Yesterday, I had an amazing experience volunteering for Westminster Mile 2016 with Team Westminster. Talking about volunteering, I had arranged/done quite a lot of volunteering work with my University back when I was an undergraduate student, so to me, giving back to the community is not just a task that I need to do, but a hobby that I want to invest my time into.
So, Westminster Mile 2016 is a road race for runners, known for its beautiful purpose to raise funds for many charities like Prostate Cancer Research UK, Breast Cancer Care, Breast Cancer Now. And I was told and have read that the number of runners is increasing year after year (it reached over 4,000 runners in 2015). So to me, this was huge!
My task when doing this was to de-chip the runners’ shoes, which basically meant cutting two thin metal lines which hold the chip (half the bank card’s size) and putting them into two baskets (one for the chip and one for the metal lines). Easy? Yep! Try it with over 300 runners/day for each volunteer!
This was a really really fun opportunity to me. I’ve met many amazing people in my team, and also I was deeply touched with my conversations with the runners while I was de-clipping them (sounds creepy! de-chipping humans?). I got to meet with many cute children with their parents, many strong elderly people who are the same age as my parents and late grandparents, and especially one lady who has just been diagnosed with a brain tumour (she even tried to de-chip her shoes without asking for my help, which made me so small in front of her). I respect them all!
Westminster Mile 2016 was such an interesting event, which not only let me know about the good deed behind volunteering activities, but also helped me to get to know many interesting individuals and learn so much from them (even from the children), which is weird because you actually think you’re giving back to the community, but in fact you’re investing in yourself also.
Read this and other posts on Tung’s personal blog
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