Help Wanted, Help Given

Here's a post from Gerard Ee, the executive director of Beyond Social Services. (The FSC I'm helping out at, Whampoa, is part of this network)

This evening, 6 secondary 2 students will be receiving tuition from some volunteers at a Residents’ Committee Centre. Nothing unusual but over the past month, these students started to ‘repay’ their volunteers with an hour of dance lessons after tuition ends at 8.30 pm. It was not something the volunteers had asked for but it was something these students knew that they could give.

For the past 6 months, these students have been dancing in the street near where they live and sharing their moves with children and others who cared join them.  Their energy and enthusiasm have added a vibrant vibe to their neighbourhood which is much appreciated.

Next month, as a gesture of appreciation to the Residents’ Committee for allowing them to use their premises for tuition, these students will be performing at an RC event. I wonder if they will eventually get the volunteers to be a part of their performance too.

"Don't Underestimate Kids"


Couple of weeks ago I downloaded a TED Conference speech by 12-year-old Adora Svitak. (Yes! She's 12, and she spoke at TED). It was for an exercise at the Whampoa Family Service Centre in which the kids would have to:

- do a word search puzzle based on the vocab in the speech (thank you free puzzle websites)
- discuss the meaning of the words and form sentences using them
- watch the speech, listen, and hopefully follow along with the transcript
- do an exercise in which they built an argument for, or against, a topic.

As context - Adora Svitak, an American who got her first book published at 7, talked about What Adults Can Learn from Kids. I wanted the kids to be inspired by someone their own age. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/adora_svitak.html.

Some of the volunteers, myself included, were worried at first. These were 9-12 year olds - most with a not-so-great command of English. Would the kids get it? Would they be bored? Lost? Start running around?