A valuable volunteer work

It was the first time I've ever volunteered for doing something that doesn't directly benefit me and out of my own initiative. *Yeah, shame on me* But least I did now, it's never too late to begin ;)

I went down to my neighbourhood to help out in the Meet-the-people's session today. I had simple tasks to do; such as gathering and entering information of the citizen's cases nto the system. People raise many different critical issues to resolve or to appeal for. Which, you may be really surprise to know what people actually complain about (sometimes it can be really trivia). On the other side of the coin, sometimes it's issues which have been swept under the carpets for a long time and only surfaced till now. Or least, are sad problems of which we would never expect would even exist in the real world. Quite sad actually. :(

At the end of session, we sat down with a group of 10-11 volunteers (mainly aged 30 and above) and of most,are white collar workers. I met like a surgeon and an entrepreneur who were really young! The spotlight of today is still, our very own Cabinet minister, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.

I was really nervous today, especially when I had to hand him documents to sign! But in real life, he really is a very nice and charismatic man. He even invited us to join in for open discussion on the current issues and our woes about potential problems. We talked about everything, mainly about social welfare, education and CPF. Hah. Not the mention the details, but least, I've learnt quite a lot from Dr Vivian in just, that mere 35 minutes. He left me with a valuable and meaningful takehome message today. :)

It was a short two-three hour session, but it was totally worth my time. There was so much to learn from people from different walks of life, and especially Dr Vivian. I'm so looking forward to the next session next week. ;)

Gonna sleep now, 9am-7pm tomorrow! Good nite.