Taylor’s University gave us a chance by carrying out a 20-30 hours community service by sponsoring an amount of monetary value. Little do i know, this volunteering process changed my perspective towards on the little things I looked in life and made me appreciate things with all my heart, and this is my personal journal of my volunteer service.
During the first week of planning ( 13 January 2020), we decided to gather up and had our first discussion together to decide on the volunteering jobs. During the discussions, we brained storm with a lot of creative and innovative ideas such as raising funds by doing car wash, visiting children in the pediatric section of the hospitals to spend time with them by bringing them some gifts and playing with them, volunteering at the soup kitchen or at the national zoo. During our second discussion ( 15 January 2020 ), a few arguments occur due to different thinking and mindset when some of the ideas were not too keen by a few of my group members because they were worried on health issues or some just wanted an easy way out of this volunteer work. When our group realized we were wasting time on choosing a spot and arguing where is the best place to do our volunteer work, we decided to come together on the 20th January to make a final decision based on democracy.
On the last discussion day, I volunteered to be the operator assistance of the team throughout the discussions by making phone calls to different operations, mainly asking questions whether volunteering was possible during such a short period of time given. It was really hard for us to settled on a date and location due to the Chinese New Year Festival approaching where most of us would be back in our hometown.
Unfortunately, While I was making these phone calls to organizations such as PAWS, SPCA and Shelter Home for kids, a lot of organizations were already fully booked till March, or some did not reach our circumstances (date that we wanted) and some of them did not reply to our emails nor phone calls. Thankfully after an hour of calling trying different organizations, we managed to reach out to an animal shelter and set a date to do our volunteer service on the first and second of February. The non-profit, independent animal shelter is called Seroja Inn Home Shelter (S.I Home Shelter) that is run by Muhammad Razeef at Shah Alam.
In the days of approaching February, a few issues rose up as Corona virus was spreading all across the world and Malaysia was one of them. My group mates were really worried about this issue and some were afraid to proceed with the original plan of our volunteering service at S.I home Shelter but in the end, we decided to go along with the plan and decided to just be extra cautious such as wearing masks, gloves, and apply hand sanitizer for hygiene purposes. On the first of February, we decided to go to IOI City Mall to get some donation supplies such as newspapers, mop, brooms, kibble food and can food as these are the items that we asked in advance if anything was needed for the home shelter because the shelter is mainly operating based on contributions from the public and hard work.
On the second day, Me and my group mates met up in Taylor’s University at 10 A.M in the morning and took a grab to S.I Home shelter right away. At first we were lost because there were no signage and we kept looking around the area looking for it and turns out it appeared to be upstairs of 99 Speed mart.
The second we arrived at the animal shelter, we were welcomed with an unpleasant smell, but that did not stopped us from continuing our volunteering service. After we settled down our things, the person in charge immediately segregated our task- Cleaning and sanitizing the cage, feeding cats, washing food bowls ; and I was in charged of setting up the cage (involved cleaning and sanitizing) and feeding the cats with Felita, my group mate.
FEEDING CAT
It was hard for us to do the set up because the cages we had to set up was locked up with infected cats with fungal disease or cats with special needs and care, therefore it was a challenge to handle the cats while setting up. In the end, It took us an hour or two to set finish the cages and after that, we had to vacuum and mop the entire floor which is our next challenge because, there were a lot of cats roaming around the area which resulted in endless fur falling to the ground, so it was hard to clean the floors, especially when there were droppings sticking to the floor.
one of the sick cats 😦 
CATS IN THE CAGES ARE UNDER SPECIAL CARE SUPERVISED
Lastly, our job was to clean and wipe all the cats facial with a baby wipe including ears, eyes and nose. Any sickness indication presence while wiping the cats was immediately notified to the person in charge, such as watery nose or high amount of discharge. We decided to end the day by spending some time with the cats because S.I Home shelter is mixed with normal stray cats but also currently specifically brought in more of special need cats such as blind cats or some cats hand were cut off due to accident incident.
This experience is my first ever time visiting an animal shelter that involves with a lot of special need cats which changed my whole thinking perspective on stray animals. In this community service, I was really impressed of the hard work coming from Muhammad Razeef (owner of S.I Home Shelter) and thankful for this volunteering process because his effort really paid off to contribute to this non-profit organization shelter by providing a home for this stray cats and especially those cats that are under special care. A lot of people when it comes to adopting cats, these special needs cats would usually not be in their consideration of adopting because they require more attention and they do not look normal to them. Through this experience, I learned how lonely could a cat be for being locked up in a cage 24 hours and not being let out was the saddest thing I have ever seen which made me really upset because I myself recently adopted two abandoned cats on the street without a mother, and hearing them crying for food and a place to stay is the saddest thing one could ever hear. Therefore through this experience, I learned that patience is one of they key to handle certain things that comes with difficulty and also being able to work with different partners made me enhance my communication skills and strengthen up our teamwork spirit through this volunteering by cleaning the cat eyes.
We ended the community service at 6p.m by communicating with the staffs and ask about their work experience in this animal shelter. On Week 6, we decided to gather up together and divided our task accordingly, by preparing on presentation, report and financial slips. It was really a memorable experience that I would never forget and would definitely volunteer again when I have the time.
Community Service Initiative 