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Angel |
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Angelica |
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Annie |
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Harry |
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Natalie |
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Trevor |
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Equal Exchange
Trevor Wong
In the pre-trip briefing session, the volunteers of Light On mentioned an important idea - don’t think of yourself as a saviour who helps others as a giver, but you should exchange equally with the locals.
One of the tasks on the trip was to give the local children a lesson. The biggest problem we encountered was the language barrier. One of the classes we taught was a group of children aged 3 to 6 who only knew a few simple words and numbers in English but could not form a complete English sentence to communicate with us. As we did not know Nepali, it was undoubtedly a challenge. One of the sessions in the lesson was to teach them to sing a number song. What we did was that we first sang the song slowly once, and then asked them to try to sing together. Perhaps they did not quite understand the meaning of the lyrics, so only 3 or 4 children could follow us when we asked them to sing together. Fortunately, an attending local teacher noticed the situation and translated for us. Now the children understood the meaning of the lyrics and sang with the music. Fortunately, with his/her help, the lesson was conducted smoothly.
The experience taught me an important lesson, the purpose of volunteering is to communicate with the locals and to help to complete some tasks. But when you encounter difficulties, you always have to rely on the locals to get the jobs done smoothly. Helping each other and cooperating is the ideal way of volunteering.
(Thanks Hing Sing Yuen, our volunteer, who translated Trevor’s testimonial from Chinese to English.)
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