Sean Ng Hongwei

Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School

Aiding in voluntary work has never been something that comes to people’s minds when they speak of me and honestly, it never used to come to mine. There was something about the gushing enthusiasm that often comes from people who do voluntary work that causes the cynical side of me to rise and denounce voluntary work as the worst sort of hypocrisy, the sort that shouts out some cause and then hides behind a thin veneer of pointless activity.

And yet, be it curiousity or just a sudden calling, I had found myself signed up for the Buddy Reading Programme that was set up in affiliation with Yishun Primary School. It was something that had intrigued me for quite a time and I had thought it the perfect time for me to participate. We were to be assigned children from Primary Four and during the year, had to help them improve their reading and oral skills through passage readings and picture conversations.

It was rather awkward at first because I had joined with all but the slightest bit of passion, (it was, after all, due to some unfathomable urge that I had volunteered in the first place). My buddy and I spoke not a proper word to each other in our first hour despite both of us trying to attempt conversation.

We had begun with the simplest of tasks - passage reading, and it was to my horror that I discovered that at Primary Four, my buddy could read no better than my eight-year-old sister. I had known beforehand that the students were in this programme because of their lack of skill in English but I had not been prepared for this.

But even as disbelief and subtle scorn rose, there was a small tendril of some kinder emotion. This boy before me was reading ever so cautiously, glancing at me uncertainly every so often to see if a frown had chanced upon my face. It touched me at a deep level for never had I encountered someone who was willing to learn something from me.

Progress began to be made as the months went by: under my supervision, the boy could now pause at the right punctuation and his enunciation became much more pleasant. It was at this point that it struck me that this child was taking in everything that I taught him without the slightest doubt. He trusted me with his education!

It had dawned on me by then that the skills I had taken for granted were something that I could give to another person. I suppose it was about then that my perception of voluntary work changed tremendously. It was not a pointless burden, and I actually found myself looking forward to our weekly session.

It has always marvelled me since, the sort of trust a child can develop, the sort that an adult can never have with another person. He trusted me without a doubt when even I, from my supposed lofty vantage of fifteen, regarded myself as nothing but a child very much like him.

I had come to the boy as a stranger, perhaps a teacher of sorts. But what we shared and exchanged was friendship, trust and a deeper bond. It really is amazing for ordinarily I could have passed the boy by a dozen times every day as I walked past his school and I would never have cast a smile his way. The friendship one can develop with a perfect stranger (and a child at that) does touch some deep vein of emotion and become something so simple and yet sublime.

In time, as my buddy became more confident with the English language, our friendship deepened as well. It was a further revelation to me, that I could be myself. Our friendship deeply satisfied me, and what I have learnt from doing voluntary work has granted me fulfillment as well for it has helped me move a step further in what can only be described as my moral evolution.

I have learnt that to make the world a fair place, people must make an effort. Because of our work with these children, they no longer need to feel a sense of inferiority when they hear other children in better classes converse in English.

We should not think that charity needs no effort of one’s own. It is simple to talk about doing charity work and even simpler to shrug off the notion that one could do anything for the greater good of society. But an individual can actually reach out to another and guide him away from where he or she stumbled and fell, and that belief is what makes me feel that the hours I put into teaching one boy how to read were indeed worthwhile. Even though we received recognition from the school, the children’s smiles had been more than enough.