My First Experience Ever with Volunteering!

This was my first experience ever joining a volunteering program at "Yasmin Al-Sham" Refugees' School at Setiawangsa, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This event took place in March 7th, 2020, and was organised by "Farha" team and collaboration with Arabic Books Club in KL.

How did I join this program?

The way I joined this volunteering program was not planned. In that day I was just browsing through my Instagram account and checking what's new there, it was all normal until I checked @Arabicbookclub Instagram "story", in that "story" they were announcing about a volunteering program called "Farha" which was about spending a day with the refugees children at the "Yasmin Al-Sham" Refugee School.

I got so excited when I first saw it, and wanted to join immediately, and that what I actually did. I contacted the page and filled up the request form.

It was something so new to me that I have never done before, I have never engaged with children since I moved to Malaysia in 2016.

Later on, I was accepted to be part of this event, so the organizing team did call for a meeting with us, the volunteers, to explain to us more about the program itself, the activities, and the tasks of each one of us. We had the meeting at "Dream" restaurant in Bukit Bintang, KL.All of us got to know each other in that day, and the organizers were kind enough to offer us some Yemeni's tea as part of hospitality.

Personally, I was in charge of a certain game, "Draw & Guess", where one child of the group has to draw what the administrator (me) ask him or her to draw, while the rest of the children in the group have to guess what is being drawn. the

on The Event Day..

The big day was on the 7th March 2020, from 8:30am until 4:00pm. On that day I was actually a bit nervous as I did not now how would I deal with children, I'm not used to that, but at the same time was so excited to meet them, have fun with them and make their day a special joyful happy one!!

Later I arrived to the school; I saw all the kids gathered in the school's playground, they were so energetic, lovely, and extremely cute! their eyes and smiles were full of innocence that you can't help but smiling at them back, you can't help but letting your heart melt and get overwhelmed with their pureness and cuteness.

Then I took my assigned spot in a certain classroom, prepared the materials and waited for my turn when the children going to join the game I was responsible on, "Draw & Guess".

Few minutes later, group one has arrived, so the strategy I was following to kind of break the ice was to welcome the kids with warm smile, ask them to introduce themselves, in which grade they are, and where they came from, and then I would explain the game to them and the rules and try to bring their spirits up.

We would go one by one, so every kid will have the chance to go and draw on the board. One of the best part to me was when they called me "Teacher"!, I'm just a 21 years-old student and I was called teacher! and the way they were calling "teacher, teacher" was adorable.

As I mentioned about my strategy just now, I would ask for a selfie with them at the end of the game, trust me I don't need to explain how hype they were, I will just let the pictures tell you..

And that was how I managed my interactions with 8 different groups of the children.

Furthermore, after we were done with the games session, our event was about to end, so the organizers helped with ordering the the lunch for everyone, and while we were waiting we had the prizes session, where we distributed gifts for all the kids that have joined that day.

Everyone was so happy. we were glad that we made this event a successful one, together.

The way I felt about this experience

Spending that day with the children reminded me a lot of myself when I was at their age. Innocence, pureness, cuteness is all what these kids about, however what make these children sort of different than the others is that they are refugees in terms of they have faced different experiences, they are grown more than their ages, because they have seen the childhood from different angle, they will tell you about wars, politics, and home. they are too young to go through all that yet too strong to being able to cope with all these difficulties

When they are happy and smiling you can really feel that and when they are not you can also feel that easily.

On the other hand, with this experience I felt like it helped me skip the world for few hours, it got so engaged that I forgot what was happening out there, I was so focused with the volunteering program, and with the kids that I forgot about everything else for a while. I was in this statues until the event had ended and the kids went back home, only then I felt like I came back to reality. I realized these feelings on that day, and it was beautiful.

On that day I observed new things and discovered more about myself. I realized that spending time with children and making them happy is one of the things that will help me skip the world for a while when I wish for.

Lastly, I would like to add that I'm so thankful and grateful for this opportunity and for being part of "Farha" project,and I would definitely love to start joining more volunteering programs whenever I get the chance to!

Here a little video about my first experience with volunteering work at "Yasmin Al-Sham" Refugees School, Setiawngsa, Kuala Lupmur, Malaysia.

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