Sheares Voluntary Corp

I'm sure many of you would have heard from me that I'm taking a back seat this year in hall ccas. =) Am already in the second year and I cannot really afford to fork out too much time for the truckload of activities similar to those I joined last year.

Hence, I decided to join the Sheares Voluntary Corp(VC) this year.

One main reason was because dear Ivy was gonna chair this cca.

The other was because I still wanted to be involved in a cca in hall and wanted to get the most out of it. Thought that VC was the best choice as I could reach out to the needy in our society and feel happy at the same time.

can someone share my excitement? =P

Saturday was our very first VC Comm event. It was a visit to Bishan Home.

Didn't feel very well in the morning when i woke up.

However, nothing could stop me from paying a visit to this home for the down syndrome and (i think) the autistic.

The reason why I said that not all of them were down syndrome because some of them looked very normal. It's just that they were mentally slower and couldn't respond to the people around them, hence having a problem with expressing themselves.

Met the rest of the comm at Bishan Junction 8 after a 40min train ride from the east to the north. Felt totally like a mugger toad in the train as I whipped out my IT text to mug. Haha. Who cares? I am a mugger by nature =)

Headed to the home with the 'help' of the Northies who apparently 'knew' their way.

However, we hopped onto the wrong bus and ended up reaching there on our feet. *bleah*

When we were there at the home, cynthia gave us some instructions as to how we should go about interacting with the beneficiaries. It wasn't my first experience with beneficiaries of such nature. However, I think the look on my face seemed a lil frightened that Shida asked if I was okay. Hee. Yup, i was really doing fine. I guess it was just that I needed a lil more time to adjust my thoughts and actions to interact with the beneficiaries.

I interacted with this gentleman. I can't name him here. Neither can I post a picture of him. It's not allowed, apparently. Anyway, he's 44 this year. Old enough to be my dad. He was one of the more higher-functioning patients in the home as I was able to communicate with him quite smoothly. At least he did reply to the questions I posted him and was able to speak quite fluently. Didn't have that much of a hard time breaking the ice, unlike some of my other friends whose beneficiaries were more lower-functioning and didn't respond as actively. Half of the time, they were trying to get their attention rather than engaging in the activities planned.

Well, we played a game of Bingo and did some dance that Cynthia choreographed. I'm sure they had a great time. So did we. =) It was a very fulfilling day as I felt that we managed to provided some fun times to these beneficiaries, despite the fact that we were only there for two hours. Can't wait for our next visit! Sheares Voluntary Corp for you =)

'where it's fun to love'