Day 5 - PRU home II on 22th July 2016

Today, we paid a visit to the Prudential Welfare Home for the second time since our previous visit on 16 July 2016. It was the day we were looking forward as we were thrilled to meet all the adorable children there. At 8.30 am, we departed to the PRU home by car for about 10 minutes journey from University of Malaya. We once again greeted and communicated with Mother Judy, the person-in-charge about our agenda for this second visit. Agenda of the day were to do some cleaning works and interaction with the children.

We did a briefing for the cleaning works and distributed the works to everyone. We swept and moped the floor, wiped the fans, tables, book racks and sliding steel door. The house was actually quite clean as the place was cleaned up on a regular basis. Nothing much for us to do regarding cleaning works, however we tried to do as much we could. We cleaned up the places and areas which were not easy to reach out such as the ceiling fans. We also wiped the book racks and rearranged the books to make it looked more neat and tidy.

Fortunate to have a tall guy like Chuan Pey in the group

Wiped till shinny!

Even a speck of dust was spotted by hawk-eyed Siao Wen

After finished cleaning, we interacted and taught the children their homework. The children were studying on afternoon classes where their age ranged from 4 to 10 years old. Close to 12 pm on the clock, a van came to the house to pick them up for school. After the children went to school, we proceeded to preparation of sandwiches for tea time later.

"Boy, any problem so far?"

Mashed the eggs with hearts =)

We made sandwiches with <3 <3 <3

Process of making sandwiches 

There was actually another group of children which were attending classes of morning session. While waiting for the children of morning classes to come back to PRU Home, we had lunch together with Mother Judy and Mother Everly. We engaged in conversation with them in order to know more about the children who were staying in the welfare home.

Grouping the children by filling names onto colour paper

Once the children were backed from school and got themselves ready, we proceeded with handcraft session. For this session, we divided the children into 3 groups which were red, blue and green. They were divided into groups as the groups would be competing among themselves for the prizes we had prepared days before that. The groups performance would be assessed in order to determine the winner. Firstly, they were assessed by the end products they produced for the handcraft session. There were two handicrafts prepared, they were origami airplane and dragonfly. We provided colour papers for origami airplane and strings for the dragonfly. The airplane were used for the further game session among the groups.

They were glued together by a strong bond, like a father and son bond

The smile was always there while teaching the children

The Green team!

"You should like this... like that..."

The fast learner

Teaching with motherly heart ;)

Other than that, we did a dance performance for the children and encouraged them to join in our dance together. The children were fast learners, they enjoyed the dance very much. Happiness could be clearly seen on them by observing the smiles and laughter they gave out. While for us, it was the stage that we could finally unleash our talents and love towards dancing. The dance that we had together with the children was not only an activity to bring joy to the children, the dance had also acted as a tool to shape the children's character. We were hoping that we could bring the best out of them while dancing, and therefore we hoped that they could always bring the best out of themselves in whatever they do.

Dance! Huunnn... I wanna dance dance dance!

Dance session

Come on dance with us ^^

After the dance session, we had a tea time break by enjoying the sandwiches that we prepared earlier. The sandwiches were distributed to every children. Besides the sandwiches, there were also Vitagen for the children. Zhi Da's mother was very generous for sponsoring Vitagen for everyone in PRU Home. We were very thankful for her kind heart.

"We are so hungry!"

"Yeah! Thank you brothers and sisters for the sandwiches and Vitagen!"

After empty stomachs were filled, we took a quick rest before continued with the next game. Due to heavy downpour, we switched the games from being conducted outdoor to indoor. We moved the tables aside to create space for the games. We played a few simple games in the small space including rubber passing, music chairs and others. Our brains were quite rusty to come up with these simple games however the children loved the games very much. 

"Steady.. steady.."

"Woah..bro you are getting close"

Music Chairs game

After having a lot of fun from the games, we assessed the performance of each group and accumulate the marks obtained by each group to conclude the winner for the prizes. The luck was with the Green group as they beat off the other groups to come up on top. Therefore we presented the prize to the Green group for being the champions. Meanwhile, we also prepared some snacks for the children as a souvenir to them before we ended our final day of community service project. Seeing the joy and happiness on their faces made us felt contented.

We won it! GREEN group is the best!!!

Small gifts were giving to children.

