For the past eight years, I’ve been working closely with young children in different capacities, and I am currently a volunteer with the children’s wing at MINDSville@Napiri, a home and training centre for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
It’s not exactly what I expected myself to do when I was growing up, but this colourful journey has greatly shaped who I am today, and I never looked back.
It all started in 2013 when I was a student at the now-defunct diploma in Child Psychology and Early Education in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. An interesting thing about being part of the minority of males in the early childhood education scene was that I frequently get asked, “Who are you?” and “Why are you here?”
Frankly speaking, till today I am still trying to figure that out, and it is exactly this constant search for purpose and self-identity that keeps me driven to do more for the community. But there was a pivotal moment that propelled me to want to make a difference in the lives of children with special needs.
My then course lecturer Shaifudin Yusof, who is an experienced special needs educator himself, encouraged me to get involved as a volunteer and programme designer for UNIQUE, a support group consisting of parents and their children with special needs in Bukit Panjang. This was despite me not having a strong background in special needs education at that time as a first-year student.
The majority of the children in the group had conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). A children’s recreation club was formed to help them develop social and adaptive living skills through art, crafting, and other creative activities.
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I love it when siblings and friends of these children, who are typically developing, also join the programme diligently with us every month. We gradually built a safe and close-knitted community together in the three years that I was with the club.
It was the first time I had witnessed how children with such diverse abilities could co-exist in the same space, in the backdrop where most children with disabilities in Singapore were often isolated and placed in separate institutions.
I remember a parent sharing with me that she didn’t dare to bring her pre-school age son with ASD and ADHD out for leisure activities for fear of being judged and misunderstood by the people they meet if he were to have a meltdown in public. She never thought her child could have a chance to interact with other children and adults so freely in a community space, like how he did in our programme.
Her worry was not unfounded. After all, only one in 10 Singaporeans were confident of interacting with children with special needs, a survey commissioned by local philanthropic house Lien Foundation a few years later in 2016 revealed.
While most people generally embrace and support the idea of inclusion, there is still a gap between what is in the mind and what is in action. More than just tolerance, we need a society that accepts everyone for their unique identities, and readily goes the extra mile to make everyone feel welcomed.
It was during that period when I realised that most of us live in a context where there is a lack of opportunities to have meaningful relationships with persons with special needs.
“More than just tolerance, we need a society that accepts everyone for their unique identities, and readily goes the extra mile to make everyone feel welcomed.”
Over the next few years, though I have not become an educator, I continue to volunteer with children with special needs, and I am dedicated to helping youths gain confidence in interacting with them as a way to encourage inclusion.
In 2019, a group of my schoolmates and I at Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information became the founding members of a befriending programme with the children at MINDSville@Napiri. This was as part of the initiatives by my faculty’s student-run volunteer group WeeVolunteer.
Our weekend afternoons at the children’s home gave the children an opportunity to foster positive relationships with people beyond their usual social circles, and to develop a strong sense of self.
A year later, I led the programme, and it was exactly then that we encountered the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has unfortunately hampered all our in-person programmes, it has also motivated us to harness technology in creative ways, such as designing and conducting virtual activity sessions with the children on Zoom.
We stepped out of our usual ways of doing things and experimented with new ideas to ensure that our programme could still enable the exchange of positive energy and “human touch” in the digital realm.
A drawing session we had with the children at MINDSville@Napiri over Zoom. / Credit: WeeVolunteer
We discovered new tools such as the “annotate” function on Zoom where we could create real-time drawings with the children and its “spotlight” function where everyone could take turns and have equal opportunities to be heard.
We want the children to know that while we can’t meet in person, our commitment towards them and inclusion hasn’t stopped.
What pleasantly surprised me was that the children are much more resilient than we think, and they adapted to the new situation very quickly. They have become more motivated to partake in the activities, and would even take initiative to make our new volunteers feel welcomed.
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We have learnt to see these children as equals with whom we exchange powerful conversations and great ideas with. After all, they inspire us just as much as we inspire them. I feel that that’s something our society should ultimately view and accept as the norm.
“We have learnt to see these children as equals with whom we exchange powerful conversations and great ideas with.”
What’s been challenging about the work is that while every child is different, the same child may not be the same every day too. We can never make assumptions and it helps for us to observe and listen to a child first before we speak.
There are times where I may have made a mistake or misunderstood a child, but I am always so grateful for the generosity that the children have given me through the years, to say “It’s okay, we are still friends.”
For me, I’ve always believed in building a long-term relationship with the children I work with because this is where I see the most impact. Rather than seeing them as just clients, I regard them as my friends who are an integral part of my life.
I’ve been with the children at MINDSville@Napiri for nearly three years now, and it is from them that I’ve experienced what it means to build genuine connections and how some of the greatest things in life take time to nurture.
Despite having a busy school and work schedule from time to time, I’ve always made an effort to attend my sessions with the children regularly, as I know that if this is something that I find personal value in and wish to see progress, I’ll have to invest time in it.
Photo by sketchify on Canva
What has helped me find time to volunteer consistently is recalibrating how I spend my time in between schedules, such as using my commute time to reply to messages or to brainstorm ideas in my notebook. I also find Google Calendar useful in helping me organise my daily movements and tasks, and it allows me to predict my workload ahead of time.
“Because every time someone says something isn’t achievable, I just keep going on and it always turns out to be possible somehow”
If you ask me what my ultimate goal in this endeavour for inclusion is, it is to eliminate the need for inclusion in our society one day. While this may seem like a distant dream, I believe that it all starts with the smallest-scale changes today. Because every time someone says something isn’t achievable, I just keep going on and it always turns out to be possible somehow. So I’m excited to see where the next phase of my journey brings me to.
