Everyday Heroes

So, the kids had a really really cool children's party organised for them by a team at PSA. The games were engaging, the kids were constantly moving, doing stuff, running and laughing - 80% of the kids were terrific, polite, well-behaved.

Three of the kids were being a real pain - esp. on the way back, on the bus. They were rude, one of them had allegedly hit another kid with an empty plastic water bottle, and another one was mouthing off loudly - most of that seemed to be aimed at me as I was sitting right in front of him trying to get him to sit the heck down in the moving bus.

I honestly thought we'd made more progress than that. So, dejected and distressed, I texted the social worker I work with on the program, questioning the effectiveness and purpose of what we were doing. And she emailed me a note I'll refer to every time I'm losing the faith. (Names of kids have been changed)

"I know they still have a long way to go, but they’re slowly moving in the right direction yeah. And honestly, sometimes the work that we do, it’s like if we can save 1 out of every 20, that’s already a success. But that’s the jaded social worker speaking
– it’s good to have those like you who keep pushing the standards so that we don’t get too despondent and lower our standards for the children.

But something small that happened last week – on Friday, we took 3 of the children to an event because their drawings had won prizes. They had loads of leftovers so I came back lugging 4 extra boxes of cake. After dropping the kids off I ran into Nik and his brothers. Of course, as I approached they were already saying “Ms C, give me lah!”, but no matter, I could tell by their surprise when I actually said yes that they were just saying it for fun and didn’t actually expect me to. So they thanked me and got on with their soccer game.

The thing is, the next day was Saturday, our outing. When Nik saw me, first thing he said was “Thank you ah Ms C, yesterday you gave me the cake, thank you.” To me, that’s an important achievement.

Here’s a child who seems to be selfish and self-absorbed, unaware of his surroundings and doing whatever suits him. Yet, he has enough maturity and social consciousness, or whatever it is that prompted this, to come up to me of his own volition one day later to thank me, and obviously with the full intention of doing so and not just accidentally remembering it.

It shows, to me, that it’s somewhere inside of them, and it’s coming out little by little. We just gotta keep reminding, supporting, encouraging, and being there for them when they fall. And of course, role modeling, because how are they ever gonna learn if all they’re surrounded by is negative examples?

But yeah… chin up ok? We’ve really made progress with these kids. We can do it!"