Finally, after a long hiatus at blogging, I've finally found something to blog about extensively - my most recent camping experience at World Vision Singapore's 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011.The 30 HOUR FAMINE Camp in Singapore aims to transform the mindset of youth in Singapore towards issues of poverty, and to motivate campers to take action steps towards achieving change.
This is the third time I joined them as a Camp Facilitator to try and do some good. My primary objective is, of course, to help World Vision Singapore reach out to the youths of Singapore through experiential activities in the camp to raise awareness about poverty and hopefully, spur them further to help impoverished children around the world through World Vision Singapore's various programs. My secondary objective is to do something I enjoyed all my life - camping and leading groups to achieve something for themselves so they can grow to become better persons through camping.
For this particular camp review and afterthoughts, I shall be going through the key activities within the camp which started from 17 June 2011 at 1300hrs and concluded at 18 June 2011 1900hrs and bring across my thoughts about the hits and the misses of the camp. It is intended to provide a clear reflective view of what has transpired through what I have seen for myself so that readers of this camp review can have different perspectives through which they can understand the camp better and learn more about it if they have not experienced it themselves during that duration.
To conveniently sum up my thoughts for readers who wanted something to reflect all those wordy paragraphs, I will use a blue ☺ to signify my personal approval of each key activity or a red ☹ to represent my personal disapproval of each key activity.
Click the subheadings for beautiful camp photos provided and uploaded on Facebook by Eric Chow, one of the volunteer photographers of the camp.
Without further ado, here we go...
Day 1/1300hrs/Opening Ceremony:
The Camp Facilitators, Logistics Warriors, Game Masters were already waiting in positions to receive the newly-minted campers from the Convention Hall of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. None of these groups actually attended the Opening Ceremony of the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 because we had plenty to do - final administration work and program briefing for the facilitators before the campers were released, logistics (primarily water and securing of the bags of the campers) to be moved around, game stations to be set up and checked by Game Masters so that campers can enjoy Day 1's experiential activities without a hitch. Personally, I would love to enjoy watching the Opening Ceremony with the campers but I suppose this arrangement, which differs from previous Famine Camps I had attended, is better because there was so much more groundwork to be done and those groundwork was better coordinated if all those three groups of camp volunteers were not inside the convention hall for the Opening Ceremony. ☺ X 1
Day 1/1430hrs/Beginning of 4 Phases of Experiential Activities:
One of the major highlights of Day 1 is the experiential activities which are divided into four phases. Once the campers has been grouped into "families" of different "countries", they are briefed by the Camp Facilitators about their objectives which will included accumulating iconic food, water, health vaccinations, education and monetary savings in Game Dollars for their respective families to survive in simulated Third World conditions. The Campers were then to explore Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a very simple map and a token sum of 10 Game Dollars for the entire "family" which averages around 10 family members comprising of Family Head, Family Vice Head, Adults and Children. I loved the series of experiential activities because it allowed the Campers time to bond together and interact with one another to solve problems at dozens of Game Stations scattered around the campus grounds of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. I am glad World Vision Singapore did not deviate from this and continued to use interesting Game Stations to test the strengths, tenacity, intelligence and even wits of Campers. ☺ X 2
Day 1/1500hrs/Dialogue In The Dark (D.I.D):
Dialogue In The Dark is a completely new program in the camp itinerary compared to previous 30 Hour Famine Camps. This is like a blind man's trail but it is conducted in a completely dark maze and small groups are actually led by visually-handicapped guides through a selection of tours with different themes. The idea is to let Campers experience the loss of use of their sight in the maze so they have to rely on other senses to find their way inside, listening to instructions, learning how to trust their fellow group mates, overcoming simple obstacles within and learning how important it is to communicate in such a context. As a Camp Facilitator, I have already experienced D.I.D and I thought it was quite a challenging and intriguing experience which lasted approximately about 20 to 30minutes.☺ X 2
Day 1/1500hrs/Bottleneck outside D.I.D:
