Reflection

In total, we just can conclude that we have done a marvelous Social Engagement trips to Sekinchan and Rumah Hope Sentul. Reflecting back the moments, we have learnt a great lesson and do feel that we have contributed something good in return to the society.

Here we would like to share our reflections on the trips we made chronologically. We would like to start up with the trip to Sekinchan. As we spent our time at a school in Sekinchan on the first day, we realized on the vitality of bringing back to the society of the knowledge we gained through our endeavor to University of Malaya (UM). Too good to be true, secondary school students must have best of their knowledge on the pathway to higher educational institutions, as it can be the parameter set to achieve the goals of their life. This may seem something that of small in effort, but later to see the seeds sown in the heart of the youngsters have grown into a tree will be truly a great achievement of ours. We believe that we obtained a valuable lesson that can make this society a well-educated one in the eyes of the world.

Moving on to the second day event! Cleaning a church compound with fellow members of the church was indeed a great blessing for us. As we joined hand in hand to finish the task of cleaning the church compound, we realized that differences in our beliefs and religions are so not needed in order to be engaged with the society. People tend to neglect the need of the others since they make their hearts prone to radically rely on their own selves. This should be proved wrong as we live in a multiracial and multicultural country, where unity is our strength. We, as UM students, did realize that to make the social to be engaged in its welfare needs open-mindedness among the citizens.

Love nature, save the Earth. A society does not mean the lives of human beings only. Nature that has been created by the Almighty God does counted in as a part of the society. Lately, environmental issues are on the rise in the news. How much concerned are we? Thus, when we took the initiative of the cleaning the beach at Sekinchan, the people around were pushed to move and make the beach clean. It was not an individual effort indeed. It was a progress showered by an engaged society. As the crowd turned bigger to join hands, we actually managed to clean the beach in a short while than expected time range. This event did really teach us that environmental cleanliness can be really maintained if the society come together and take the responsibility.

HOPE Worldwide Malaysia visitation, on the other hand, did make a great impact on us on the part of the society to play for the kids growing up in poverty. These kids need love and affection as they ill-fated. They need assistance in areas such as education and mental health. Thus, as we realized that need, we took part in My Reading Program for the children. Publicizing this matter, did create a public awareness. We gained support from the external sources and so we were able to buy stationeries for the kids. This made us to know how the society is still care about the children who are stricken by hopeless situation, giving them hope and life.

 In conclusion, as we reflect back, we gained ample of lessons throughout the Social Engagement activities. We were able to create awareness to the students and their parents on the importance to know the educational pathway for a better future. We are also satisfied with our efforts to bring good to the society in making known the vitality of education in life. We also understood that involving into a social responsibility event, should there be no differences in beliefs or culture pointed out to make an improved society. As students of UM, we believe that the hopes are upon us to make the society come together to clean the environment, thus creating a better place for the future generation. We also do feel that the unfortunate do need attention from the society as they should not be left behind from the nation’s progress. We trust that the future will be better if the reflections we poured here is fully propelled in the society.

MY Reading Program by HOPE Worldwide, Malaysia on 9 May 2015

Today, we departed from UM at 9.00am by LRT and had our first stop at NU Central to buy some small gifts for the children. We chose to buy stationery for the small kids as a motivation for them to pay more hard work in their studies. 30 sets of gifts were successfully prepared by us in a short while. Teamwork is indeed important in order to make job a success. 

Preparation of small gifts in process

Small gifts prepared – a file, a ruler, a sharpener and a pencil in a set

After the preparation of gifts and lunch session, we headed to Sentul Timur by taking LRT. We had to reach our destination by 1.30pm, as scheduled. In fact, we managed to arrive at HOPE worldwide centre around 1.00 pm with the help of a volunteer we met coincidentally at LRT Station. We appreciated and were blissful with the mercy she offered in leading us to the centre; otherwise, it would be a great challenge for us in search of it.

Agenda of the day was started with a short briefing by the supervisor, Caesar. From introduction of HOPE worldwide organization to briefing and preparation of activities, it had actually embarked our passion in serving or helping the community. The community there around Sentul Timur is mainly built up by the underprivileged group and majority of them are Indians.   In order to meet the basic needs, the basic 3 meals which most of us might take for granted, some of them are forced to commit crime just to fight for a living for their beloved family. They have no choice but to compromise to the reality. Engagement in this kind of program gave us an eye-opening experience in seeing the real situation of the poor, and of course, it made us to feel blessed for everything we have now.

As we can see from the picture, the living environment there isn’t well.

The reading program started at 2.30pm.

