City Harvest Community Services Association (CHCSA), an organization that aims to inspire and care for the community, held its first volunteer orientation on 27 June 2009.
Seventy volunteers came for the orientation with the same passion and zest to serve the community.
The event had a rousing start with an ice breaker led by Eden Sim, the game master. After the volunteers got to know each other better, team building activities such as “Jumping Machine”, What’s What” and “Magic Pole” taught them how to co-operate, communicate and set team goals.
For the second part of the event, the volunteers were introduced to the CHCSA’s history, vision and the core value “Touching Hearts, Changing Lives”. Through community services, CHCSA aims to touch the hearts of those who are underprivileged and change their lives for the better. Some volunteers then shared touching stories about how their clients’ lives were changed as a result of CHCSA.
The service areas of CHCSA include children (K.I.T.E. — Kids in Total Embrace), families (STAR services), the elderly (Old Friends), youth (POD), Rehabilitation (M3 — Mighty Men in the Making), the intellectually disadvantaged (RAYZ), the terminally ill and the hearing impaired (Talking Hands).
Two of the volunteers, Saunders Tan and Ann Goh, shared they were more motivated to be a volunteer after the event. Tan chose to serve K.I.T.E while Goh will be a volunteer for “Old Friends”.
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| PHOTOS: Jing Jie |
The organizer of the event, Irene Ho, said that before the event, CHCSA had organized individual training sessions for new volunteers. This was the first time that all the volunteers were gathered for the largest orientation program CHCSA had ever held. CHCSA will also organize future training sessions for the volunteers to equip themselves to serve different kinds of areas.
If you missed this orientation event but would like to be a volunteer of CHCSA, do contact them at (65) 6835-9916 or log on to http://www.chcsa.org.sg to sign up.
