NOW this is a story all about how- my life got flipped, turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute, just to sit right here and tell you all about how I became one of the ‘Youths of the Year’.

Props to you if you got the Fresh Prince reference, but today we’re not talking about the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, we’re talking about volunteerism.

Personally, volunteerism has indeed turned my life upside down but in a good way. For the past few years, I’ve aligned myself with volunteering simply because it gave me something fulfilling to do. More recently though, volunteering has allowed me to view things around me through a very different set of lenses.

I can’t exactly explain what these lenses are, but I can tell you about some of my memorable experiences and hopefully, you’d see the merits of volunteering.

I visited Seattle recently, as part of a Cultural and Leadership Exchange Programme I was selected for. During my time here, I volunteered at two Not for Profits; the first was Redeeming Soles, an organisation that seeks to provide footwear for those in need and the other was the ACRS Food Bank, which distributes food to mainly Asian and Pacific islanders also in need.

From my time spent at Redeeming Soles (I hope you can appreciate how witty this name is) I garnered that volunteering isn’t just about providing a service to someone, it’s also about showing compassion and respect to them, regardless of their circumstances. I also learned also that human dignity is very delicate.

There were dozens upon dozens of pairs of shoes to fix up. Some muddy, some raggedy and some without soles (no pun intended).

Now, the act of giving someone a pair of shoes of itself would be enough count as a good act, right? Wrong.

Every single pair of shoes was sorted into usable and unusable piles. I don’t really know where the unusable pile ends up, but I do hope it finds some purpose. But if it was usable, it would be sent for cleaning. Again, just being usable is not enough.

Now when it’s time for cleaning, the idea is to make each shoe appear brand-new, fresh from the store (though, I must mention that some actually were). There were about five different shapes of brushes, tons of stripped t-shirts used as rags, and water. No detergent was used in the process, just “elbow-grease” because that makes the cleaning more meaningful (and it takes longer, but no complaints).

The thing is, whoever receives a pair of shoes would have some footwear to protect their feet regardless of whether it’s clean or not. The idea of doing all of this, however, is so that you maintain the sense of dignity of the person at the receiving end. You see, not because they need a pair of shoes means that they should be given knick-knacks.

From cleaning a few pairs of shoes that day I was able to understand an important concept of human behaviour (dignity) and learn how to show compassion in small ways. And for me, that’s a priceless lesson.

I’ll save my talk about ACRS for another day (maybe next week) because that’s a whole other overwhelming experience.

Oh, and I have left that ‘Youth of the Year’ statement unattended to thus far but I didn’t want this column to seem as though I was boasting about the title. I was just named one of the Youths of the Year because of my work in advocacy and volunteerism.

I can’t describe volunteering in any other way but fulfilling and all I can tell you (besides all that I already have) is that if you have the opportunity, you should try doing something for someone else.

Alkaline said it best: “Any time me get in me affi leff ah impact.”