Volunteer Diaries 6 and 7 - the last skate

Apologies for not writing my volunteer diaries for the past two weeks, between work experience, university open days and school I have had very little time to sit down and write. However, that will change in the upcoming summer.

Friday was my last ice skating session until after the summer, but I will be helping out with some of the summer volunteer projects.

The week before was quite a challenging week though. I was to look after a girl aged 11 and to say she was in a bad mood would be an understatement. It was challenging to convince her to skate and interact with the other children, but after a long talk she finally joined in. This week was extremely useful for me as it is in the taxing moments that you learn something new, if the voluntary work was easy every week I wouldn't gain anything from it. I can certainly say my communication skills have been improved as a result from that week.

I am sad that I will not have anymore sessions until September as I have made some great friendships with the children, and I love going each week. However, as previously mentioned I will be completing voluntary work in the summer so expect some more in depth posts about that.

Volunteer Diary 4 and 5 - a recap

To say that I have been busy is an understatement. I had the assumption that after my exams had finished I would be graced with time to focus on this blog, to work on my university application and to get ahead in A2 work, along with socialising with my friends and also complete some more work experience. Well it turns out that in doing all of this I have lost track of time and I have only just realised how much I have neglected this blog, and for that I apologise.

So since my last post I have continued with my MOOC on the clinical psychology of children and young adults, and I have learnt so much about the formation of mental illnesses and how complex they are. I also feel as if through this MOOC I have significantly improved my own independent learning skills.

However, my voluntary work is what is continuing to inspire me. Each week I am continuing to strengthen the bonds and friendships I am making with the children, whilst learning more and more about their personal disabilities and challenges, along with getting to know their parents. On Friday we had a special skills ice skating lesson, and as well as improving my own skating ability, I learnt that I have hugely impacted on particular boys life. The boy is one who I looked after on my first week of volunteering and he suffers from dyspraxia. Despite not being paired with him that week, he still insisted on being paired with me, and even left the volunteer who was initially paired with him to skate with me, continuously hugging me and telling me that I am his favourite. Whilst this may just be a phase, I can help but feel almost a sense of accomplishment, if not at least a huge humbling feeling that I have influenced this boy's life so much, that he wants to work with me every week (last week when I was paired with him he danced around the seating area in the ice rink with excitement and shouting "YES I GET TO WORK WITH ELLIE") To see a child respond in that way is extremely inspiring, to know that you alone can improve their mood that significantly proves to me alone why I do this voluntary work. Of course it is not just this boy who inspires me, they all do. Even when we were completing the skills lesson, all of the children joined in, despite many uncomfortable glances at first, they all want to try new things, and they are all willing to do new things.

I feel that through my voluntary work I can see myself growing as a person. Not only do the children that I work with inspire me each week, but so do the incredible other volunteers who I have been able to meet along the way. Before I started this voluntary work I had a tendency to be quite shy around new people. Whether shy is the right adjective is debatable, but I was not one to go up to new people at random and create a conversation or friendship, I liked to take a slower approach, but now I have certainly become more outgoing, indefinitely more caring and my communication skills have improved immensely. I have gained a lot from my voluntary work, but maybe more so than anything I am gaining incredible memories,  each week I have the chance to help these children, to improve what may have been an awful week for them, and have a great time at the same time. What more could you want?

Volunteer Diary 3 - autism

Most of the children I work with at my voluntary work have mild disabilities, ones that realistically if you did not know where present, you would think were non existent in these children. However, there is one boy who it is quite clear has a much more severe disability, he suffers from severe autism, and this week I was asked to look after him. 

I had never had any experience with autism until today, I had merely read about, so I was excited to  be able to look after this boy and learn more about this devastating disability. From skating with this boy for an hour and a half, it became apparent that I really did not know much about autism, just the basics, but one thing I did notice immediately is that this boy as cliché and basic as it sounds, was in another world of his own. The communication between the two of us was very basic, he would reply yeah to most of my questions, and when he replied no there was often a long pause and no sounded almost aggressive. I also noticed that much of our communication was not through words, but facial expressions, he would skate in front of me and every few minutes would look back and smile to check I was there, he also would pull funny face at me, and if I reciprocated would laugh. 

As well as taking the children ice skating, as volunteers we are responsible for making sure they eat, for most children this is taking them to the cafe and buying chips and chicken nuggets, but this boy came with a backpack full of his food. What was interesting to me was that instead of asking to get off the ice and eat, he would stop at the exit of the rink and just stand there till I asked get off? It was almost as if he was waiting for my permission. 

After the session today I left feeling very reflective, whilst I did feel quite sad that this boy was so oblivious to the world and appeared so confused, I also left feeling satisfied and that I had really made a difference and helped him today, because it was obvious that when he was skating around the ice rink he seemed much calmer and much happier. It made me realise that I no longer do this voluntary work to gain experiences that will help me with a medical degree, but that now I actually do this voluntary work because I genuinely care about the children who come. Over the time I have been volunteering at this charity I have got to know many of the children and they will come up and hug me upon arrival, and even know I am meeting new children every week. For example, this week a boy who I had never looked after before came up to me, shook my hand, told me he was the science genius, and proceeded to explain to me how he would clone a dinosaur, and from the biology lessons I have had on clones I can confirm that what this 9 year old was saying, was in fact true. I suppose what I am trying to say that this voluntary work is something that I love to do, and that each week the children there never cease to amaze me and provide me with new memories, allowing me to finish my week knowing that if all else failed that week, I have improved their day and week, which ultimately is the aim in my opinion. 

Volunteer diary 2 - the air hockey champion

Yesterday evening I once again went ice skating for my volunteer work, and this week I was asked to look after a new boy who had just joined the programme. He was extremely nervous to begin with as he said that he was not very good at ice skating, but after a few minutes of talking I convinced him to try to skate. It turned out that he was a natural, and it was clear that after about 15 minutes of skating he was having a great time. Throughout the session I continued to help him become more confident skating and introduced him to the other members and volunteers. After about an hour of skating though we decided to have a break and we headed to the arcade where a tournament of air hockey commenced,

Volunteer diary 1 - Gone off alcohol

As well as my reviews I am now going to start including my experiences when completing my voluntary work. I have previously volunteered for my local Marie Curie hospice, but I want to experience a wide range of areas and work with as many different people as possible. Therefore more recently I have started volunteering for a local charity who work with disabled children.

I now spend my Friday evenings taking a group of children, most with mild disabilities, though some are severe, with the help of 8 other volunteers ice skating. I can honestly say that it has to be the most rewarding thing I have ever done, because after merely a few hours with these children you leave with a huge sense of accomplishment, knowing you have improved their day.

Obviously due to privacy for the children who I volunteer with I will not mention either there names or delve into too much detail of the conditions, as frankly I think it unnecessary. I will however include on my blog moments that have inspired me, and have taught me something new.

I find it very hard to believe that the children I volunteer with have disabilities, some as extreme as severe autism, because they are the most polite, kind and entertaining children I have ever met, who coincidentally are a thousand times better at ice skating than myself. One of the biggest lessons I have learnt from them so far is that as teenagers we have a tendency to 'sweat about the small stuff' - I believe that is the correct phrase - because these children despite their disabilities always have a smile on their face. To me they are truly inspirational and never fail to make me laugh.