Before we left Prudential Welfare Home, we let the children to take part in applying finishing touches to the banner that we brought along by stamping their hand-prints. Lastly, we gathered together at the yard at dusk to have group photos together with Mother Judy, Mother Everly and all the children. The children clearly liked us very much, they asked us about our next visit. At that moment, we felt quite sad as we could not visit them frequently. This moment of bliss was priceless and we enjoyed the playing and learning time with them. Not only for the kids. It was also a fruitful day for all of us as we learnt to be blessed and cherished every single thing in life. Therefore, we made a promise to them that we will be back on this September. This is because it was definitely a memorable experience for us and not because of the assignment purpose but our sincerity.

Thank you Prudential Welfare Home!

Day 4- Sutramas Apartment on 21 July 2016

Howdy! A nifty day it was today! Everyone got up early in the morning and got ready as we headed to Sutramas Apartment located in Puchong for our 4th round of community service project. Our agenda at Sutramas Apartment were to provide helping hands for the opening of new Ajar-Ajar tuition centre and also to take part as Ajar-Ajar tuition teachers. We arrived at our destination at around 9 am after a 25 minutes journey. Ms. Hooi Khim came to us and greeted us with a big smile on her face. She briefed us the rough schedule for the whole day and introduced us to several new faces of volunteers from Ajar-Ajar Puchong. Tasks were quickly distributed before the imminent arrival of a special guest who was coming to pay a visit.

At around 9:30 am, our special guest arrived. He was the State Assemblyman for Kinrara, Puchong , Yang Berhormat Ng Sze Han. As a warmhearted leader of the area, he came to visit us and endorsed our project at Sutramas Apartment. YB Ng had a short discussion with the Resident Association of the apartment regarding this activity and also the Ajar-Ajar program which would be held later in the night time. Soon after their discussion, YB Ng was happy to spare some 30 minutes from his tight schedule to meet everyone of us and gave us a short but meaningful speech which was much related to volunteerism. He expressed his gratitude and satisfaction to us for helping the needy ones. We were pleased to receive such a message from a warmhearted leader like him and felt grateful for his endorsement.

YB Ng Sze Han's Facebook page

Group photo with YB Ng Sze Han

Soon after YB Ng left, we started our works with enthusiasm. We were assigned to paint the entire hall to produce a new fresh look to the place. Before painting works began, we wrapped up the power points, air-conditioners and the parts we wanted to avoid painting with newspapers and duct tapes. We also got some protection against the paint as we armed ourselves with newspapers. Therefore, we started our mission to transform the hall to a much pleasant look. We kept on applying several layers of paint onto the walls in order to cover up the stains that appeared on the walls. We halted the works during lunchtime and continue again for several more continuous hours to complete the job. Fortunately, some help arrived as volunteers from secondary school joined us in our mission to transform the tuition area for Ajar-Ajar program. 

After long tiring hours of painting, we finally finished our painting works which covered the painting of the walls in the hall, toilet, doors and steel railings. Even with the protection we had using the newspapers, we still couldn't avoid from getting a few sprays from the paint that catapulted from the rolling brushes. Some of us got stained by paint on our favourite pants (quite a huge sacrifice). Lesson learnt, never put on your favourite pants for painting works. We took some rest and waited for the paint to settle by enjoying tea time. 

Next, we cleaned up the furniture and books that had been moved out of the hall earlier before the paint job. The furniture and books were cleaned up before we moved them back into the hall, some of the unwanted things were removed and recycled to clear up the mess. As it was already late evening, the paint had already dried, hence we began to move the furniture and things to set up the hall to become a new tuition centre for Ajar-Ajar Puchong. Afterwards, we were off for showers and got ourselves ready for one last task for our project at Sutramas Apartment.

Armour up!!

Well the above pretty much sums up our day time at Sutramas Apartment. After our dinner, our quest continues as we enrolled ourselves in the Ajar-Ajar activity at 8:30 pm as children swarm into the tuition area waiting to start their class. Most of the children are primary school children with wide variety of character among them. It was a challenge for some of us as this was the first time to be a volunteer teacher. Each one of us would have to deal with children of different characters therefore the challenge was not the same for everyone. The good news was, we had done a pretty good job as a teacher! Chuan Pey had to teach a hyperactive 9 years old which was talking non-stop, meanwhile Li Hao was assigned to teach a child which was introverted type who glanced at him only twice throughout the one and a half hour session. Everyone had different experience and feeling towards Ajar-Ajar. No matter what, it was a valuable one for sure!

