A Selfless Day: Volunteer Day at St. Mary's Hospital organized by the Yeoksam Global Village

A Selfless Day
Volunteer Day at St. Mary's Hospital organized by the Yeoksam Global Village
Karina Marie Ang Chua, Philippines, http://karinachua.blogspot.com

Starting 2010, Yeoksam Global Village in cooperation with St. Mary’s Hospital in Gangnam-gu, Seoul has been organizing volunteer activities for foreigners in St. Mary’s Hospital. It aims to promote social responsibility as well as multiculturalism to foreigners as well as the local patients in the hospital.

 

The range of activities that the volunteers can do varies from preparing medical supplies up to giving entertainment and support to the young patients confined in the hospital.

 

“It has been always important for me why I am doing a certain task. With that, I see the importance of what I am assigned to”, Karina, one of the volunteers, said. Volunteers were assigned to clean and prepare gauzes which apparently are being used during the operations and/or emergency.  Other medical supplies being prepared are the aprons being used for operations as well as the visitors of the confined patients.

The volunteers are also being assigned to entertain the children in the regular children wards as well as the Children BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) ward, where most of the patients are undergoing their treatments for leukemia. Children’s age ranges from 0-18 years old. The volunteers sing, draw, play and learn together with the young patients. According to Karina, “Knowing how important the tasks are makes what we are doing more fruitful.  It has always struck me to see how young the patients can be yet suffering from the needles, medicines, treatments and operations they have to undergo. Sometimes, I cannot even identify whether the children are boy or girl with their bald head due to probably their treatments such as chemotherapy. I am happy to go back every month being able to see the smiles and giggles in the cute little faces of the children, yet I am hoping not to see the same faces again and hoping to see lesser patients every time I visit.”

These activities are not only to help the patients and the hospital but also giving an opportunity for both foreigners and Koreans to embrace globalization, multiculturalism and differences among people; as well as, appreciating one’s life and its beauty and consequence that comes with it.


This article can also be found in the MAY Newsletter of the Global Centers in Seoul: http://global.seoul.go.kr/webzine/2011_may/sub08.html