Project Love Box; Volunteering

Christmas is 2 months 6 days away. Every Christmas most of us would receive gifts from family and friends. This Christmas, why not do something special and grant a kid his/her wish?

Project Love Box is an initiative by Every Nation Church (Singapore) helping disadvantaged and needy children in Singapore have their Christmas wish come true with the help of the public. It don't matter what age you are, as long as you feel that you would like to and is capable of making a kid happy this Christmas, then you can help.

Every Nation Church (Singapore) has collated a list of items the kids would like here. Each wish comes with the name of the kid, age and the level of education the kid is receiving now. The gifts are pretty standard actually and mostly affordable, if not individually then shared among a few people. It's kind of funny to see the younger kids requesting for identical items, I think they probably have a list of items to choose from or these items were suggested by the in-charge of this initiative.

In any case that you are interested, click here. Or if you are not, you can still check it out. The steps are as follows:

1) Select the gift you and/or your friends would like to sponsor,
2) Fill in contact information at the bottom of the page,
3) Confirmation email will be sent to you with a Gift ID (to be printed out and pasted on your gift), when and where to deposit your gift (collection point),
4) Shop for the gift you have chosen to sponsor,
5) Wrap up your gift and tag it with Gift ID. Feel free to include a personal note to the child in the gift. If you leave your mailing address, the child might be able to write back to you,
6) Bring the wrapped and tagged gift to the specified collection centres on collection dates.

Actually this is only a small group of children. There are lots of needy and disadvantaged people out there whom we can help over the course of the year, not only during Christmas. This isn't the largest initiative, there are lots of other initiatives around worth taking part in. I just thought I'd blog about this and bring to everybody's attention that besides receiving, we could also give and it is about time we did.

Coincidentally, a friend was doing a project on volunteerism. I'm sorry to say that I have not volunteered before in my life, unless you count compulsory Community Involvement Project (CIP) as voluntary, which I do not. One of the questions his survey asked was why I'd never volunteered.

I said that it is scary.

Explained to him that from the time I went to IMH for the introduction to volunteering there, I realized how truly afraid I am of the patients and of volunteering as a whole. I am ashamed to view them as an outcasts and as "crazy", despite knowing about their mental illnesses. Every fibre in me wanted to get away from them, yet my mind told me it is wrong to feel this way. How ironic when you consider my course of study. I feel like I'm turning my back on everything I've learnt and my beliefs, lost this trust in myself. That day at IMH, I had looked at the volunteers with respect because they were doing something I don't know if I'd ever be able to do. Then there were also others there whose expressions I believe mirrored mine - uncertainty, fear, disbelief and yet more fear. That was the day I wondered why am I studying what I'm studying if I cannot bear to face these patients, if I am even fit for this vocation or anything related to it.

My friend told me that it is very normal to feel this way about people who were different from us and that he feels this way too. He told me that his Vietnamese group mates thought that for Singaporeans to feel this way is very odd and callous. For them, this sort of "abnormality" is everywhere. It is no more an abnormality but instead part of everyday life, something they deal with, I think. Whereas for us, those who are not normal by our standards are segregated, put out of sight and thus out of mind, until the day we are forced to face this reality and the rejection comes naturally. I believe it isn't only in Singapore that this happens, that in many developed countries this is the norm.

Maybe we are all too caught up with our pursuits of achievement to look around and realize that the world don't revolve around only us. Maybe we could all take that tiny step out, do something against that fear.

I once talked to somebody vaguely about what I felt. He knew where these patients came from and if I'm not wrong, he said I can't help them. I didn't understand what he meant then, I'm not sure if I understand what he meant now but I agree that I can't help them in terms of curing them. All we can do is to make life a little bit better for them and help the nurses there a little as well.

There is much to learn.