Happy Chinese New Year!

For our first Cultural Exchange event within the Boys' Home, we have organised two slightly different Chinese New Year celebrations for Block D and Block F respectively. Here's the respective accounts from our volunteers from the Wednesday Block D and Thursday Block F celebrations.

-Chee Wei

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Block D (Wednesday, 30th Jan 2013)

This is my first time hosting an event in youth. It was a rather fun and new experience for me, especially since we are introducing the Chinese culture of celebrating Chinese New Year to the boys who are from different races. The planning stage was for us to brainstorm for ideas on how to make the presentation of the Chinese culture interesting and appealing to the boys. Hence, we came out with the idea of making the boys stand when the speaker mentioned certain keywords and rewarding them with points for it.  At the end of the talk, we also had a round of the Q&A sessions whereby the boys get to answer the questions regarding cultural meaning and practices of Chinese New Year.  At the end of the event, the winning team gets to choose the flavour of the pizzas they want to eat.  After which, we had some get-together time with the boys where we sat down to eat the pizzas and interact with the boys.

Through this session, i got to know some of the chinese cultural meaning behind certain traditional practices that even i was not aware of! I also get to interact with the boys better.Overall , it was a fun and meaningful experience to share my own culture to the boys with different cultural backgrounds and watching them join the fun!!!

-Ying Siew

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Block F (Thursday, 31st Jan 2013)

新年快乐 ！ 31^st January marked our first festive session of 2013 with the boys at Blk F where we celebrated for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Instead of the usual dark-coloured WSC tee, volunteers were dressed in festive red this time round. As per normal, there was loads of chattering on the bus as we made our way down to Boys’ Home.

The session started out with the boys and volunteers being divided into 3 groups. Since it was a CNY celebration, red packets (hongbaos) could not be missing. Volunteers then handed out hongbaos to the boys that contain gold-wrapped chocolate coins (the very typical replacement for cash :P). The emcees for the night - Shark, Jacky, Glenda and Zheng Wei, later covered a detailed presentation on the customs and norms of CNY, as well as interesting facts about the Chinese Zodiac. I guess everyone had really listened attentively because hands were rising all the time during the Q&A segment. It was also impressive that many non-Chinese boys could rattle off CNY greetings in Mandarin! Some of the boys and volunteers also went up to share how they would be spending the CNY holidays, and indeed most of us would be spending time with our families and friends.

Then came the highlight of the night – supper! It was everyone’s favourite (or at least my favourite brand of pizza :D) Sarpino’s and KFC! Despite the long day at school, everyone was in high spirits and time was spent chatting and catching up with the boys. The food were quickly polished off and to our dismay, it was soon time for the volunteers to leave. The mess was quickly cleared through the efforts of everybody and we proceeded to bid our farewell to the boys.

Overall, it had been a fun-filled night and I certainly had enjoyed myself. Much thanks to the emcees and organisers for planning this! J Perhaps during Hari Raya, we could get the Malay boys from Blk F to introduce their culture to us instead!

-Ruo Yu

A very big welcome to all the new volunteers to Youth Block D! :D

Block D officially welcomed its new volunteers into the family over the Festive Season. There had been a slight delay in arranging the new volunteers' briefing talk due to unforeseen circumstances, thus resulting this late entry.

During the First session at Block D with our new volunteers, the seniors were there to guide them along and orientate them to the place. After 1 round of brief introductions, we played Ice Breaker games, such as double whacko together with the boys so that we could get to know each others' names in a fun way. Though the place was a little quiet in the beginning with some of them being shy, the boys never failed to amuse us with their jokes. Very soon, the atmosphere became less tense and it was good to see the new volunteers mixing around well with the boys; the boys showed much enthusiasm in getting to know them as did the volunteers.

After Session ended, it was time for the volunteers to have our routine supper session together at Sheng Siong. However, this supper session was set to be a special one. In keeping to the spirit of giving during the festive Season, Block D had its very own Christmas Gift Exchange session. Everyone had been pre-notified to purchase a gift of about $15 or hand-make a gift for this gift exchange. Although participation in this gift exchange was optional for the new volunteers, it was indeed great to see all of them participating eagerly.

Poker cards of 2 suits were given out to all the volunteers who were present and each of us was to pick our desired gift according to the number on the card we were holding. After everyone had picked one gift, it was time for the interesting part where volunteers were given the choice to swap their gifts with another volunteer. The day ended happily with a photo-taking session of all of us with our gifts over the night backdrop.

Once again a very warm welcome to all the new volunteers and hope we could enjoy the future sessions together with the boys as one happy family! :D

-Rishi