I joined Beyond in 2005 as a community worker reaching out to children under 6 years old to get them registered for early childhood education and after a couple of years, I was seconded to support our main grant maker. After which, I left social services but rejoined Beyond in 2016.
I came back and rejoined the sector to meet my needs for meaning, connection and well-being.
Last Friday, I was supporting a corporate volunteer group to distribute care packs comprising necessities for the new school year to children in a neighbourhood where we work. This group engaged youth from a residential facility to assist them and their cheerful cooperation was pleasing to see.
Amirul, a staff from the residential facility approached me when he found out that I worked at Beyond. He told me that it was his day-off, but he came back when he heard that his residents were helping with a Beyond event. He was warm, chatty and I felt like I was catching up with an old friend I had not seen in a long time. The fact is I did not know him but I knew all the colleagues he was asking about.
So I learned that he spent 4 years at our early childhood centre, joined our study and football programmes when was in primary school and in his teens we enrolled him with the Fandi Ahmad Football Academy and he eventually played competitively with Home United Football Club for 2 years.
Amirul has 10 siblings, and he says that 5 of them and him benefitted tremendously from our presence in their neigbhourhood. “Beyond helped my mom raise us and even after I got into trouble with the law, you guys welcomed me with open arms and set me up with a professional football team.” What he stressed more than once was how Martha, an ex-colleague complimented him for his leadership qualities and then assigned him various responsibilities related to his neighbourhood football programme. “Suddenly I became a very confident person and I enjoyed the responsibilities,” he elaborated.
When he was in National Service, he was awarded the Commander’s Gold Medal and he sought a career with the army but a bad knee injury hijacked his plans. After National Service he found a job as a security officer with the corporation who was distributing the school necessities but after 6 months, he joined his current employer who offered to sponsor his social work education.
He left his security officer’s job with the corporation’s blessings as they respected his desire to contribute to the facility he was sentenced to for his misdemeanors. He believed that being a former resident, he was well placed to empathize and guide those under his care.
Meeting Amirul was a joyful experience and it is one of the things that I am grateful for this year. It affirmed my decision to rejoin a sector that strives to value people simply for who they are and not what we think they should become. Amirul, graciously considers Beyond as a grace in his life but what moved me deeply, is his grace to give. When we think well of people, they become better.
Thinking well of you as the year draws close.
When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.
Leo Tolstoy