When we were told to have a service trip, I was honestly appalled. I never liked (and perhaps never will like) service trips, but I will do this anyway. That was what I thought before I began the pre-trip preparation.

We began to have meetings (Mariska and Joshua being the facilitators of this trip) to plan out the scheme of work for our trip, like what we were going to provide them. I was still not in to this 'service trip thing', and just without a care randomly joined in discussions, and sometimes drowning out the information given to me.

The 'me' now, after going through and really hearing the information of the situation over there, really wanted to get into this service trip and do whatever I can to fulfill what they truly needed. I was not excited and not happy about this trip before, but because I realized that they desperately needed our help, I decided that I couldn't be an ignorant person anymore.

The teachers over at the school we would be funding and donating to, only earned about US$13 per month, and for us, that is not even enough to support us for even half a day, much less a month. Yet these teachers are still willing to give their all for the children who were willing to learn, so what about us? That gave me a wake-up call, that we were more privileged, but yet what were we doing, just sitting about and planning? It was time we get into action. Thus ideas about collecting the items ourselves from the neighborhood around was a great idea, and we all set to do it when the trip was nearing.

We all set out with determination to collect items so that we could get it done and properly sorted the next day. Our collection really went well and we were overwhelmed with good-hearted peoples' donation items. Our teams transported a lot of them back to our school and we slowly sorted a lot of them out.

Some of the donation items, however, we must properly check thoroughly before we give it to them. For example, the clothes. They must not be revealing because they are, after all, a Muslim country and we must respect their religion. Their religion restricts that they reveal anything above their knee, so even if we donate skirts to the girls, they must be at knee-length or lower. We must consider this fact, and respect it before we began the clothes sorting.

All in all, all of us gave a lot of effort to collect these items and in the midst of it worked together well, and thus wasted almost no time. I was honestly impressed at how much I could do with other people if I really put myself into it, and I'm glad I did. It is time to make a difference for other people.