Students Launch Helpers School
To give back to those who have played a major role in their lives Island School Students held a Helper School on Sunday 13th December. Over 100 helpers were invited to the school so they could get together with their friends and do some activities arranged by students.
Kiara McDonnell, Heng- Jeung Yuen and Vivienne Lam all in Year 12 led a team of students who have been planning the day since the start of the school year. They set up a Facebook page to find out what interest there was in the community for such an event – now they have over 600 followers. They surveyed the helpers to establish what they might be interested in and based on their feedback, contacted professional teachers of yoga and English to arrange free classes.
In addition Vivienne organised a photography workshop, showing them how to use a basic DSLR camera and gave them tips to improve their photos using different angles and lighting.
Helper Ann said: “It was exciting and fun…specially the yoga, I loved it. I think everyone enjoyed and loved the programme and they are looking forward to the next one.”
Vivienne said; “Our helpers have played a major role in our lives and we [Helper School Group] just wanted to give back to them.” “I did a photography project like the Humans of New York exhibition but Helpers of Hong Kong. I took photos of helpers and asked them how their day was and I thought there must be someway to empower them and give them some fun.”
Kiara; “On their day off they don’t have a place to go and they hang around on the streets so we just wanted to give them a space.”
Heng- Jeung; “They arrived around 12:30, some arrived before just to hang-out. We set-up all the rooms with the right equipment, we had schedules of who was going where so they knew what to do. We posted it on Facebook before the day. ”
Vivienne; “They [the helpers] really enjoyed the photography challenge, they got the freedom to experiment and they did a lot of jumping shots and they laughed a lot. “But I could see that they were taking in what I was teaching them, using all the right terminology.”
Kiara; “More than 100 helpers wanted to come and I think in February’s Helper School we will try and have more activities. A lot of helpers want to do cooking and computer classes so we might try and arrange that.”
“It was actually really fun and I really enjoyed it. We took so many pictures together at the end of the day. ”
