All it takes is two tennis balls, two strings, ribbons, and two napkin-sized pieces of cloth, colored pencils, and the unlimited artistic creativity of 40 kids to make the most interesting Pois.
Introducing a new and fun activity to the children of Barangay Tumana was the goal of Planet Zips’ first community outreach program. For four hours, Planet Zips instructors, students, and friends assisted an energetic group of 7 to 12 year old kids to make their own set of pois and, of course, showed them how to use them during a Poi tutorial.
Barangay Tumana in Marikina City, has been severely affected by Typhoon Ondoy in 2009. Joining the Red Cross Rizal Chapter, we helped distribute donated goods and teach sanitary practices such as hand washing along with our Poi workshop.
Although I work in what most people would call the ”help-others-industry”, it was my first time joining such an activity. I was impressed how well organized the program was. The materials were given out to each registered kid individually. The kids were very well-behaved! No fighting over pens but friendly sharing and helping each other out. Most of them were super focused on coloring their individual Poi cloth!
I got a bit concerned when the first kids had finished their Poi sets and started swinging their new toys uncoordinated. Having gone through the learning process of Poi dance myself, I know how painful a tennis ball in the wrong spot of your body can be! :-) Time to teach the kids some basic moves!
And that’s what we did! I was impressed by a handful of the kids who picked up the moves quickly. Some of the natural talents couldn’t be stopped to practice whereas the majority was too shy to get up! This is where I saw the parallels to my work: All we can do is provide people with the tools and motivate them to use them. We can’t force them to do anything. They have to pick up the new tools out of their own motivation.
I’m sure we motivated some of these kids that day and gave them a fun tool to use. Now it’s up to them to practice and to get better.
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