Reflection; Dina

I am really delighted as I was given the opportunity to join organizing “Youth Attack” camp. At first, we were informed by the lecturer that we as a group needed to organize any charity events for 30 hours. After many discussions made with the team members and our supervisor, we decided to organize a camp in SMK Shah Alam for 3 days. Our main objective of the camp was to expose the students about their journey after completing their high school. During the preparation of the event, my friend and I were assigned to handle the ice breaking slot. We had to brainstorm a few interesting games that can be used throughout the slot. We had to make sure that our slot was interesting as it was the opening of our event, so we needed to give the participants good energy so they will be enthusiastic throughout the event. We were also assigned a station during the explorace slot, so we needed to come out with an activity that gives good messages to the students. Aside from the assigned slot, there were many activities done by the group members in order to raise funds for the event. For an instant, we organized housekeeping activity as one of our fundraising for this event. In this activity, we were instructed to offer the public our services such as cleaning their houses and getting payment as the reward of our services given to them. Besides, we needed to sell t-shirts designed by one of our teammates. Every group members needed to meet the targeted sales in order to make sure the fund was enough for the event. The cooperation that members gave during the preparation of the event showed as our programmed were organized smoothly without any problem for 3 days.

During the ice breaking slot, I was so happy to see how energetic the students participating in all the activities that we had planned in that particular slot. The participants were given groups with random people so they could interact with different people instead of choosing their own friends to be their teammates. At first, the atmosphere in every group was very awkward since they did not really know their teammates. But after some group activities, I observed that they were interacting very well with their teammates in the group. Next, I was given the opportunity to interview the students during the interview simulation slot. In this particular slot, we as the facilitators could observe the confidence level of the participants when attending the interview and we needed to give bits of advice to the students on how to improve their talking skills during an interview. For the explorace session, my member and I organized a game that was called blind maze. This activity taught the students to focus when listening to the instructions given by their team members despite all of the distraction as they needed to find envelopes scattered on the floor while their eyes were blindfolded. In my opinion, the most important slot in our camp was the sharing session with the facilitators. The facilitators needed to share their own stories and experiences about their journey after taking SPM. This activity was significant in our camp because we wanted the participants to learn from our experiences and improve. These sharing sessions also made the facilitators and the participants closer as we could interact with the participants personally in small groups.

In a nutshell, there were many good values that I attained when organizing this event. One of them was cooperation given to the group members in order to make work easier. As long as everyone cooperates well in the team, anything is possible. Communications were equally significant in group work. We needed to communicate by giving our own opinions and ideas to improve our group’s assignments. After observing the students during the camp, I can say that I was very impressed with the student’s participation in our camp. I was quite shocked by the students as they could come out with creative ideas within a limited amount of time given to them. Their creatives skills really show especially during Teatro De Suenos and Go Green slots. The participants also were all well-behaved students as they listened to our instruction very well and participate in all of our camp’s activities without complaining. I really hope that the students learned a lot after joining our camp for 3 days. I would gladly volunteer to join organizing this kind of camp again as it would be really helpful for the students to build their confidence level and most importantly to plan their future.