We started off with an ice-breaking session. We were one of the two volunteer teams of the reading program that day. Each of us introduced ourselves warmly to the little kids.  There were 30 kids in total whom aged from 5 to 9. For your information, these children are not orphans, but they are from the underprivileged families and are ready to improve themselves in term of speaking ability. We bonded and played games with the kids. The video below shows our interaction session and all of us did have fun throughout the session:

A closer bonding was created between us and the children. We continued with a story-telling session. The story we picked was titled ‘The Little Yellow Chicken’. Each of us had our role in this story-telling session to attract their attention and interest. We were figured out in the official Facebook page of HOPE Worldwide Malaysia:

Source : Official Facebook of HOPE Worldwide Malaysia

It was then followed by the main agenda of the day, which was the reading session. Each of us was assigned to accompany one or two students in reading. The major concern of this session was not to force them to read, but to instill their interest in learning English. One-to-one or small group learning was effective to stay focus on particular students. Each of them have different English level and what should we did was to teach and guide them accordingly. At the end of the reading session, we were asked to grade them from few aspects which were pronunciation, voice projection, confidence level, fluency and vocabulary. This was done to keep track of every kid about their improvement in English learning process. Throughout the reading session, we interacted with them as we are now friends with each other.

 

Before it came to an end, we distributed our gifts to every kid. Seeing the joy and happiness on their faces made us feel contented. At the same time, we felt even more grateful for what we had all this while. This moment of bliss was priceless; we enjoyed playing and learning with them. Not only for the kids. It was also a fruitful day for all of us as we learnt to be blessed and cherish every single thing in life. This was definitely a memorable experience for us and hopefully we will pay another visit to them again in future not because of the assignment need but our sincerity.

Seeing the smiles on their faces made us realized volunteers are not free. We are paid in five figures, S-M-I-L-E.

About HOPE Worldwide, Malaysia

HOPE worldwide is an international non-profit, non-religious organization established in over 100 countries, reaching out to more than two million people annually. Since 1996, HOPE worldwide Malaysia is committed to bringing hope to the underprivileged and disadvantaged communities by offering them free healthcare, empowering them with new technology and creative skills, and building their confidence to face the world with pride in their existence and capabilities.  

Click this link for further information: http://www.hopeww.org.my/

There are different community programs offered by HOPE worldwide Malaysia, which has successfully brought great impact to the unprivileged. The 3 core areas include Health & Medical, Food & Nutrition as well as Education.

Health & Medical

Sentul Free Clinic of HOPE

Penang Free Pediatric Clinic

Penang Free Mobile Clinic

Food & Nutrition

Food Distribution Program

Education

MY Reading Program

Creative Art Program

1 Stop IT Resource Centre

School Sponsorship Program

Why did we choose MY Reading Program?

We chose to involve in MY Reading Program as a part of our Social Engagement agenda. This is because everyone deserves an equal educational opportunity, especially for the poor. Promotion of education is vital to improve the standard of living for the underprivileged ones. English which is the global language should be mastered by the young before stepping into challenging society.

MY Reading Program started in year 2008, its objective is to help underprivileged children to learn and appreciate English in a fun and lively environment through several of activities, include singing of nursery rhymes, games and as well one to one story reading.

We find this is a great chance for us to engage with different types of people in the society. 

Preservation of Redang Beach, Sekinchan on 12 April 2015

Beaches are public resources held in the public trust which provide affordable recreational access available to everyone. As human activities and development in coastal areas increase, preservation of these areas have become significant. Therefore, we had decided to take the initiative to conduct a cleaning activity with the public at the Redang Beach of Sekinchan on 12 April 2015. The purpose of doing so is not only to preserve the surrounding environment of the beach, but also to raise awareness of the locals as well as the visitors to keep priority on the environment hygiene.

Early in the morning, we departed to the Redang Beach. When we arrived at the destination, we were surprised as the surrounding environment was worse than what we had expected. Redang Beach, a famous tourist spot was then full of trashes and that was the time when we realized how important our role will be. 

Rubbish was thrown BESIDE the dustbins and not INTO the dustbins.

The authorities of Redang Beach had turned up and gave support on our activity.

The primary importance of keeping the beach clean is to prevent health problem as trash and organic debris will attract vermin and other diseases carrying vector which lead to severe consequence. At the same time, plastic trashes which had been thrown into the beach possess the risk to endanger the wildlife due to pollution. Besides, beach hygienic is significant for aesthetic purpose so as to keep the natural landscape looking pristine. From economic aspect, local small business will be indirectly affected when the natural landscape is being disrupted and dirty beach means lesser visitors. Furthermore, clean beach provides a recreational place for the social to leisure their time with water activities.

