Renovation project of volunteers at the School for Life
Behind every foundations of a project lies a story and this is a story about giving a group of children a voice: because everybody deserves to be heard, particularly those who needs it the most! I had a wonderful and very emotional time at School for Life and I was lucky enough to get to know some of the most amazing and captivating children. My experience in living in the same environment gave me a profound insight into their lives and today I would like to share with you my experiences about the project that I had started together with the other volunteers.
After spending three months in SFL I started to wonder whether or not the children were happy and if there were anything I could do to help improve their lives and their overall happiness and wellbeing. I have studied early childhood education in Germany and it has taught me valuable lessons in the importance of nurturing children at an early age in order to provide them with the necessary platform to develop right the way through to adulthood. Over 100 children live at SFL, spend most of their lives at SFL and they all naturally became part of a family. In fact, for most of the children it is their only family (citing one part of the morning ceremony: ‘This is our home, our family, this is school for life’). Therefore, I wanted to give them the opportunity to talk about the positives and the negatives in their everyday lives.
I initiated an anonymous questionnaire with the children to better understand things such as what they liked about the school, what it was like at home with their families, their everyday lives and worries and the sort of changes they’d like see. Since some of the children were very shy, I thought the questionnaire was a good way to explore the issues. The most striking wish from the children was the need to renovate some of the family houses and so we decided to try to help renovate at least one of them. The one house that we chose had 20 boys at the age of between 5 and 20 living in it and started to put together a list of things that were most urgent after having discussed it with them. There were things such as fans, water tanks, paints for the walls, clothes hangers, wardrobes, clothes baskets, extension cables etc. Once we had this list, the other volunteers and I started a fundraiser back home in Germany with our friends and families and to our surprise we managed to raise €800 after only 1 week. This was the first time we’d ever done anything like this and of course it excited us very much because we knew this would make a huge difference.
The project was already in progress! We took the children with us to buy the supplies which gave them the opportunity to decide for themselves what they wanted in terms of size, colour, brands etc. It was an exciting and happy time for them because they were given the chance to make decisions for themselves even though it was quite difficult at the beginning as they weren’t used to this type of occasion. We then started the work of renovating the rooms which involved moving everything outside in order to paint the walls inside and out. The atmosphere was very relaxed and everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves with their work. Some of the boys did some art work and some younger girls helped also. Just a simple act of installing a fan brought great joys to everyone, now more than ever.
It was a wonderful moment to witness the children so happy and feeling so good when they entered their newly decorated rooms. This school should be a place where the children can feel happy and content to be able to enjoy and grow up peacefully. Especially when I look back on my own childhood and recognizing how important my home and my room was to me at the time. For us it was just a small act in raising money and to do this type of work but for the kids it was a very important moment, when adults gives them their full attention and to make some things possible. Unfortunately, there are still a lot that needs to be done at School for Life and therefore we have made it a priority to work on this project and perhaps go on to raise more money for future projects.
Myself and two other volunteers had the pleasure to meet an awesome (super funny) and motivated young Englishman during a trip to Laos who’s interested in working together on our projects so we will see how things develop there.
If you want to take part in this project or just want to help by donating some money, please contact me at connym.grimm@web.de.
Thanks Masha Toussaint, Charlotte Schwesig, Domenik Stoehr, Sabrina Stephanowitz and Tom Le
Conny Grimm together with Charlotte Schwesig und Masha Toussaint 2017
