Youth Day @ Grace Orchard School – Busy Volunteers

Guilty as charged! That’s how I felt after reading “The Busy Trap” on the New York Times. As the title suggests, the author talked about how we are always keeping ourselves busy. Such scenarios are often seen like whenever I meet up with my friends, one of the first opening statements from them will be “what are you busy with now?” Indeed, I must confess that I often pack my schedule back-to-back, but I never believe if the busyness was fulfilling. However, my recent volunteering event with Grace Orchard School gave me a differing opinion on how some people spend their time fruitfully.

On the last Friday of June 2012, a group of volunteers helped out with the Youth Day’s celebration at Grace Orchard School, a school for students diagnosed with Mild Intellectual Disability (MID) and those with Mild Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). As 1^st July was approaching, the teachers wanted to organize a fun-filled event for their students. In order to inculcate the values of unity and perseverance in them, games, such as tag-of-war and dog and bone, were planned to allow youths to work together to complete the games. We, volunteers, manned the stations while they had fun!

On a weekday, many would expect volunteers to be students and retirees). Instead, there was a good mix of working adults and students, who took the time off their busy schedules to volunteer. For many, it was their first time at Grace Orchard.  As I chatted with some of the volunteers, I realized that many were rushing off to events after Youth Day’s celebration. However, they had specially taken time off to attend this event.

I believe that many of us, across the spectrum of our society, are in what Tim Kreider described as the “busy trap”. However, my interactions with these volunteers provided me the perspectives that some of these busy people are in search of something meaningful and for the space to give back to the community altruistically. Seeing the smiling faces on busy people when we left the school affirmed that insight. Though many of us are in a “busy trap”, at least some of us have pockets of time that we will be proud of.

About V2 Scheme

V2 Scheme is a flexible volunteering scheme, organized by Jurong Spring Community Club, which provides opportunities to help out in the VWOs in the area. If you would like to know more or be in the mailing list for upcoming events, please kindly drop a mail to jurongspringv2@gmail.com.