Tutors and students

When the teaching session had come to an end, we are separated into groups to share our experience and thoughts with the W-CARP volunteers. The session was rather short but it was very meaningful as this was a brand new insight for most of the group members. Shortly after the session wraped up our day, we left the Sutramas Apartment and back to our hostel and house respectively. Rest well and ready for the Final Round tomorrow!

Day 3- WCarp Center House on 20 July 2016

Today, we went to the residential house of the volunteers of W-CARP. The house provided accommodation to the volunteers and once in a while, workshops were also held at this residential house. It was located at Jalan 17/21 of Section 17, Petaling Jaya. Our agenda was to serve the W-CARP volunteers by providing clean and conducive environment to them. We planned to do so due to the reason that we wanted to appreciate their works to the society. 

We arrived at the W-CARP centre house at around 9 am. We were greeted by the friendly volunteers upon our arrival. We had an interaction with the volunteers there and the person-in-charge, Mrs. Lai briefed us about the house and the tasks needed to be accomplished. Surprisingly the volunteers that we met on this very day were actually came from several different countries. There were Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and locals who stayed at the centre house. It was a pleasure to meet and got to know the volunteers who came from several countries staying at the house we visited. We were inspired by their spirits and their determination to come to this country as volunteers.

The tasks assigned to us are pretty much about cleaning up the centre house. It sounds simple but Mrs. Lai requested us to clean up the house intensively, just like professionals. The areas we had to cover for the day were fans and air-cons; floors; balcony; yards; windows and glass doors; and many more. As we were all assigned with different tasks, we were divided into several small groups to tackle different target areas. While cleaning up the place, we communicated with the international volunteers trying to know more about them and their countries. At the meantime, we also shared with them about our country therefore we could establish mutual understanding with them. 

Everyone did their best in their respective areas!

We cleaned up every nook and cranny of the centre house as requested. As the Centre House is rather huge, it took us quite a long hours to clean up the whole building. Even though it was a very tiring work to meet the standard set by Mrs. Lai, we still managed to keep our spirits high and we had fun while cleaning up the house. One of us named Zhi Da was very passionate with his duty which was cleaning up the toilet. He took about an hour to clean up each toilet until he felt satisfied with the end result. From his passion, we learnt that we should always love and enjoy our works.

Sharing sessions which came afterwards touched much on education and instill spirits of volunteerism in us. We were taught to appreciate more of what is given and possibly lending our hands to W-CARP to help in one of its program such as Ajar-Ajar. Ajar-Ajar is an education program whereby volunteers gather in a place and giving tuition classes to children of less fortunate or couldn’t catch up with their studies. Children will bring any materials for study to the class and the volunteers will teach them. It is possible that the volunteer might not understand the questions given however, this is one of the purpose of Ajar-Ajar which both students and volunteers benefit by teaching each other.

Our day ended with a short tea break from 6:30 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. and we bid farewell for now, till we meet again!

Enjoying the snacks and drinks after a fruitful day

Group photo together with the international volunteers

Preparation Day- 17,18 July 2016

On this day, we had a discussion on the activities we planned to carry out during the next visit to PRU Home which will be held on 22nd of July. We started our discussion at around 10 am at the studio of Faculty of Built Environment located at 4th floor. Firstly, we discussed about the activities and games that suit the children of PRU Home and we wanted to have activities which could live up the atmosphere over there. We were planning for activities that could strengthen the bonding between the children and us. Next, we listed out the materials we needed to carry out those games and activity flow for the next visit. Then, we set off to buy the materials including rope, colour paper, snacks, straw and etc.

Everyone were squeezing ideas for the design of banner 

After that, we headed back to the studio to continue with our preparation and dance practices. We had decided to have a banner for the event at PRU Home. We discussed about the colour we wanted to use and the design of the wording on the banner. Once we finished on designing the banner, we continued with our next discussion regarding the dance we wanted to perform to the children at the PRU Home. We spent the rest of the time until about 3 pm selecting the dance and started to learn the dance together. At around 3.00 pm, we therefore ended our practices and called it a day after such a tiring day.

On the following day, 18 July 2016, we continued our preparation by colouring the banner we designed on the day before. We put together our creative minds and applied the ideas onto a white cloth to produce a masterpiece. We were pleased that the end product was not bad at all! Some of us were responsible to wrap up the prizes that will be given for the winner of the games on the event day. The prizes we had prepared were not lucrative, but we were confident the children would like it. 

