Community Service

Bead-by-Bead
[Autism awareness raising non-profit organisation]

2018 - Present

What I did:

I am tasked to help facilitate quilling workshops for the public and the target audience of the workshops can vary from children as young as 2 years old to working adults.

Challenges I faced and how I overcame them:

During the most recent workshop, as we started to teach groups of young children ages ranging from 2 to 6 how to quill a flower, we realised that certain steps were too complicated for them to do. Not only that, but the crowd was also growing and the number of visitors trying out quilling at our booth grew larger. Thus, we decided to quickly do up the first few steps for the children before passing it to them to try. However, because of this new arrangement, I had to cope between explaining the next few steps to children while trying to quickly glue and put together the first few steps of the quilled flower for other children. Thus, to cope with the demand of the crowd, I quickly laid all the needed materials for children to use on the table in front of them. I then quickly explained to them step by step what was needed to be done. Realising that children took a more time to complete each step, I used that time to prepare my next set of materials while checking on them.

Result:

The whole workshop moved smoothly and children got to bring home beautifully quilled flowers. According to my own observations, none of the children had to wait or were unattended with nothing to do at any time. Thus, I would say that the workshop was a successful one.

What I learned:

Through this experience, I learned how important it is to have age-appropriate activities for children to take part in. I also learned that it is always good to be organised and prepared when teaching. Lastly, this experience taught me how to be adaptable and how to multitask well.