Community engagement reflection

My friends and I came up with an idea of visiting an orphanage in order to complete our 8 hours of community service for our blog. Having not done any community service before I thought this would be a really a fun and different experience for me. The overall experience was amazing as it made me look at life differently. The experience made me ask a lot of questions some moments my friends and I would make eye contact when we saw something really sad

Selecting an orphanage was quite a challenge because most orphanages required background screening and police reports or would not let us take pictures however as the leader I did not give up I continued to search and call. Finally, I found a children’s home called Mother of Peace who were very excited to have us. My friends and I came up with a date planned out everything the things we were going to take and so on. Having found the orphanages grocery wish list on their Facebook page we decided to buy long life milk to take for the kids. Saturday morning, we went to the orphanage arrived on time the kids were so happy to see us they came hugging everyone I was shocked to see them happy despite having a few things at some moment I didn’t actually think that was an orphanage because of the way everyone was so happy! They really appreciated that 2 boxes of milk we brought which we thought was nothing.

We were given the task of selecting and folding clothes that were donated to them and we had to group them according to groups like babies, girls, boys, teenage girls, teenage boys, women and men. We first had to wash the black boxes we were to put the clothes in. Two of the children helped us clean the black boxes which was really nice and helpful of them. After cleaning we began to select the clothes and we were done in an hour or so. The lady in charge was quite impressed with our work she had to bring out more bags. In total there were more than 25 bin bags filled with clothes, shoes and toys. The work felt a lot there were more than 50 pairs of shoes and we ended up using 30 or more black boxes to store the clothes in. Despite this we were keen on finishing the work that day. I had moments in my head where I was like I should have split the hours as 8 hours was a lot considering we had not eaten or brought any lunch along. At 11 am the kind lady from the home offered us some tea, juice and biscuits which we really appreciated. During our lunch break I took pictures with the kids who really loved me and didn’t want to let go. It was quite a fun experience as they were really good children.

When we got into the folding, there was a moment everyone was quiet I think everyone was thinking about how fortunate we are. Looking at the old and dirty clothes that these children were going to wear made me realize how fortunate I am in life. I complain a lot about not having clothes to wear yet I shop online almost every week for new clothes. These children had to wear donated and worn out clothes which was really sad. There was a moment we had gone for our tea and the children ran to the black boxes we were packing to look through toys and clothes at first it made us a bit angry as they were unpacking everything we had packed but when we actually took time to process it we realized they were so excited as these old clothes were going to be theirs. We were able to finish our work at 15:30 then off we went to the slides and trampoline to play with the children that was the really fun part, we laughed, fell, took videos and pictures till we realized we had to get home as it was almost 5 pm. This experience gave me an understanding to life it made me see how material things do not matter in life as these children were so happy despite not having fancy things. It also made me not take things for granted as I normally do. Despite waking up with sore arms the next morning, I felt it was worth it as they really needed the help so that it’s easier for them to distribute the clothes.  I applaud mother of peace for making that place a home to the children and not an orphanage.