Teksti: Sanna Rekola
A group of 12-year old school kids from The International School of Helsinki took a look on volunteerism in a workshop in KEPA on Monday 11th April. Jacob, Daniel, Flavio and Seung Soo made great collage pictures of what volunteer work can be like around the world.
Volunteer work can be a lot of different things. Usually it’s helping the other people or doing something good for animals or for nature. The group came up with a lot of ways of helping:
Helping older people
Babysitting
Planting trees
Helping people with disabilities
Giving your toys to children who don’t have toys of their own
Helping with gardening
Taking care of animals
Visiting people who are sick
The school children had already done a lot of voluntary work. For example in the school they had planted trees for preventing climate change and taken part in a “run for fund” event, where funds were collected for a good cause.
Volunteering all around the world
In the workshop the schoolchildren made a journey around the world by making collages of what kind of voluntary work they would like to do in different countries. They had to pick one country from each continent and choose the way of helping others in each place.
Seung Soo was concerned about the situation in Japan. He wanted to help Japan with pollution problem caused by tsunami. He also wanted to provide people in Brazil with new farming tools and help poor people in Finland. In Papua New Guinea he would like to build a well for fresh drinking water.
Flavio wanted to help people in Myanmar and take care of the children. In Zimbabwe he wished to help so that all the children would have access to school instead of working or being forced to fight as child soldiers. In Haiti he wanted to offer children medication and fresh water
Daniel came up with an idea of volunteering for stopping polluting in Canada. He’d like to support building up renewable energy resources like wind power. He also wanted to help poor people in Tanzania to get enough food, medicine and money. In Venezuela he wanted to help children to go to school.
Jacob wanted to help people in southeastern United States to survive the natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. He also wanted to help people in Japan suffering from tsunami to get shelter and care. By volunteering in South Africa he would like to provide children with education, fresh drinking water and food.
Visiting civil society organizations
The 5th grade of the International School of Helsinki is visiting civil society organizations during the spring to find out how organizations are working to create change in peoples’ lives.
The aim of the visits is to explore what are our rights and responsibilities as we strive to share finite resources with other people and with other species. The visits will be presented to the class mates and parents in a big exhibition organized in school in May.
In KEPA the school kids familiarized themselves with different activities of KEPA and took part for example in making of Maailman Kuvalehti magazine and in portraying voluntary work by collage pictures in the workshop.