Then we moved on to handcraft learning session because we had decided to do handcraft session with the children on the upcoming Friday. One of the handcraft we planed to teach is origami airplane. One of us, Hui Jin had a lot of experience with handcrafting. As a preparation before the upcoming Friday, Hui Jin taught everyone of us on how to fold an origami airplane which resembled a Concorde. 

Origami Aeroplane <3

The second handcraft we decided to make is the Chinese knot. The Chinese knot was the easy version that suit to children. The Chinese knot was made to resemble a dragonfly. This time, Ching Yee took over the role to teach us how to make it as she was an expert when it comes to Chinese knot. With the practices that we all had regarding handcrafting, therefore we were ready to guide the children on the event day!

Practice makes perfect!

Deng Deng Deng Deng!!! Dragonfly!!!

After that, we continued our dance practices from where we left off the previous day. During the practices, we began to have the interest towards the dance and getting exciting during the practices. We believes that we could do well on the event day at the Prudential Welfare Home the next week. Gambateh!

Day 2 - Visiting to PRU home on 16 July 2016

Prudential Welfare Home, also called PRU home is an organisation to take care of the children from age 4 - 17 years old. PRU home is comprised of two bungalows located at Seapark, Petaling Jaya. For your information, these children are not orphans, but they are from underprivileged families. The Prudential Welfare Home is fully funded by Prudential and managed by the Wesleyan Community Berhad. Their mission is to provide shelter to the underprivileged children. Besides, PRU home also provide an environment conducive for the children;'s physical and emotional development. They enrolled in government schools to enable them to continue their formal educations.

In the early morning, we departed to the Prudential Welfare Home. At 8.30 am, we reached the destination and we greeted the person-in-charge called Mother Judy. We had a chat with her and talked about our agenda for the visit. Right after that, we had a short briefing among us the volunteers regarding the activities we were going to carry out for the day before we started our activities. Later, we started our preparation for the activities. 

Discussion with Mother Judy

We started our program with an ice-breaking session with the children there at around 10.30 am. First of all, we did self introductions together with the children in order to know each other and get familiar with each other's name. Then, we conducted some simple games with the children in a hope to improve the bonding between children and us, besides making them more comfortable with our presence. The games included "Wind... Wind.... Blow", bottle passing and others. For those who lost in the games, we imposed a small punishment which was taking photos with a specific pose decided by us.

Ching Yee was leading the ice-breaking session

Briefing for the games

"Wind... Wind... Blow" game

Mermaid pose for losing the game ;)

Monkey Kings!

After the ice-breaking and simple games, we had our lunch with the children and had some interactions with them. We also guided the children in their homework and reading before the children left for school in the afternoon. Some of the children had an examination during the day of our visit, therefore we guided them for their revisions and taught them before they went for their exams. The children there are independent and discipline because they cleaned and washed their plate after had their meals. The children had their duty roster, they took turn to do house chore according to the timetable fixed by Mother Judy. It was part of a training to be more independent and discipline. Mother Judy also punished them for any wrongdoings they committed by the way of giving them extra house works.

Helping the children to do revision

House Duty timetable

Interaction with the children

At around 1 pm, we had a movie time for the children before they went to school. We prepared few animated movies and one of them was " Ice Age 3" for the children. This was a movie that showed we had to protect our earth and environment. Our aim of movie time was to transfer the message of protect our environment and earth from pollution. In the movie showed the collapse of  iceberg due to greenhouse effect. After that, we did the quiz session about the movie with giving small prize.

Everyone was so concentrated on the movie

    

Our program for the day ended after the movie time with the children. However we would be visiting Prudential Welfare Home again in the following week as the part two of the visit. Before we left, we made a promise to the children that we would visit them again soon and we would conduct more exciting activities for them next time. As we left, the children waved goodbye to us with their warm smiles. We were grateful for the amazing time we had together with the children there and anticipating more exciting activities with them in the following week.


For more information about PRU home:
https://www.prudential.com.my/corp/prudential_en_my/header/aboutus/CSR/pruhome.html

Day 1- Cleaning up the Peace Embassy on 15 July 2016

This was the first day we started off our community project in cooperation with a non-governmental organisation namely World Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (W-Carp) Malaysia. W-CARP is an NGO which actives in various community services for instance, free tuition for indigent students, family project, leadership project and cultural exchange with members from Korea and Japan.

