The Memorable Experience

Everyone has memorable moments in their lives, which always stay in their mind and play an important role in life. I also have some memories from my early life, which includes volunteering with a NGO called Konpal Child Abuse Prevention Society, an organization that deals working against all form of child abuse. While volunteering, I participated in activities such as visiting rural areas, attending medical camps, and did a walk against child abuse and neglect on “Universal Children Day.” This organization makes the youth club members learn real values of life. One such value of life is learned through social work. Social work is a professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and subjective well being of individuals, families, groups, and community. It is done through research, organization, and teaching for the benefiting those affected by social disadvantages such as poverty, mental, and physical illness. Children often suffer from various illnesses. Konpal Child Abuse Prevention Society (CAPS) is a non-profit voluntary welfare organization, conceived by a group of individuals belonging to various professions, concerned with raising awareness such illnesses as abuse, neglect, and the exploitation of children.

Konpal CAPS team comprises child rights activists, who share the common vision of society FREE of child abuse, with zero tolerance against child sexual abuse, child labor, and other forms of violence. Their mission is not just to help children that are being abused, but also teaching them important values of life, making them healthy citizens, and bringing smiles on their faces. This organization conducts seminars, workshops, relief camps for flood victims, and recreational events to engage children in healthy activities. To engage children in such activities, I started volunteering at the age of 15 with Konpal (NGO) in 2011 as a member of Konpal youth club. When I started working with this NGO, my goal was to help other children and make their lives better. I attended variety of activities like medical camps, walk on universal children day, capacity building workshops, and festival celebration activities. I often got some research projects to do, which included studies related to children being abused, forced to work, etc. Also we arranged visits to orphanages like children villages and the Remand Home.

We provided them healthy recreational opportunities. Those visits gave me great pleasure because I played with those children, spent time with them by talking about their lives, donated clothes, food, books for them to read, and tried to make their day full of joy. In June 2011, our organization conducted more visits at small villages and orphanages, providing free medical treatment to the children and their families. We gave them vaccinations, did whole body checkups, and gave them advice about how to live a better life, become a better person, and how to respect others. People like me in youth club often give these forms of advice, because being a kid and sharing your thoughts to other children motivates them. To create further motivation, other activities that I performed by being a part of this NGO was taking part every year on Universal Children Day, which is on 20th November. Konpal organizes a walk, which basically raise awareness among the people about child abuse and neglect. We, the volunteers, gather at a place called Mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam (founder of Pakistan) in the morning with signs, we walk for about 2 miles, and our motto is, “Stop child abuse.”

Volunteers include doctors, nurses, lawyers, group of children from rural areas, and scouts. We all raise our voice and protest in a calm manner. At the end of the day, we all go and pray for those children who are victims of this cause. Since child victimization can be prevented, working with an organization and helping others out is itself a great satisfaction. My experience, working for 2 years with Konpal (NGO) dealing with child rights, gave me a better perspective about life and made it memorable for me. Life does not just deal with working for just one person. Life gets value when it functions to benefit others. By volunteering there, it made me a better person and taught me how to live for others. NGOs like these, that want to makes a difference, attain a value in society and in other people’s hearts. Since I have been able to make a difference, working with the NGO and helping other children in my early life became a memorable experience for me. Through all these different events, I learned how to make a difference in someone’s life.