Project Revive 2011 – Beach cleaning event

Hey all,

It is the story sharing time again by our MIRACLE project interns. ^^v

On 18th and 19th March 2011, our interns had went to the Teluk Cempedak, Kuantan to become one of the volunteers of the Project REVIVE 2011 together with a few of our University Putra Malaysia AIESERers and also all of the volunteers that come from different part of the states in Malaysia.

During the event, as a volunteer, I had the chance to take on several different tasks. On the first night, right after dinner, there are total seven people including me were assigned to the reception for the day after. There was a person in charge of coordinating the reception that explained thoroughly what the job was about. After getting the counters prepared for registering the people in, I attended the general briefing in which the organizer was making sure every task was covered by a group. During this briefing we were also instructed about the event schedule, we had to wake up very early in the morning and the briefing itself started very late. I can hardly say this was bad because it gave me the opportunity of indulging in the amazing dawn on the beach, that’s something that kick-starts your day up!

We started the registrations at 8am and my task in particular was registering the press in. Also I was asked to promote the “Project Revive” on the social networks, task that I accomplished by inviting every journalist logging in on Facebook and liking the “Project Revive” page. Before opening the counters, the Facebook page had about 450 fans, raising up to more than 550 just at the end of the morning.

After the lunch break I was appointed to a different task, because the day before we planned to make shifts so that everybody could try out different tasks. During the afternoon I had to promote the event to the people on the beach. That was a good chance to improve my selling and promoting skills and, most of all, to learn more about Malaysian culture by talking to the locals. Once the event closed, we had a short brief about what we did, our strengths and weaknesses, so that we could know what to improve in the second day.

I decided to spend the whole second day on the beach, making reception in the morning and promotion during the afternoon. Also I was in charge of managing the sessions of one of the activities we came up with. The activity was about throwing anti-pollution water cleaning organic mud balls into the water. My task was about promoting this activity to the people, gathering them in the pitch on the shore at the right time, lining them up, delivering the mud balls and countdown for the launch.

I found it extremely amusing, even though sometimes it was pretty hard, especially when I had to deal with big groups such as the cyclists one, because I had to register them in, gather them up and explain them the purpose of the activity all at once and I had a short time for doing all of this, but eventually I made it!

When the time for activities was over I had my first English-speaking public speech, and the funny thing is that I had no time to practice because all in a while the organizer pop up asking me to jump on the stage and talk about AIESEC. At first, I said that maybe I’m not the most suitable one for doing this since I joined AIESEC only two months ago but, the organizer told me “I don’t care, I want YOU to do this!” I was very glad of his choice but still pretty anxious! In the end, as far as I remember, suddenly I came up saying: “ok, I think I can handle this” and one minute later I was giving my speech on the stage. It didn’t last long, I have still to improve my public speech skills, but it was a good start anyway.

In conclusion, I have to say that it was great joining the “Project Revive” as the first activity since I am here in Malaysia because it was a chance for me to improve my skills before having workshops and getting to know more about all the different cultures that this country hosts.