Meet our Volunteers
Kris Chong
My Shoot@Tampines
Temasek Polytechnic student Kris Chong is an aspiring paralegal and also an avid photographer. She recently volunteered to take photographs of SPD’s first satellite centre SPD@Tampines. A young woman of few words, she shares her first encounter with SPD in this article featured in the July 2008 issue of ExtraPage.
I find it a new experience everytime I volunteer for different causes. When I was in Secondary 3, I went with my class and three teachers to an orphanage in Chiang Mai to help the children living there, some of whom had Aids. We were there for 10 days to teach them English and to help improve some of the facilities. Although without a proper family, the orphans seemed genuinely happy to have one another and to have had a comfortable place to live in.
It was another interesting experience volunteering at SPD@Tampines. All this while, I had little knowledge and contact with people with physical disabilities. I didn’t know what difficulties they faced or how they coped with their daily activities.
Although the main purpose of my visit was to take photos, I was glad to be given this opportunity as, through that session, I was able to interact with one of the clients as well as a therapist.
Mr Safaeh bin Omar had to undergo therapy to strengthen his muscles and learn to walk again after being fitted with a prosthetic leg. He came across as friendly and pleasant, and determined too as he never gave up trying to do the exercises that he was asked to.
I was pleased at what I saw from my short stint which was in part a sort of tour of the premises. The facilities within SPD@Tampines catered to the people with disabilities and the elderly. The whole environment gave me a clean, crisp and sunny feel. Xiu Ling, the Occupational Therapist attending to Mr Safaeh, was very professional, friendly and helpful towards my requests for special poses.
I think that SPD’s focus on helping disabled people and the elderly be more independent is important especially in our ageing society. I also found out that SPD provides therapy for children with learning and developmental disabilities. Helping these children with special needs and their parents cope with their conditions at an early age will definitely smoothen the rough road ahead for most of them.
To end my short reflection, here are some of the pictures that I took at SPD@Tampines that day.
