read to them. The kids were extremely enthusiastic as many hands shot up once a word was asked to spell out, so we did not know who to call first! They received colourful stickers as a reward for spelling the word correctly, which most of them did.
Since we had leftover stickers from the spelling competition, we decided to give them all to the kids but the catch was that they had to do whatever we asked of them, for example singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars. The kids did a great job, and the stickers were gone merely in minutes. For the last part, we handed out boxes of colour pencils to the children in hopes of colouring their lives - figuratively speaking of course.
My honest opinion and thoughts about the project:
All in all, it was my first community service (yes, after eighteen years of my life…) and I had a pretty good experience. It warms my heart to see the faces of the children light up, and to hear the sounds of their laughter while they were enjoying themselves during games time.
These children, they do not have much but they are easily contented. A little lesson that I have learnt from this project is that, sometimes we need to take a step back and truly appreciate what we have; not constantly demand for materialistic goods that we do not need. Besides that, these children are hungry for knowledge even though they are financially challenged. I know kids who are studying in expensive private schools but sadly, they do not fully grasp the importance of education and take their parents’ efforts for granted.
I know all these sound cliché, but really, after seeing those kids living in conditions which are lacking in basic necessities, I felt a sense of gratitude surging through me. I think all of us who are capable of helping should really humble ourselves and give back to the society with a willing heart. Only then will we realise the true meaning of lending a helping hand to those in need.
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