A problem developed when one of the groups inside D.I.D was delayed long enough for other groups to start gathering outside, creating a bottleneck as only five Campers from each "family" got to experience D.I.D, which meant those five members had to suspend their Phase 1 or even Phase 2 activities to wait outside D.I.D and that actually defeated part of the experiential purpose of the Phase 1 to Phase 4 activities as the "families" were split up and thus could not really bond well enough to be tackling Phase 3 and Phase 4 as a closer "family" unit. Personally, I thought D.I.D should not be interjected within the experiential activities, which would disrupt the flow of the activities but it should be made as a separate activity on perhaps Day 2 instead, alternating with some of the written work activities. This bottleneck obviously was not a good thing in the camp. ☹ X 1
Day 1/2300hrs/Sleeping Arrangements:
The female Campers and female Camp Facilitators were to sleep in LT56 while their male counterparts are to sleep in Block 50. So after collecting our bags in the holding area, I made my way to Block 50 with other Campers and Camp Facilitators. Block 50 was a way off from the Convention Hall area and the bag holding area so it was quite a trudge for many who were now running on empty engines and fatigued from an entire day's worth of physical activities. Most of the male Campers were too restless, however, to fall asleep and they were trying to clean themselves up as best as they could since there was no shower heads available for anyone to use. The Camp Facilitators were quick to fall asleep as they knew they had a long day ahead the next day. After briefing my roomful of Campers about how to overcome some of the possible "uncleanliness" from the story I had heard from Ngee Ann Polytechnic Campers about Block 50, I turned in at around 12.30am and woke up at 5.30am, giving myself a full five hours of undisturbed sleep. The next morning, a number of Campers and Camp Facilitators were grumbling about how cold the place was for all the sleeping rooms had air-conditioning within. For me, I think the accommodations were much better than most of the other camps I had attended. ☺ X 1
Day 2/0900hrs/Fish To Infinity:
Fish To Infinity is one of the less physically demanding activities in the camp which requires Campers to break into small groups to come up with a business proposal to help children. The Campers were given some parameters to work with and they had to submit the proposal after consulting information within a catalogue provided by World Vision Singapore. As the Camp Facilitators were not briefed or trained to provide any direct guidance to help the Campers, most of the Camp Facilitators just left the Campers to their own for their brainstorming sessions. I felt that forty-five minutes were a little too short for proper organization of a decent proposal and some of the Campers made use of this time to take naps instead of participating. Perhaps, more could be done if Camp Facilitators had a preview of the catalogue and a better idea of how to assist the Campers instead of milling around. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1
Day 2/1100hrs/R.O.M.A.S:
This is an outreach activity aimed at Campers to interact with members of the public outside key shopping venues along Orchard Road so as to raise public awareness of World Vision Singapore, its 30 Hour Famine Camp, as well as the plight of children who are in dire need of help. It involved photo-taking sessions with members of the public, as well as Campers to take jump shots and creative shots of themselves to be uploaded to a specific Flickr account created by World Vision Singapore. My group had only about less than twenty minutes outside Paragon to accomplish all the activities and I thought it was far too short compared to the originally allocated ninety minutes so most of the photos taken were hurried though the Campers enjoyed the short excursion away from the confines of the camping grounds.
I thought the outreach was successful to a good extent but it could have been better if the Campers stayed at Orchard Road longer with more planned activities to keep them in the limelight. Then again, activities along Orchard Road always had to go through stringent checks and approval from the Singapore Police Force. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1
Day 2/1400hrs/Reflection Time:
Reflection times are necessary in such camps as they involve more cozy discussions about learning points which should be aligned with the learning objectives of the various camp activities and overall camp focus - awareness and action. Most of the Camp Facilitators had gone through at least two and a half day's worth of training, which is a good thing but the reflection time in that afternoon stretched more than three hours till 1700hrs. That posed a serious problem for Camp Facilitators whom some of them commented that they were running out of ice-breaking games to play and were worried that idling time would bring the thoughts of hunger back into the minds of the Campers who had then been keep busy since the moment they woke up.
