Metta School Alumni visit

In our inaugural charitable event, Liontrust participated in a ‘reverse volunteering’ event held by Metta School Alumni where the students taught us to do batik painting…

Metta School offers special education to children with Mild Intellectual Disability (MID) and to children who also have Autism (ASD), aged between 6 and 21 years.  It’s vision is for their students to lead an independent and meaningful life by empowering them reach their fullest potential by providing them with a quality and holistic education.  The alumni caters to those who have graduated from the school but have not gotten gainful employment or required further caretaking by the school.

On the day of event, we were greeted by a warmth alumni coordinator and were given a tour of the alumni and their workshop located in Simei.  Thereafter we were introduced to some of the senior alumni members who are also our mentor for the batik paintings and that’s where the real fun and learning began…

Reverse volunteering’ begin when the alumni members guided us on the techniques on how to create the framework for batik painting. The coordinator shared that reverse volunteering helps the alumni members to gain confidence and social skills by putting forth what they have learnt into teaching others.

It was a very interesting event as many of us felt that were back to school once again having art lessons. Some of us have not had any experience in batik painting and made a mess of everything. The friendship between the teachers and Liontrust develop quickly and many laughter and giggling could be heard. Each team of student and teacher try to outdo the other in good fun.

The session ended with each member of Liontrust showing off their “masterpieces”. We were very appreciative of the patience that the teachers have given us.

Laughter and smiles filled the air!

It was a joyful and fun experience for Liontrust and the alumni. One of the alumni said: ‘Today I am happy that all of you are here!’ When asked why that was so, he replied ‘that’s because I made new friends!’

Serving and making meaningful contributions to the community are values embraced by Liontrust. Through such community outreach activities, Liontrust hope to serve the needs of its community as well as engaging its employees with the right values.