We arrived at the headquarter of the organisation known as Peace Embassy located at Jalan Utara, Section 52, Petaling Jaya at around 9.00 am. Once we had arrived, we were greeted by Winnie (we called her sister Winnie), the person-in-charge, with a warm welcoming smile. Soon after, we had an interaction session with sister Winnie to get to know more about each other and the purpose of our project. From the interaction, we have obtained numerous inputs and insights from sister Winnie. She had shared with us about her working experiences and impressions when she joined the projects in the organisation. We learned and know a lot via the vision and mission of the organisation that we should always try contribute to the community as long as we are capable we here we should inherit the heart of living for the sake of others. Besides, she also gave a briefing to us about the projects that held by the organisation in Selangor area, including the free tuition program, leadership project, community services and culture exchange program and encouraged us to join them whenever we were free.

Interaction session with sister Winnie

Before starting the cleaning work, sister Winnie had brought us around the Peace Embassy and briefed us about the works that we need to complete at each area. The works instructed to us covers a lot of the areas in and outside the building. Even though we were given with a pile of works, we were determined to do our best and show that we have high spirit as University of Malaya's students. Sister Winnie distributed the job scope to us where we were divided into three groups where some of us were assigned to wipe the windows and doors, some sweep the floor, some clean and arrange the shoe racks and etc.

Afterwards, we started off our cleaning works at the Peace Embassy. Therefore we moved to our respective areas separately in different small groups to start our works. For the cleaning works, the necessary cleaning tools were all provided and prepared by sister Winnie. During the cleaning session, we were joined by an international volunteer from Japan, his name is Toshihito. He was a volunteer from Japan who came to Malaysia for several months of training. We were glad to have an international volunteer to assist us during the cleaning works and besides could get to know more about him during the process.     

Briefing before cleaning works commenced

Ching Yee and Hui Jin were assigned to clean the shoe racks

Mung Xuen was sweeping the floor in one of the rooms

Wei Sheng meticulously wiped the glass window

Yong Wee and Li Hao wiped the glass door with full diligent

Hew Chen tirelessly wiped all the windows from the outside

\

Zhi Da was cleaning the toilet with a joyful heart

Kok Kwang was wiping the glass panel railing undisturbed

We went for our lunch during the lunchtime and came back to the Peace Embassy again to resume our unfinished works after we enjoyed our lunch. After hours of cleaning, we have finally finished our works at our respective areas. We were very satisfied to see the end products of our long hours of hard works. After we completed our job, sister Winnie had gathered all of us at the living for a quick chat. She had one special task for us, she requested us to wipe the floor in the living hall but not the ordinary way. She wanted us to wipe the floor using Korean traditional style. She explained to us that this was one of the way to experience the way of living of people in Korea. Then, she instructed us to move the furniture in the living hall to clear up the space. It was our first time to wipe the floor using Korean style therefore we were not used to the way of cleaning the floor. When we knelled down and started the work, some of us fell down several times when we try to move the cloth forward as the floor was slippery after wiping. The process was funny and interesting =).  This was a good and fun experience for us!!!!!

Winnie gave us briefing for the special task

"Wipe The Floor" Contest XD XD XD

(Zhi Da was the winner!)

After the fun time we had from the Korean style of wiping the floor, we went for the final work for the day. we went outside of the building to pull the unwanted vegetation around the yard together. We were lucky that we could proceed to the final task because it was quite a heavy rain before that. It didn't take too much of our time before we finally completed our agenda for the day!

After we finished all works, sister Winnie prepared us with some teas and cookies as a treat of appreciation. Then, we had a sharing session for the very first community services for this university course. We all felt contented as we had paid hard works to do something meaningful in assisting the NGO therefore providing a comfortable training center to the members there. We were delighted that we were able to accomplish our agenda for the day which was to serve W-CARP as an appreciation for their contribution to the society all these while. We managed to fulfill our agenda by providing helping hands in order to provide a clean and comfortable environment to the volunteers.

Say cheese =) =)

Yet another selfie taken by Ching Yee who likes to take selfies!

We played jokes and chit-chatting during the tea time as we forgot about tiredness that we had before that. We were truly grateful for such a fruitful day at the Peace Embassy and truly appreciate for the treat by sister Winnie. We ended our first day of community service with endless selfies. After the tea time, we cleaned up the table and bid farewell to sister Winnie, the Japanese volunteer and the little girl that we had just met on that day. We thanked sister Winnie for the opportunity to serve them and for helping us throughout the cleaning session. Hence, we declared that our first mission for the community service completed with success! Yeah!