People choose to volunteer for various reasons. Some may say it is to give something back to the community or make an impact to the people in the community. Sounds cliche? I think so too. I am Danielle Leong Ming Yeh, a Semester 4 Biomedical Science undergraduate student at International Medical University (IMU). Just like everyone else I was not entirely happy with the idea MPU U4 aka the mandatory-boring-waste-of-time module which was integrated as one of the modules in this very semester. I was rather skeptical towards it when I was told this is beneficial to the society and perhaps oneself too. For this module, earlier in February, my group paid a visit to Spastic Children Association of Selangor and Federal Territory. At first, I was not comfortable with the idea of volunteering just for sake of doing it to pass my degree. At same time I was nervous to handle kids with special conditions. Children or anyone suffers from cerebral palsy struggle with their speech and movement making communication with them challenging. Our group decided to go during the Chinese New Year season with some handicraft session as a form of celebration of this festive season for the children. It was a rather pleasant experience. Through this experience, I was able to get a glimpse into the daily life of the children by interacting with them. The children harbour positive attitudes towards life despite the hardships they are in.
As a prospective health professional, I was disheartened to learn that most children who suffer from this condition were actually caused by lack of education, ignorance and carelessness of the doctors. It had left a great impact on me – a perfectly normal healthy individual and someone who would possibly make a change to improve this condition in the near future.
Often times, we get caught up in school work, our busy schedule and many other aspects in life then we complain and then conformed, the cycle repeats day in day out. Little did we know that there are so much more to see and people who desperately need our help. Just spare some time for them and make them feel like a part of this community.