Shaneeqa Shanaz

My personal love for children and wanting to make an impact on their lives have propelled me to volunteer with Project Luminaire. This project had provided me many opportunities to tap onto my passion and form a deeper understanding towards the communities that we were giving back to!

Personally, I enjoyed interacting and getting to know the children during my service days. Going there, I thought I could make a difference in their lives by teaching them but who would’ve known that they were teaching me! Seeing the kids, I learnt the value of simplicity and appreciating what’s around me. With very few things at their disposal, the children learn to enjoy the simplest pleasures — they could merely have one ball to play with and the entire class would get up to gather & enjoy the time spent together. Aside from the children, the community around them was always generous, making us feel at home even if they may not have enough for themselves. Because for these people, happiness comes from appreciating the common joys and that had touched me deeply!

I hope that our contributions during this project had improved their lives one way or another; easing their current living conditions through the solar light installations or motivating them to be curious learners through the service days at Alao. PL11 has been a wonderful experience and I hope it will be an experience enjoyed by many in the future!