Without any hesitation, we started by hanging up the banner that we had prepared earlier so as to attract public’s concern on our activity and to be a part of us to clean the beach.

 

Without wasting any time, we started off by distributing the garbage bags and plastic gloves among all of us and at the same time, we invited the public to have a helping hand with us. Many of tourists and residents showed enthusiasm and boldly geared up with the tools and started picking up the rubbish with us.

As the activity continued, the crowd turned bigger to join hands!

Despite the hot sun, each of us worked selflessly and passionately simply because we love our nature and our one and only Mother Earth. What we have done might seem little to you but what we recognized was the Earth has the rights to live without pollution too.

After that, we gathered all the rubbishes collected at a side while showing our appreciation for their commitment along the activity. The beach had become much cleaner than before after what we had done. This could not be done without all of us joining hands together. Not forgetting the publics who had joined us! You guys are TRULY AWESOME!!

The whole activity ended in the evening. The moment when each of us worked hard hand in hand was truly touching. All of us understand that whether we live on a beach or hundreds of miles from the coastline, we all have a profound stake in a healthy ocean that is free of trashes.

Trashes on the beautiful beaches are disgusting. Plastic trashes are harmful. It can endanger the wildlife as birds might get caught on plastic can holders and turtles might choke on the sludge from garbage. All animals could get cut on sharp things. They might eat something they should not and get sick or even die. Littering on beaches is mean. They can kill animals and even plants.

Protecting the beach from pollution and healing the bay will ensure a clean environment for the animals and plants to stay and grow healthily. We believe that we had successfully raised the awareness of the society in the importance of environmental cleanliness. 

Helping out in Methodist Church Sekinchan on 11 April 2015

We prepared ourselves with some cleaning tools at 9.00am in the morning after joining the launching of the Reading Bus Club in Yoke Kuan Secondary School. We arrived at our destination at around 9.30am which is half an hour earlier than the time scheduled for preparation. Pastor Chan, the person in charge of the church welcomed us with open hands. After a short ice breaking session with each other, Pastor Chan gave us a briefing on the cleaning job we are going to do for the day.

The weather in the morning was calm and windy, where we start our work mainly on removing the grass and weeds around the garden in the church. Wild grass and weeds will affects the growth of the flower around and the important plant especially fruit plant. We did gain our knowledge about gardening stuff, some species of the plants, and how to take care of them. It is great to get to expose to these knowledge where we usually do not have the opportunity to learn in our daily lives especially in University.

It was great that Pastor Chan joined us on the gardening stuff, which also reduced our loads. The weeds and the grass removed were placed under a big tree to be collected and discarded soon. The area around the church had not been cleaned up for 2 weeks, due to insufficient of workers and volunteers. This was an opportunity for us to join the community in the church to help up the church on cleaning the compound.

Although the first gardening compound is small, but we did took around 2 hours to finish up the job, which due to lacking of technique. It is not an easy stuff to clean up the area because some parts of the area is dangerous due to the torn found in some plants, especially the cactus and trees. The sun shone redundantly during the afternoon and it had the hottest temperature at the moment. Our group members did shows their hard work and commitment to finish their job although it is a hot day, especially the girls in our group. 

After 12 in the afternoon, Pastor Chan brought us to Restaurant Chie Shang for lunch. We had Chicken rice and honey chrysanthemum tea as our lunch. The chicken drumstick served was crispy as everyone was satisfied with it, while the ice-honey chrysanthemum tea was a suitable choice where it can reduce our thirst and cool down our body. Pastor Chan is so kind that she treat us so well for the lunch.

After the lunch, we went back to the church and started to collect the dried leaves around the compound. Lacking of cleaning at the moment of gathering the dried leaves, made the rest of the member to collect the removed wild grass and weeds and discard them in a nylon bag. This is where our teamwork comes in. Working stuff were separate equally so that everyone can work as a team to increase our efficiency. During the process, we found various kinds of animals such as snails, bugs, birds and butterflies around the compound, which means that the environment around the area is healthy.

There is actually a kindergarten located beside the church and within the inside closed area. By doing cleaning stuff and gardening, we are not just cleaning up and beautifying the church compound, but also creating a comfort and safety zone around the compound for the kids. Playground equipment such as swings is also available at the area nearby the kindergarten. We cleaned the equipment and arranged it nicely as it can be lifted.

After all the hard works, finally we managed to clean up the compound, and arranged the objects in a good manner when the sun set. We are really satisfied with our work with the Pastor Chan and the community at the Church, besides gaining a lot of knowledge of various fields. Volunteering to help the others is indeed the right thing to do. Being able to engage to the community despite the differences in our beliefs is indeed a blessing. We will surely pay a visit here again in the future!

