The volunteer Queenie Zhou with school children
Queenie Zhou heeded the call to volunteer abroad and ended up having a memorable experience in Costa Rica, where she took care of children in a daycare center and befriended other volunteers. The entrepreneur and associate publisher at Brands Macau Magazine says that the idea of doing a special trip came to her when she was watching a video stream of Emma Thompson on David Letterman’s popular late night show.
“Letterman asked her about a trip she took with her daughter. She explained that she took a six month mother-daughter trip. They went to a lot of very exotic places and they really enjoyed themselves. She said: ‘My daughter left home at the age of twelve, when she returned she was 18,’” Ms Zhou recalls.
With the plan growing in her head, she found the “Cross-Cultural Solutions” website. With over 32,500 volunteers enrolled since 1995, “Cross-
Queenie Zhou accompanied by kids at the day care center
Cultural Solutions” is a company headquartered in New York that provides short-term international volunteering programs in 10 countries all over the world, including Asia. Queenie Zhou picked Costa Rica as her destination, and planned to do the volunteer program with her daughter. She ended up going by herself, becoming the first person from Macau to enroll in the Costa Rican program.
“I’ve never been to Central or South America, so I was very curious and I know Costa Rica is a ‘happy country.’ It kind of clicked. And then I thought that four weeks is a long time, because it’s a long trip and I didn’t want to go there and come back immediately after,” Queenie Zhou told the Times.
The U.S. company offers several types of volunteer programs, such as teaching children and caring for the elderly or sick. Queenie Zhou opted to work with children, although the decision is up to the organizers, who are responsible for placing volunteers. “[As] I don’t speak Spanish, It probably would be easier for me to communicate with kids, because body language [is a more important requirement].”
After a 29-hour trip, she arrived at San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica.
“For some reason I started to smile until the day I left. It seems there’s something in the air of that country that made me feel good. It’s a happy country, I cannot explain why,” she said. It was in San Jose that Ms Zhou met the rest of the group that would travel with her to the “home-
base” in Cartago, a city about 25 km east of the capital, at the base of the Irazú Volcano.
The volunteers pose for a picture
The group was comprised mainly of U.S. citizens of different ages and backgrounds. There were families, elders and also a 22 year-old girl who had just graduated from university and was taking a gap year.
As Ms Zhou puts it, “we were complete strangers, who – if not for [Cross Cultural Solutions] – would not be in the same place. But somehow as soon as we started talking we just clicked and we felt so connected to one another and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.”
In the “home-base,” where Queenie Zhou stayed for a month, she shared a room “with three lovely girls” and slept in a bunk bed. “Last time I did that was 30 years ago,” she says, amused. Assigned to work with children in a day care center, she noticed a completely different concept of child care. The day care center where she volunteered was the home of a woman who looked after neighborhood kids, receiving a small subsidy from the local authorities.
“They are children of poor families living nearby, some of them immigrants from Guatemala. They cannot afford better care, so they all bring the children to this so-called ‘tia’ [aunt in Spanish],” the volunteer describes.
For her first “assignment,” she took care of seven children, the youngest just six months old and the oldest with 6 years-old, which made it “complicated to organize games” due to the age difference. Every morning she and other volunteers would carry a big bag of toys to play with the kids and sometimes they would get “more ambitious and try to educate them,” albeit with no visible results, due to the children’s young age.
No money donations or even food offerings (only the ‘tia’ provides meals for the children) were allowed, in order to keep relations with the children as non-materialistic as possible.
“The families have little, but the kids are well taken care of, they are very clean, beautiful and lovely,” Queenie Zhou adds. “The main point is really to show your love. You go there, you spend time with them [the children]. The volunteers always change […] and, in a way, it’s good for the kids because they have exposure to different people, so they will not be shy when they see a strange face and they are more open.”
During the last part of the volunteering program, Ms Zhou went to another placement, a tiny school located in a farming area. There, she helped an English teacher that went around different schools and dropped by four times per week. “She teaches all levels, so she would come with a suitcase full of books for different levels. Whenever she was there, I would help her, and when she was not there I would help in the kindergarten and in the kitchen,” she explained.
Like in the day care center, the volunteer was amazed by the adorable kids that would hold her hand as soon as she entered the classroom. “The instant they saw you they would smile at you. Five minutes later I took them out during recess for a snack at the canteen, and everybody came and held my hand. And at the end of the day, they would all give me a hug,” she recalls.
Reflecting on the experience, Ms Zhou mentions two things that stood out: “Obviously the children and the people that I met. That’s one of the things that I take away. But the bigger thing is the friendship that I have built. We had wonderful connections with the people there and that is so rare. I’m still in almost daily contact with my two roommates,” she says.
“You are there to help others, but in fact you take away so much gratitude and appreciation for the small things, because living in the home-base we had to share the room with others, sleep in the bunk beds, share bathrooms. (…) It makes you appreciate things that you take for granted every day [back home]. Over there it becomes something you crave.”
Following the month in Costa Rica, Queenie Zhou says that creating a Macau-based organization similar to “Cross-
Cultural Solutions” is possible. She is determined to repeat the volunteering experience every year: “I want to do it in different countries, but I also want to do it in Costa Rica again.”
Average cost around USD4,600 per month
Besides the placements at the day care centers and schools, home-based staff prepared other activities for the volunteers. They held Spanish and dancing classes and had group tours twice every week to see Costa Rican tourist attractions. Queenie Zhou revealed that the trip was “not cheap” since “everything is very well organized and constantly being assessed.” The prices depend on the country where the program is held. For example, enrolling in most of the 2015 programs costs around USD4,600 for one month.
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