Zeleen, our youngest volunteer

Let’s hear from Zeleen, our youngest volunteer on board.  In 2018, she has applied to join our team as a volunteer when she saw our advertisement as a 16-year-old.  Though she was underaged, PeopleStories decided to take her in as embracing ‘inclusiveness’ means we include people who are underaged but share the same belief.  Of course, Zeleen’s parents were involved in the initial journey. ​

Zeleen has always wanted to find some ways in which she could contribute to the world and help other people.  She said, “I have done quite a bit of volunteer work, including helping to distribute food to the needy in my community and making a prototype/product to enable the less-abled to work more efficiently as hawkers. I have also volunteered with Acres, a wild-life rescue centre! I helped to maintain the cleanliness of the enclosures and prepare food for wild animals. That was the most fun and exciting!  Who knew fat-tailed geckos are so soft and cute?!” 
 
In 2019, she took part in our charity annual dinner.  It was a totally new and out-of-comfort zone experience for her!  She remembered, “When I saw how so many people came together to support a meaningful cause, I was very touched. And that made me feel that we have the power as a collective to make the entire world change. More than just empowering children in Cambodia by providing them greater access to education, but the immense possibility and ability we have to solve every problem there is on our planet and to make the world so much more beautiful!” ​

Recently, PeopleStories has produced 2 scholars who passed the exam to attend a STEM school.  Zeleen is very proud of them. She gushed, “I think that they are awesome! Whether they know it or not, they have become possibility-models to other students who are dreaming of achieving the same for themselves.  I sincerely hope that they will be happy studying in their new schools, making close friends and special memories!” 
 
She believes that to have a meaningful learning experience, one should enjoy the process and not the destination. She revealed, “I have been single-mindedly pursuing as for most of my school years that I’ve let the other more meaningful things slip me by, such as spending more time cultivating close friendships, taking up leadership opportunities and having the courage to be myself.  Instead of  focusing on what I was doing in my school years, I wished I had focused more on who I am and who I can be in the future.”   

As a teenager, who has spent more than a decade in school, she believes that the most important aspect of learning would be the purpose of why we are learning what we are learning. As Friedrich Nietsche she has said, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”  
 
She reasoned, “I think it’s the same with education and everything that we do! If we have got a strong enough reason that we connect with emotionally to do something, nothing can stop us!” 
Zeleen is currently taking a gap year, during which she has been focusing on personal development and growth. She has recently completed a programme called Life Book by Jon and Missy Butcher. She explained, “The programme guides me in figuring out my visions and plans for the different parts of my life! Like my health and fitness, career and character!” ​

Other than that, she has also been listening to audiobooks as she knits.  These days she is listening to the Conversations with God series.  
 
Since this is the month of the International Women’s Day, who is the most inspiring woman for Zeleen?  She replied, “It has to be my mom!  She has gone through her own set of struggles bringing the three of us sisters up. Her family is all in China, so she had few people she could rely on when we were all so young and she had so much to do. Also, she gave me life, what could be more inspiring than that?”  
 
What is Zeleen’s vision of being ‘inclusive’ for the students in rural schools?  In her words, “I would like to work with them to dream up the type of education that they would like to receive, and make it happen. These include the subjects they would like to learn, the experiences that they would want to have in school, whether they want school uniforms and how they would want it to look like and also how they want their schools to look like, I want them to have a strong say in what they want their education to be like. I guess, in other words, I would like us to reform the entire education system together.” 

​We hope that we would soon get a chance to visit the schools in rural Cambodia to make these happen. In the meantime, here’s her message for them, “I want them to believe so strongly that they totally deserve to have quality education and the ability to achieve whatever dreams they may have. I would also like to wish them so much love and strength in their lives.” ​