Group photo before leaving

About Sekinchan Methodist Church

Methodist Church Sekinchan

 Fifty years ago, Sekinchan was a remote and desolate place with more than three thousand residents, mostly living with farming, fishing, and a few are engaged in industry and commerce. In 1953, the government implemented an emergency decree, due to the fear where Communist Party will harass the residents and make them suffer. So the government called all the villagers who in paddy fields to concentrated in the fence range, and the village was established. These including urban area, village B and C, while outside area including village A and fishing village.

The church was not yet establish in Sekinchan at that time. There are some Christian villagers such as iron Yan Sheng Tie, Li Bi Yu couple, Pan Gang Feng couple, Li Yuan Qing couple and Xie Lu couple joint to do family worship. These early Christian believers working together and pray for the Father to establish Sekinchan church. Soon, there are a part of migrants from Kuala Selangor came to Sekinchan are Christians. So the number of Sunday worship gradually increased. Believers pray concerted efforts hardly, with the hope that the church will soon be build up so that believers have a fixed place of worship.Thank the grace of God the Father, when Chen Sicheng pastor actively followed the work of development around the sermon, beside there also some female pastor like have a Wan Qing Xiu sisters, Jiang Bao Lin couples, Tan Mei Jin are also very concerned about the Sekinchan’s believers. They always have contact with Chen Si Cheng pastor and once in a while, he came to Sekinchan to make movies and open air preaching the gospel work. Hence the gospel is preached and attracted a lot of people. Chen Sicheng think that Sekinchan should have a church. So, he asked the village’s committee chairman, Han Ying Shi pastor to discuss matters related to build up the church. Thanks to Chen Si Cheng, Ms Wan Qing Xiu and others effort to went around Kuala Lumpur and Klang to raise funds, while on the other hand they asked the government for land.

Finally in August 31, 1956, a twenty thousand chapel was built up and as the priest house. Since then, believers have a fixed place to worship. By the late seventies, the roof of wooden chapel has leaked, so they decided to rebuild it. In 1978, under the leadership of Pastor, they established the church building committee. There is a ten-year plan to rebuild the church in. Within this decade, church members donate their money and also worked tirelessly to raise funds. Within a few years, a total of more than one hundred thousand dollars was used as the Building Fund. Since the new church construction costs thirty thousand dollars but the church building fund only about one hundred thousand dollar, and there are still far away for construction.

Construction Committee Chairman Tim Chen Chan brother, committees and brothers and sisters went around Malaysia to raise donation, which also assisted by Mr. Pan Cai Jian in Kuala Lumpur, and finally they raised enough for building fund.

The Reading Bus Program in SMJK Yoke Kuan on 11 April 2015

It is indeed a great opportunity for us to join the launching of the Reading Bus Program in Yoke Kuan Secondary School. We always believe that every child should be given the opportunity to enjoy school and life through reading. Thus, when the deputy headmaster invited us to join this event, we agreed to it without any hesitation.

The event started at 7.30 am in the morning. It started off by the speech of the headmistress of Yoke Kuan Secondary School. She said that the Reading Bus Club is a very good opportunity for all the students to start reading and to improve their English level. The event was then continued with the speech by Mr Cheli Nadarajah, the starter of the Reading Bus Club. He mentioned that he is grateful that the Reading Bus Club can be launched in the one and only secondary school in Sekinchan. He also mentioned that he wished to launch this club in West Malaysia in the future so that every child gets to enjoy their school life and gets to know things happening around us through reading. 

A speech by Mr Cheli Nadarajah, the starter of the Reading Bus Club

The event continued as the students from the Interact Club of Sunway University who are also a part this Reading Bus Club organized an interactive session with the students in Yoke Kuan Secondary School to get closer to them and also to introduce them this reading program.

The president and vice president of the Interact Club started the session by holding an ice-breaking session. Students were divided into three groups and games were carried out. At first, the students were quite awkward but thanks to the friendly president and vice president, they seemed to blend well with the students from Sunway University. The whole process was carried out in English and it helped the students whom always communicate in Chinese to get familiar with it.

One of the members, Ying Xuan joining in for the ice-breaking session

Around 9.00am, we had to leave the school as we had to go to the church for the cleaning job.

Although it was a sudden plan to join this event, but it was indeed a great honour as the deputy headmaster of the school invited us to join this event. It was a shame that our participation in this event was short, but we had learnt that reading can be really fun and not burdening at all if you do it the right way. We had also learnt that knowledge is power. Through reading, we can obtain unlimited amount of knowledge. We sincerely hope that this Reading Bus Club can be spread to more rural areas in whole Malaysia to help out the underprivileged children so that every single child has the chance to read. =D