Fortunately, the Camp Facilitators from my country, Ethiopia, whom I wished to commend publicly here, were a resilient bunch who tried their best to keep the Campers entertained after reflection time by combining all the "families" under Ethiopia for mass games. A total of three mass games were played which somehow worked the Campers to peals of laughter, brought smiles to their faces and thankfully took one hour off the possible idling time. I guessed somehow this lengthy time slot did bring the Campers and Camp Facilitators closer. I just thought more ice-breakers taught to the Facilitators, some of them who were completely new to facilitating groups, during pre-camp training, would have helped a little more in situations like that. ☺ X 1 + ☹ X 1
Day 2/1800hrs/Closing Ceremony:
The Closing Ceremony was much more entertaining than the previous year as the performers were much better prepared and they took efforts to whip up the mood of the audience who were hungry but ecstatic enough to enjoy popular English songs. Some of the more energetic ones even stood up to dance! I recalled games played by deejays from FM91.3, a cheer-leading performance, two sets of songs performed by Jack and Rai and a female singer whom I could not remember her name at the moment. There was then a countdown event though the official Break Fast timing was supposed to be at 1900hrs (which marked the official end time for the 30 Hour Famine Camp itself) but the Closing Ceremony ended at around 1920hrs.
Dismissal from the Convention Hall was also delaying the collection of the break fast meals and I thought the delays were probably excruciating for those Campers who had already made plans after the Break Fast timing of 1900hrs. After more than thirty camps under my belt, I completely understood that no camp could end exactly on the dot but the thing was that the Facilitators were not briefed on such a contingency and thus some of them were a little lost when Campers asked about delays and collection procedures of the Break Fast meals.☺ X 3 + ☹ X 1
Day 2/1930hrs/Break Fast Meal Collection:
That, in my opinion, was the biggest and most visible glitch in the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 because by the time my group of Campers were dismissed from the Convention Hall where the Closing Ceremony was held at, it was already past 1930hrs and without knowing exactly where to collect the meals, I only managed to spot two queues forming outside the Hall. I joined one of them only to find out that that was but the drinks queue and the other one was actually for the food. Deciding to collect drinks first since I was far ahead in the queue, someone then shouted to the Facilitators there to get a helper from the Campers since there was a lot to carry. That posed an immediate problem because I had already dispatched my Camper to the allocated Facilitation Venue which was at least 400 meters away from the queue. So I took out some large plastic bags to try and carry every packet of drink and food for my group as I moved to queue the food queue.
To my utter dismay, the food distributors announced that they ran out of rice and thus everyone had to wait for at least 15 to 20 minutes for the next batch of rice to be cooked. The time on my watch was nearly 2000hrs so I decided to head back to my group of Campers and dismiss them straightaway without the Break Fast meal as they would be waiting far longer than 20 minutes on empty stomachs. It was, of course, not a good piece of news, because some of them seemed really keen to break fast on an official note but a few were really in a big hurry to leave the Camp as their parents were waiting. I made the decision but I was in quite a foul mood as I thought the Break Fast was an important finale to the Camp and should have been more well-prepared instead and that it was not the first time World Vision Singapore had organized a 30 Hour Famine Camp. After talking to the various members of the organizing committee, I finally verified the reason behind - the newly appointed food caterer was not well-equipped to handle the sheer number of people requiring food to the point that one of their two rice-cookers broke down in the midst of cooking. It was one spanner in the works thrown into the final hour of the camp when everything else was relatively smooth and the hiccups paled in comparison to that rice-cooker problem. ☹ X 3
Nonetheless, I felt that the 30 Hour Famine Camp 2011 was all in all much better organized than the previous ones with a lot more attention on Camp Facilitators' training, clearer program objectives, more variety of programs to keep the Campers engaged, and much better camp accommodations so that everyone was better taken care of.
Of course, there is still room for improvement and every Camp Facilitator had even received an email which asked for their feedback about the camp. This alone speaks volumes of how World Vision Singapore remains pro-active in improving themselves and their activities. ☺ X 1
I believe this blog post would suffice as my reply. For now, I am already looking forward to attending World Vision Singapore 30 Hour Famine Camp 2012 because it surely has the potential to become one of the best camps in Singapore!
Thank you for reading such a long and lengthy post. I'll end with a Youtube video of photo montage of the camp itself. Have a great week ahead! ^__^
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