CDAC kidsREAD Volunteers Training

20-odd volunteers from CDAC's kidsREAD programme converged on the basement of the National Library on 3 December 2006 @ B1 Multi-Purpose Room along Victoria Street on an early Sunday morning to learn and share experiences about their kidsREAD volunteer journey.

It was a learning journey for myself too although I was also the trainer for this event! :-)

I learnt that within the CDAC family, we have kidsREAD programmes running at five locations spread out in the student service centres located at Jurong, Redhill, Tampines, Woodlands, Punggol.

Being the trainer, I was mortified when my alarm clock failed to buzz me at 7.00 a.m. and I ended up waking up at 8.33 a.m. and needing to be at Victoria Street by 9.00 a.m.! Fortunately, my national service experience helped me wash up, grab my gear and call the cab all the same time and the relatively clear roads allowed me to reach NLB at 9.10 a.m. - phew! - only ten minutes late. There were still some volunteers who had not arrived yet so my tardiness was not overly evident...Lesson learnt though.. always set 2 alarms for important events when one is the trainer or facilitator. It's not too bad to be late as a participant but a definite no-no for a trainer.

I covered the following areas in the training from around 9.20 am plus till 12 pm.

- Icebreakers
- KidsREAD Jurong SSC Experience Sharing
- KidsREAD fundamental skills
- Discussion and feedback from kidsREAD volunteers/HQ staff
- Ideas Generation – Going forward

We had a good mix of volunteers from the different centres and we got warmed up by introducing ourselves by writing our names / centres / 3 things about ourselves on post-it pads and then got to know three other persons and exchanged tags with them. I got the participants to then introduce the person whose last tag they had and I think it got the crowd going a bit.

The presentation proper was divided into 3 major segments. Firstly, I shared with the participants what I learnt from my Jurong SSC experiences. Secondly, after a break, I leveraged on my toastmasters experience to share about fundamental kidsREAD skills in story reading and story telling. :-) Yes, there is a difference between the two. We wrapped up the session by breaking into 4 groups and brainstormed about:

- Things you like about kidsREAD (Which we should reinforce)
- Things you think works for your centre/class (Which we should share with each other)
- Things that help you achieve objectives (Which we could share with each other)
- Things that hinder you (Which we would need to avoid / mitigate)
- Ideas / suggestions / complaints

Overall it was an interesting session as I learnt more about the other kidsREAD centres within CDAC and got to make contacts with like-minded volunteers.

I will be compiling and submitting the points raised by all the groups as well as sending a report on what is the action plan based on a SWOT analysis of the ideas and suggestions raised.

Onward to kidsREAD 2007!