MKCC 2024

Title: The AIESEC Volunteer, Salome
Date: 19-Feb-2014

Recently, we have a volunteer who has come all the way from Kenya to help us at Shelter 1. Her name is Salome Yatich. She is a young and passionate lady. Her story of how she came to our doorstep is once again through AIESEC (Previously we had two volunteers from China who came via AIESEC). Salome just filled a Form with “children” as her area of interest as well as “would like to interact and teach the children”. AIESEC then recommended her to our organization.

Salome has previously volunteered in children’s work back in Uganda for about a month, doing work like filing of documents as well as dealing with the children. The organization she volunteered for was a new one with only 3 to 4 children.

With 4 months of volunteership beginning in December 2013, Salome offers her services primarily to teach English to a new child that just got admitted to our Home. She also teaches Science and Maths to the other children, as well as helping out with the office work and occasionally helps in supervising the children during events or day to day activities. Although 4 months maybe a short period of time, Salome has an aim – she wants to help the new child to be able to hold a simple conversation in English. The new child (who was recently admitted into our home) barely knows English and can only converse either in Bahasa or Tamil.  This definitely poses a huge challenge for Salome as she is not a local. She is however determined to achieve her aim and we are indeed very thankful.

Salome states that her biggest challenge in volunteering in Shelter is her being homesick. She misses the important festivals as she usually celebrates them with friends and family back home. However, she mentioned that the people in Shelter, i.e. the staff and other volunteers are very welcoming and friendly. This really helps her cope with homesickness.  She observed that Shelter is more of a family than an organization as everyone helps and cares for one another, both the staff and the children. She also commented that she is impressed with how Shelter takes care of the children and those CSR departments of many companies are aware of Shelter’s presence.

 

 

 



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