Every early of the year, I make activity plan. Among those plans in 2009 was to organize a youth camp on "Youth and Social Engagement".
During water festival holiday, I managed to do it as plan.
I, together with my volunteers, brought 50 young people; who were carefully selected by face to face interviewing, to held a youth camp on this issue. This camp has becoming my biggest success of the year. I am so glad I have organized it and I am so thankful to other volunteers who have worked very hard to make it an unforgettable event.
At the camp, we shared, learned, danced, talked, sang, and cried together. We learned about each other's experiences of how we manage our time to serve our society. We shared our experiences on how to make ourselves successful. We created a new dancing band. We sang lots of song. And we cried a lot. You may wonder why do we cried at a youth camp like this ? it suppose to be a happy time. Well, our tears were a happy tear.
At the youth camp, we provided enough time and space for each participant to share their hard time history, their sadness, their family stories, and more. All these were organized because I know that behind all these happy faces, each one of us has a story. Each of us may need hug, need a word "I love you", we all need to cry at some point. After all the sharing, I realize how important is it to talk about our sadness. One of the participants said : "All I want in this is life is to have a Mum and Dad to call". His parents divorced when he was three years old. His dad passed away soon after that, and his mum had another husband and left him with his gradma. One other girl shared another long story and asked: "why my brother could forgive his friend, but not me?". Another poor girl said: "my mum doesn't love me anymore". we shared more stories in a room with light off and candle on. Listen to other's stories and saw how difficult their family relations are, one participants cried and said: "I just know today, how much my parents have devoted for me. I love them and I will be best for them." There are another 100 pages of their stories if I keep writing. After a few hours of honest sharing, we gave each other warm hug and said to each other "I love you".
Sharing is not a discussion. At my youth camp, participants were encouraged to share but not discuss. Everyone has a story, all I want is to let it out. To cry the most we want, to express our pain. So if you do have pain, let is out !
