Sabahan Alexandria Lu first learnt about SHELTER when she was completing one of her school assignments. She could not however, do much about it as she was in Sabah.

After her form 5, Alexandria came to Kuala Lumpur to further her studies at HELP University. Amidst the hustle and bustle of going for classes, tutorials, assignments and exams, any thought of volunteering was out of the question.

Alexandria, who is studying Psychology, soon discovered that there was 20 hours of social work required for one of her assignments.

Immediately, she remembered SHELTER. After some research, she applied to do her internship there. Alexandra was placed in SHELTER 1, the home for children aged between ages 4 – 12. Alexandria shares her experience:

“Before coming to SHELTER, I had certain preconceived notions of how children in a home would be. To my surprise, I found the children at SHELTER were not any different from children elsewhere. They too experience happiness, excitement, sadness and anger and so on, all emotions which I myself experience.

What really struck me was the camaraderie between the children and the staff. They all got along together like one big happy family.

My course mate, Shanny, and I spent our time with the children, helping them with their reading as well as playing with them. We tried to incorporate some of the things that we learnt in our course when we interacted with them. We were also tasked to clean the home and we found the children were ever willing to help us. Soon it became an enjoyable activity.

I plan to continue my volunteer my time here and also encourage my course mates and friends to do the same.”

Alexandria believes that her friends and she can do more for the children at SHELTER. “I believe you are never too young to help others and I am sure my friends and I can come up with some projects for SHELTER.”

So if Alexandria, a young girl, is willing to help out in SHELTER, what about you? Can you lend a hand too?