Volunteers in Action
These testimonials are a few years old and not a 100% reflection of the actual volunteer roles available today.
Project
Morning Star Centre – a non-profit, non-governmental organisation which was the first day-care centre in Hanoi to provide a high-quality system of early detection and intervention services to improve the quality of life and social integration for children with learning disabilities and autism.
My Role
As this volunteering experience formed my university placement year, my role in the centre had a strong link to my psychology degree. As well as providing the teachers with the support and help that they needed in their daily activities with the children; I was also asked for my opinion on different psychological approaches which could be implemented and asked to develop activities which from a psychological perspective would help to enhance the children’s development over time.
A typical day as a volunteer
I would arrive at the centre at about 8-8:30am while the children were still arriving. Whilst waiting for all of the children to be dropped off by their parents, the teachers and I would get the children involved in a ‘warmer’ activity, such as aerobics or dancing, to get the children active and alert. Afterwards, we would move onto the teaching session. During this time, I would have two of the children to help teach them through many different activities; teaching them numbers, colours, animals, clothes etc. (all in Vietnamese – testing my abilities). After the teaching session was complete, the teachers and I would take the children to either the soft play area on the second floor of the building or to the outside play area for them to have some time to burn off some energy. This was then followed by lunchtime, where I would assist the teachers in helping the children to feed themselves. I would then go on my lunch break while the children had a nap (a very common practice in Vietnamese culture, for all ages). In the afternoon, we would have a similar ‘warmer’ activity, followed by teaching the children how to dress themselves, how to wash their face and brush their teeth. As well as this activity, we would also have a more creative activity which would involved painting or colouring in. These activities would be followed by a snack break, similar to lunchtime, I would help some of those children who needed help to feed themselves. Finally, the last activity of the day would involve music, whereby the main teacher in my classroom would play the piano and the children would take it in turns to sing one of their favourite Vietnamese nursery rhymes (and try and teach me). This is the general overview of the daily activities which I partook in on a regular basis, however, I did observe a lot of different therapy sessions outside of the classroom when the children were taken for their one-to-one sessions. I also taught yoga for 30 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday morning to a group of six students and in the summer, we also took the children swimming.
Outside of volunteering
When I wasn’t volunteering, I spent much of my time immersing myself into the culture; visiting museums and famous historical monuments, visiting religious sites such as temples and pagodas, trying the local cuisine and trying to understand Vietnamese culture. I often travelled around Vietnam with some of the other volunteers I was with, exploring the beautiful landscapes both in the north and south of Vietnam. Again, this provided an opportunity to experience the culture but also to see the differences in cultural customs across the country which was really interesting. After work, I regularly went to the local gym where everyone was really friendly, coming up to me and asking to practice their English with me which was really welcoming.
Most interesting thing about living and volunteering
I really enjoyed living in a volunteer house with lots of other volunteers from around the world. This meant that as well as learning about Vietnamese culture and traditions, I was also learning about many other cultures through the people I was living with, which made the experience really interesting for me. Furthermore, living with other people who are volunteering, who are far away from their homes just like you, provides you with a sense of comfort – the other people around you understand what you are going through, and I think this mutual understanding allowed me to make some really meaningful friendships that will stay with me. Moreover, from a volunteering perspective, the most interesting part for me was to see how the children in my class developed throughout my time volunteering with them. I was able to see direct observations of my work which made the whole experience so much more rewarding.
From my volunteer placement I learned
Volunteering at Morning Star Centre has been an invaluable experience and one which I cannot really describe how much it has changed the way in which I approach things and has altered my perceptions on things. Perhaps one of the most salient things that I have learnt from this placement is patience. Although I mentioned that I noticed the children making progress during my time at the centre; this progress was slow which often brought about feelings of frustration in myself as I felt that I wasn’t providing the children with enough support. However, gradually, over time, I began to notice some small improvements which were incredibly rewarding and motivated me to continue what I was doing. Therefore, this experience made me appreciate the role of patience when you are working with children, a skill which will be vital as someone hoping to pursue a career in child clinical psychology. Furthermore, I have developed my communications skills. On the first day if my placement, I realised that there was an evident language barrier, whereby my teachers and I only spoke a basic level in the others language, limiting our conversations to “hello, how are you?”. This meant that I had to find alternative means of communicating with the teachers and with the children whilst I had Vietnamese lessons. At times it was really frustrating because I couldn’t always convey my message that I wanted to get across, but I also couldn’t add to their conversation which I found challenging. However, this encouraged me to develop a greater understanding of the Vietnamese language and during the latter half of my placement, my teachers would be helping to teach me phrases and words in the classroom to help me understand and I would do the same with them in English, developing a cultural exchange.