Giving Back through Corporate Social Responsibility
For two years and running in the company I currently work for, we are required to allot four hours of company time (half of a workday) and four hours of our personal time (either we sacrifice part of a weekend or file a half-day vacation leave during a workweek) to extend help to the underprivileged. Last year, 99% of our total company headcount (of about 800) went in groups to various Gawad Kalinga communities around the country to teach children in their makeshift schools. This year, for want to explore other areas where our help may be equally needed, it’s going to be either CRIBS Philippines or Kythe Foundation.
It is one thing to be willing to help and another to have the heart to want to deliver the “service” well. I have long realized that I’m not cut as a teacher because I have very little patience around kids in that I easily get annoyed when they randomly move about, cry for no apparent reason, and, most especially, they take on a particular smell after being active all day. And they can’t talk LOLCAT. And they’re needy, clingy, and immature (hmmm, this sounds soooo familiar. TOO familiar. *strokes Photoshoped beard on avatar. OH! I was describing an adult, sry.). In a nutshell, if you know you’re not cut for teaching, do other things to make yourself more useful like contribute food, prepare the snack area, coordinate with the agencies, clean the site’s perimeter, or re-paint the school’s existing mural (only when they ask you to). Doing so will do the kids a big favor.
Shown in the photo is my first student, Malou, from GK Baseco. She was 6, I think. In her kit is a lesson plan with notes from her other previous teachers. It is my task to teach a child with very short attention span, engage her by any means other than hypnosis (which could have worked better), and test her afterwards if she remembers her shapes and colors. She’d turn her head sideways from time to time and sprint halfway across the room just for the heck of it. Hover your mouse on the photo above (taken a year ago) to see the impatient Malou at her finest. Look at those eyes. Eager to get away from the boring lesson in front of her which by the way was just “how to properly use crayons to color shapes.” “Gilid muna. Madiin. Tapos sa loob na. Simula ka sa taas. Isang direction lang. WOW! Galen…uy, lumagpas pero OK lang. Ibang kulay naman para sa ibang shape.“ I felt myself age several years after those four grueling hours.
I chose to go with the Kythe team this year and I volunteered to retouch their mural. I think I’ll do a better job this time, something I’ve learned firsthand from teaching Malou.
NEXT POST: The CSR that gave street children the gift of music.
It’s also gross when they get uhog in their nozzes. =/
My last outreach program, I ended up in Bilibid. I’s hardcore. Oh. Not counting those fund-raising gigs I used to go to, heh.
Uhog comes from the ears, anuba?! Mine had sipon that sometimes inflates like a bubble. It’s part of the challenge to not be grossed out by it. What I even did was take her towel and wipe it off her nose. +10,000 karma points, I haz it!
I’m with Helga on this. I think Uhog & Sipon are both byproducts of the nose.
I sit corrected. Was thinking of luga pala 0_o
Yeah, the smell! But I love kids [relatively]. LOL Good luck with your new-found Samaritan self. :D
I dun have a choice but to comply LOL One more thing, I let the others choose their students first so I can teach the kid that nobody wanted.
The smell, the annoying questions, the stubbornness… GRAWRRR! But SOMETIMES you feel the satisfaction of being selfless. :)
Yeah, selfless. To balance out my almost always being so full of myself. LULZ On the subject of their screeching noise, sometimes I see children falling in line probably for their school fieldtrip alongside a cinema inside the mall. Their banshee-like shrill voices would drill my ears drive me nuts that I’d walk away even if I already bought tix. Can’t stand em. lULZ
I love teaching kids. The smell, I can tolerate. Besides, I used to smell like hell when I was in their ag—-wait… I’m not supposed to say that -_-
Reminds me of thanking you again. :)
You’re welcome, Neil. Tama na! LOL Actually mas tolerable and ang smell ng mga kabataan (and I didn’t discriminate here because I’m referring to the particular smell of all smelly kids all over) as compared to their noise. I remember once sabi ko gusto ko anak ko is 4 years old naagad. LOL
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Ang galing!
Nakaka-miss magturo sa mga bata.
Tiyagaan lang talaga!
Saludo ako sa iyo dito!
Ok naman basta paminsan-minsan lang. Kaya nga iba gagawin ko this year para at least mas may pakinabang. Salamat, kabayan!