Community Outreach

For the community outreach, I decide to join 2 different clubs because I really wanted to devote my time to helping the society and making people understand that there are people who cares for them. The first club I joined was the ladies club and we decided to go St Laurence’s children’s haven and the second club decided to go to the gateway village for old age. It was indeed a beautiful experience and I cherished every bit of time that was spent there.

For the community outreach programme, the ladies club went to St Laurence’s children’s haven located at 106 kliprand street roodeport on Saturday to see the children. It is a private organisation owned by Christians, who take children that are abused or children that are orphans and make them feel loved. The organisation is not sponsored by the government. So the orphanage consists of few kids and the orphanage make sure that the children attend school. 2 of the kids are already in the university.

I was glad my group chose to go to the orphanage because I love spending time with children. I plan on having my own orphanage home when I’m done with school and I start working. We all decided to go with milk to the orphanage, so each person was meant to take 2litres of milk each to the orphanage and it was much appreciated by the owner of the orphanage.

When we got to the orphanage, we were taken round by Mr Jonathan Malan to have a view of what the orphanage looked like. We were taken to the rooms where the kids sleep, the kitchen, the dining room, the pool for children, the playground and it was indeed a beautiful place. After we were taken round, we decided to take a group picture. After the pictures were taken, then it was a time for games.

We played different variates of games and then we divided ourselves, some people went to play soccer and others decided to plays cards and later we played monkey in the middle. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed themselves. After lots of playing we went to the kitchen to make launch, after that launch was served, we rested for few minutes and decided to go back to play. After the games I decided to chill and listen to one of the kid songs, he’s a rapper and his songs are amazing. I also had fun playing with the cats and dogs at the orphanage. It was indeed a great experience that I would want to experience over and over again.

For the second community service I joined, we decided to go to gateway village to meet the old age and people with Down syndrome. It was indeed a wonderful experience. We had the opportunity to help the old age people fix their beds and help clean the place. We helped them with their colouring and we spent time with them and got to know them better. After that we decide to go to see the Down syndrome people. When we went to see the Down syndrome, they were really happy to see us and they welcomed us with open arms. We decided to play nerd ball when we got there. We divided ourselves in teams, we had the red and green team. I really learnt a lot because I never knew how to play nerd ball but I had to participate with them and it was fun. We also went to their workshop to help them with their paintings, we made sure they were doing their paintings correctly. After the painting, we decided to dance, we did the cha-cha dance, we also did nene, and we also did the Monash dance (I’ve got bills). It was amazing dancing with them. We also sang a song with them (one call away). After that we went to the babies ward, the babies ward consist of old aged people that behave like kids, so they need to be helped with almost everything, including to bath them, dress them up, they feed most of them that don’t know how to feed themselves, most them are on wheel chairs so they are carried when they bath them, most of them put on diapers. When we went there, we had to help feed them. After then it was time for them to have their bath so we had to bath them, brush their teeth, dress them up and take them back to the sitting room. It was time for their massage, so we helped massage their legs and hands. It was a nice experience and their ward mothers were happy that we assisted them today.I learnt a lot with this two community service I participated in. I saw people that couldn’t do things for themselves, people with disorders, orphans etc. I discovered that there were so many in the society that needs help and I need to make out time to go see them and help them in the possible way I can. I am indeed grateful to Monash University and Mrs Willemien Strydom for giving me an opportunity to spend my time with people that really need my time and I value every time I spent there.