We went to a nursing home as our community service activity. I was little embarrassed because it was my first time to go to the nursing home in Yantai and to be honest, I don’t think I am good at singing. I didn’t have enough confidence to do the singing task in front of many Chinese elderly people when I was considering attending this activity. However, I thought that it would be a good opportunity to overcome my timidness, so my final decision was “Okay, let’s try it.”

Many people came for the activity. After greeting each other, we walked about three minutes to the nursing home. The place was relatively big, and it was very good for the elderly people to stay. Anyway, we started our performance to cheer the elderly audience. But it was quite embarrassing for everyone.

After one and a half hour, we finished the performance. Many members of the audience enjoyed our performance. Some of them were so excited that they even sang a song individually in front of us. I was very happy when the people seemed to be very happy as shown on their faces. And I thought, “This is what the community service means to be!” And the major reason of my happiness was that I felt even though what I did was little, I could help a whole community through this type of activities. The activity was so healing and if I have one more chance to go to the community service activities, I will definitely attend.

- James Choi, IGCSE 1A

As my community service activity, my friends and I went to sing songs for the senior citizens at a nursing home. Our main objective was to share joy and happiness with them by singing for them.

We started off by singing our prepared songs, and then some of the senior citizens volunteered to sing for us. We gave them a big hand.

I feel that our service has benefited the community by making the senior citizens feel happy and being cared for. It also made them feel like important members of the community because they were the main focus of our activity.

I think I performed well and I learnt how to involve senior citizens in activities.

- Ruhi, IGCSE 1A