In May 2006, I got the chance to be a volunteer translator for Operation Smile when an international team provided hundreds of kids with free evaluation and surgery in Urumqi, Xinjiang Province. For the first time I saw kids suffering with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities. Some of them looked shy and kept silent with their eyes always looking to the ground even when I talked to them. But some of them were so vivacious and lively. They played games, they sang and danced. Most importantly, they laughed. Despite facial deformities, their smiling faces were full of sunshine and left all the troubles in the world far behind. I also got to know some great friends there who shared the same good intent for the kids wherever they came from. “The week was the happiest time in my past four years”, I told my friends. The journey to me was such a unique experience that it changed my life in some way.
My former employer was an accounting firm where working overtime is common. I was getting really tired of it and thinking to leave. After coming back from Urumqi, I finally decided to leave. I got another job with more normal working hours. From then on, I’ve been looking for more volunteering opportunities when I happened to find Shanghai Sunrise on my favorite talk show Culture Matters on ICS. I checked its website - Sunrise was started in 1995 to provide educational sponsorships to students from poor families and they help to build up one-to-one relationship between sponsors and students. “Fantastic, this was just I was looking for”, I said to myself. So I immediately wrote a letter to Sunrise Director of Volunteers Colette and soon got response. That’s how I started.
I’ve been to two pairing ceremonies where I met with students coming from various high schools of Shanghai. Some of them came here alone and sat there very quietly. I felt obliged to cheer them up. We started to talk about their school life, courses they like or dislike, their parents, their idols and their dreams. Some were shy and some were quite the opposite, being talkative, fun and bold in opinions. I was very fond of those kids for their purity and simplicity. Chatting with them brought me back to my school years again. That reminded me of a line in the Youth Poem: But so long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from Infinity, so long you are young.
On the first pairing ceremony, I met Sylvia (Loh) who kindly introduced me to Yvonne and months later I started the Sponsorship Renewal. The renewal job can be done via emails and phone calls which is good news for me as I have a full time job and I usually handle emails for Shanghai Sunrise after work. It takes about 8 to 10 hours per week. It pays off each time I received a positive answer from a sponsor saying that he/she will renew. The feel of being useful to other people brings me a long lasting happiness. This year, I was assigned as renewal coordinator. Other than finishing my own renewal assignments, I also need to monitor the status of other renewal volunteers and report back to Yvonne. It was a bigger responsibility as well as a bigger challenge. But I made it and the satisfaction out of it was incomparable. I would also take this opportunity to thank all the other volunteers working with me. Some even go on business trips often and yet still manage to finish the assignments on time. Your dedication to the volunteer job impressed upon me and drives me to do it better.
Finally, to those who might take interest in Sunrise, I would like to say, “Come on join in us now. It will become one of the most rewarding experiences in your life. Don’t miss it.” Mahatma Gandhi said, I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.