By Aaliya Samuel
Aaliya is a high-school graduate, who was on a gap year and volunteered at Skillseed.
I originally had plans to volunteer overseas throughout my gap year. However, due to COVID-19, these plans, like many other people’s, were disrupted and so I wanted to find something to do in Singapore over the summer months. A family member shared with me about Skillseed, put me in touch with Huijia and after a few emails and video calls, I started a two-month volunteer experience with Skillseed!
Despite it being a short volunteering stint, I have learnt so much during this period. I have never had an internship or work experience prior to joining Skillseed, so everything was very new to me and I didn’t really know what to expect. Seeing the behind-the-scenes of a company’s operations as well as the team’s dynamics was fascinating. Through the work I did, the online discussions and the weekly team meetings, I learnt the importance of communication and collaboration with my fellow team mates. My time here has definitely helped me to improve on these skills.
Communication is not my strongest trait. As a relatively shy person, I sometimes find it challenging to ask questions and speak up, so I was nervous to dive into this new environment, which I foresaw would challenge me out of my comfort zone. Thankfully, the team at Skillseed showed me that there was nothing to be nervous about. Everyone has been so warm and friendly to me and never made me feel hesitant to approach them or ask about anything!
Aaliya Samuel, 3rd row, bottom left participating in our team’s ABCD Walkshop segment.
Before I started volunteering, I thought that I would mostly be doing more menial tasks, because I just completed high school and don’t really have any other qualifications or work experience. However, I was pleasantly surprised when my portfolio was shared with me and I realised that was not the case! A phrase I often heard before I started volunteering and throughout my time at Skillseed was, “we want this to be a meaningful experience for you”. The fact that the team went out of their way to plan tasks for me to do that would be interesting and purposeful as well as (hopefully) beneficial for them makes me so appreciative of their commitment to my growth as well.
I greatly enjoyed conducting research to help develop new content for Skillseed’s curriculum and also wrote a thought leadership article about Skillseed’s expertise in experiential learning. On top of that, I was also able to discover various interesting places and meet new people when I helped to recee for some of Skillseed’s local Learning Journeys. These tasks also allowed me to understand how Skillseed designs and develops their experiential learning content which was insightful to me.
As I reflect on my experience at Skillseed, I am filled with gratitude. Gratitude for the opportunity to volunteer here, and even more gratitude for all the time and effort that the team took out of their already busy schedules to engage with me, help me, and ensure that I had a meaningful volunteering experience.