Hello. Happy February!
I signed up to be a part of this campus community engagement program at the end of last year and was placed in this refugee school/ daycare center for six weeks. Tomorrow will mark the start of my fifth week there. We are tasked to write reflective logs every few weeks so I thought of sharing them here too, instead of rewriting my experience with different words. Here’s my reflection after the first week!
From the 6th of January to the 10th of January 2020, I have gone through the first out of six weeks of the campus community engagement program at Pertubuhan Pusat Kebajikan Destiny (Destiny Center). The center located in Klang is a mixture of a daycare and kindergarten for children, with a total of almost 100 of them aged two to seven, and majority of them being children of foreign workers recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). My day typically consists of going on the KTM train at 6.48AM to reach the station nearest to the center, an hour’s ride away, helping out with giving breakfast and lunch to the children, giving them exercises in their workbooks, helping out with the children’s bathing and napping time, as well as cleaning the center. I am not alone as I have my groupmates and other volunteers coming from countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and China taking care of these children as well.
The center very much focuses on discipline to these children, which I feel is an almost impossible task considering their age in which they want to explore new things and interact with their peers. I do find myself struggling to assert myself as a teacher to these children, which makes it difficult for me to control their actions. The center does not want us to ‘pamper’ the children, which also includes not soothing crying babies and to be strict to them. As someone who studies Psychology, I wonder if this is the right approach in raising up children as developmental psychologists have founded babies and toddlers raised in harsh environments where their cries are ignored would grow up with dismissive or avoidant attachment styles in their future relationships. However, I do wonder if this is just training for them as being born to immigrant parents who might not have the privilege to grow up in normal, legal settings, that their future environment would probably be harsher to them, thus by teaching them discipline now they will grow to be more resilient to the extra hardships they might face.
I have also gained insight of children growing up in high-need families and am inspired by the efforts made by the center to ensure the wellbeing of the children. Some of these children do not eat proper meals nor do they practice proper hygiene at home due to their circumstances of not being able to afford those basic luxuries. Hence, the center really emphasizes on the children eating full meals for breakfast and lunch, in addition to taking care of their hygiene such as ensuring all of them showers and always have clean hands. I realize that I have taken my privilege of being raised up well for granted, seeing that not everyone gets to be raised up the same way. I wonder if the Malaysian government is doing enough for these communities that might be overlooked.
My groupmates are great people to work with and are responsible people. I am glad that we can all communicate openly about our thoughts and ideas in helping out with the center. The long KTM rides and walks to the stations as well as the long working hours are giving us ample time to bond and make meaningful conversations that help us learn more about each other..
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