For my CIP project, I decided to volunteer at a children’s daycare. Once a week I would go to the daycare and play with the children for a couple of hours. An interesting point to note is that when I was initially asking to volunteer at the daycare, the staff personnel also requested bank account information. This is because in Japan it is not unusual for volunteers to receive「お礼」money, which I could never imagine receiving in the United States.
As someone with an introverted personality, I initially found it difficult to interact with the children at first, but like with any child they were interested in learning about their new 「先生」and after learning I was from America would often request me to say things in English, which were often met with laughter or additional requests. Another difficult point was that understanding the children. Compared to the staff personnel, the children had a high tendency to speak in Kansai dialect. While I was able to quickly pick up the word meanings, the children also tended to speak faster than the adults, and to someone whose listening skills are not their strongest point to begin with, understanding the children could sometimes be hard. However, since the children also tended to speak in short sentences and simple vocabulary it was not impossible to talk with them.
Additionally, the more time passed the more friendly the children became with me. It was interesting to see the subtle differences between Japanese and American culture at the daycare; things like how fast they become friendly toward others and the children’s increased willingness to listen to adults and others. But it was also heartening to see that regardless of culture, children are still rambunctious, outgoing, and at times more forward than their adult counterparts. I am also grateful to my fellow volunteers and the staff personnel for helping me out and taking care of me during my time at the daycare.
It’s great to hear that you enjoy working with the children so much. It’s really surprising that they give out money to volunteers, but I suppose makes a kind of sense if it’s a smaller, salutary amount. Anyhow, what lead you to decide to volunteer to work with children? Do you have past experience doing that sort of thing, or were you deciding to try it out for the first time here?
The money is indeed rather small, but given the fact that this is given to every volunteer every time they come, it can certainly add up to quite a bit! As a physical therapy major, I wanted to work with children who had disabilities–this daycare happened to have 2 children with disabilities–but since there were so many kids I often ended up playing with other children, which turned out to be not that bad in the end.
It’s really nice you were able to make connections with the kids, I think that this is an experience that many of us didn’t have while living in Kyoto. I can see how it was really hard to understand them (it’s hard to understand kids speaking english sometime!), and I really admire you persevering through it.