And Thus It Ends...
The webinar we prepared for our partner community to help them set-up an online presence in Shopee happened on the last Saturday of January this year. Everything our group have been preparing for has finally reached its culminating point, and we were successful in pulling off a 2-hour seminar for LPPWDFI. Our audience consisted of 40 people from different barangays that were members of the federation, and from different range of ages. It was truly humbling to have them talk and engage with us, as we tried our best to present our webinar in hopes that it may help them adapt into the changing world of technology, and serve as a solid source of livelihood that will allow lesser difficulties, as they can do it in the comforts of their own homes.
The pandemic has really changed the way of life, and it’s only been a year since then. 11 months at the time of this writing if I wish to be exact. However, the normal before already feels so far away, and for awhile, there was hope that this would get back to normal, and that everything that’s been happening is just temporary. Sadly, the virus is only evolving as the times goes, and it might be 3-5 years before anything ever returned to what was truly normal – and there is even a chance of this being the new normal. I realized only recently that I should not put anything on hold just because of the pandemic, and that I should finally stop seeing it as a temporary situation. This realization has given me more appreciation to our efforts in helping our partner community, by setting them up in a platform that will be able to adapt to the current climate of the pandemic. I have high hopes for them, and even if our e-Service Learning activity has already concluded, they will continue to be in my thoughts.
All in all, I am thankful to my school for giving me this opportunity of to help, and learn while doing it. It has tempered my person and have given me new perspectives to consider, and a wealth of lessons to take from as I move forward to the next step of my journey. It has opened my eyes to the things I still need to learn, to the truth that every day is an opportunity to acquire wisdom, and has steeled my resolve to continue with my yearly New Year’s resolution: to be kind. To myself, to others, even to people who have hurt me, or people I do not see eye to eye with. With my heart so full of gratitude, it is very unfortunate that even through all the months that we have worked towards this, not once was I able to meet my groupmates, my instructor or our partner community in person. I can only hope that my gratitude is felt nonetheless, even if conveyed through the less intimate methods of written text.
And thus it ends, but it has also opened a lot of beginnings that I look forward to cultivate. Inspired, I hope to able to engage with many more communities, and extend my help to those in need. The class has impressed upon me the importance of volunteering, something I haven’t really explored yet. So I turn to the future, and equipped with the experience from my Ethics and CSR class, I can only hope I to make the difference I desperately want to achieve.
This is my last entry to this online journal, and I wish anyone who has stumbled upon my thoughts well.