What was the activity?
As a part of the Round Square International Conference 2010, the Student Steering Committee arranged for each delegate to take part in 2 days of service where they would have a chance to meet and interact with our various local community partners. On both service days I was given the opportunity to visit the nearby Koh Pai Nursery for children living in the nearby slum areas. The children were all below the age of 5.
On the playground equipment with the children
What were my aims?
1. For the most part I wanted to aim at being an effective communicator and thus overcome the Thai-English language barriers.
2. Secondly, I wanted to be an inquirer through better understand the backgrounds or the children at the nursery and the lifestyles of the people within my local community. This would allow me to be more open-minded.
3. Lastly, I of course wanted to make a decent contribution to the cleaning and repainting of the nursery’s playground equipment.
One of the kids from the nursery
What did I do?
On both days, I would spend half of the time inside the nursery to play and spend time with the kids. After lunch the two halves of the group would swap duties and thus I would go outside and help to repaint and clean the playground equipment.
My new friend Gob and I
During the mornings we sang songs with the kids and made several crafts with them. Prior to arriving we had each been given the challenge of getting to know at least one kid. This included finding out their name, age and what their favourite colour was. If we were able to do this then we could go outside with our new friend to where the paints were and both place a handprint on the mural surrounding the school. As I attended the activity twice, I am proud to say that my handprint is on the wall next to both little Gob’s and Poom’s! Gob is 3 years old and she likes the colour yellow. Poom is 4 and he prefers the colour blue.
All of the delegates with the Koh Pai Nursery kids
After lunch I would go outside and help out with the repainting and cleaning of the playground equipment. On the first day we finished scraping all the old paint off of the equipment, then on the second managed to repaint both the swing set and the slide. Covering all the little nooks and crannies proved harder than expected, especially in the heat of the afternoon sun. Luckily we managed to finish though and even had time to cover each piece with a coating of lacquer to prevent the paint from chipping.
Me covering the playground equipment with lacquer
What problems did I encounter along the way?
On the first day I was faced with the problem of language barriers. I quickly realized that language barriers were not as big an issue as I’d expected, even though the kids spoke no English and my Thai is very limited. We were able to communicate with each other using the simple Thai words which my friends and I knew in addition to the use of hand gestures.
Painting with the children
What did I achieve?
I feel that through this activity I became a better communicator as I was able to play games, sing and dance with the kids despite the Thai-English language barrier. Unfortunately this meant that I was unable to learn much about the lives of the children at the nursery as they did not understand most of what I was asking. However, I did become more of an inquirer and a risk taker as I spoke to the Thai staff at the nursery about the backgrounds of the kids, using the little Thai I know. Lastly, as we managed to repaint two large pieces of playground equipment, I feel we definitely managed to achieve what we had been aiming for, as a team.
General Reflection
