Today’s post comes from Francis Paulino at HandsOn Shanghai.

Global Youth Service Day, the largest service event in the world, was celebrated on the weekend of April 15-17 this year and HandsOn Shanghai was definitely a part of it! One of the activities HandsOn Shanghai had around the city that weekend was the project at the Mental Handicap Community Sunshine Home at Dapuqiao with students from Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade.

The students planned an afternoon full of educational, fun and team building activities. They first started with a stimulating English lesson of different methods of transportation.

While one student stood up front writing words on the board, the others helped out the Sunshine Home residents with their pronunciation. The student up front would write and say “boat, b-o-a-t, boat!” and the residents would cheerfully repeat their newly learned word in English.

The next activity, and where the real fun began, consisted of volunteering to go to the front of the class and doing a short performance— either to sing a popular song, dance, or draw a picture on the white board.

With a mixture of cheering and innocent teasing, the residents would volunteer their friends to go up front and sing. However, we didn’t have to insist very much for all those artists to go up front and sing! Most of the residents sang a song without a hint of embarrassment while their friends sang happily along.

One of the residents even sang a song in English! And out of all songs he could have known I was surprised with his choice when I heard the words to John Denver’s “Country Roads”! Some of the volunteers from Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade also shared their beautiful voices by singing tunes by Michael Jackson that everybody knew. Overall, the atmosphere was one of celebration and everyone had a great time!

By the end of the singing activity, the volunteers had bonded with the residents and there was a relaxed and friendly mood, which was perfect for the final activity as it required people to get physically closer.

For the last thing on the list, the volunteers planned for everyone to play the game called the “Human Knot”. By then everyone felt comfortable enough to holds hands and tie each other in a knot by going in between people without letting go of your neighbor’s hands. After getting twisted into a knot, everyone had to work together as team to untangle themselves, which was received with cheers, claps and a feeling of accomplishment when the task of getting untangled was finally accomplished.

I don’t know who was sadder at the end of the afternoon, the volunteers who had to leave or the residents who had to say goodbye to the volunteers as everyone just bonded and had such a great time! The whole afternoon had a mood of equality and joy, making HandsOn Shanghai’s celebration of Global Youth Service Day a success!

And now off to continuing to improve our community! So until next year, Global Youth Service Day!