Personal Action Plan
I found this volunteering opportunity on SG Cares website and I have decided to sign up for it.
I will be volunteering as a befriender for Y*Star Arts Challenge at YMCA on alternate Saturdays, 7, 21 and 28 December 2019 and 4 and 11January 2020 from 10 am - 1 pm.
Y stars comprises of youth with Down-syndrome and students with special needs. In this program, they will participate in regular arts and craft sessions. Founded by Regina Aun who is also a mother of a Y*Star member, this program only takes in selected 25 students. This program employs visual arts as a platform to engage children and youths who are underprivileged, intellectually challenged or hearing impaired. The program allows the beneficiaries to express themselves creatively and aims to uncover and develop their hidden talents. ' ( Y Arts Challenge, 2019).
Every art session, there will be different activities organized by the art teacher. I hope for every session, I will be paired up with different students, interact with them and learn more about their needs and struggles of everyday life . Right now, before volunteering, I am like typical Singaporean who carry the stigma of people with hidden disabilities are weird. If someone, who looks like a special needs student, is approaching me to make friends, I am not going to lie but I will ignore and walk away. I do not know if he/she is genuinely want to have someone to talk to or there is a hidden agenda behind it.
By volunteering, I want to find out what is right and wrong in building relationship with someone of special needs and their train of thought when they approach strangers to make friends. I believe that people with learning disabilities just want to find someone to talk to .
Through volunteering at art lesson, I hope to gain different insights into how they view their world, how different his perspectives as compared to mine through their drawing, coloring, and painting.
As what the founder of Y*Star said ' When we look at people with challenges, we shouldn’t always look at their inabilities, all the ‘cannot, cannot, cannot’. We should think of what they ‘can’ do. Look at what they ‘can’ do, and not what they ‘cannot’.
I hope to look at them at different perspective and change my impression of them.
I believe this volunteering opportunity can bring an impact to the community as I can share my experience on social media and spread awareness on accommodating people with invisible disabilities instead of dissing them.