5 Things I Have Gained From Volunteering With YSS

Universities students who are actively involved in volunteering activities would usually know what YSS is. For those who did not know, this article aims to introduce what it is and why you should try out for it.

            YSS /Student Volunteers Foundation

Yayasan Sukarelawan Siswa ("YSS") or in English, Student Volunteers Foundation is wholly owned by the Malaysian Ministry of Education("MoE"). It was established in 2012, making producing global student volunteers icons as its main objective. Its tagline is exactly what it does, which is "Winning People's Hearts, Mind and Soul Beyond Borders". In September 2019, I had been lucky enough to participate in a 3-weeks YSS mission in Laos (YSS-MoES Lao PDR Joint Mission to Vientianne Province 2019). It was one of the best times of my life, leaving deep impacts to my life eversince.

Thus, based on my experiences from that mission, I would be sharing 5 things I have gained from being a YSS student volunteer. Hopefully, it will also become the 5 reasons for why you should totally become the next YSS student volunteer!

1. Voluntouring

YSS is well-known for sending its student volunteers to international mission. After all, it strives to produce global student volunteers icons. When missions are carried out within Malaysia, international students volunteers would be recruited to join such missions. There were 4 missions in 2019, 2 domestic missions in Sarawak and Sabah, while the others were international missions in Vietnam and Lao PDR.

Why voluntouring? Now, I would consider every mission as voluntouring, even if it is a local mission. So when it is an international mission, that is self-explanatory. For safety reasons, YSS would never send volunteers to a dangerous or risky place. In all its international missions, talks with the local governments had been carried out beforehand and there would always be cooperations between governments or with the local organizations there. What volunteers are required to do are just to contribute to the local community. 

Thus the word voluntouring. You get to go to a new foreign place and have fun while giving back to the local community. Like traveling, but  coupled with doing something you love, you would end up enjoying each moment during the mission.

Personally, it was really an amazing opportunity for me to go voluntouring without having to pay for anything. I was lucky because aside from the expenses covered by YSS throughout our mission, UM too, had sponsored its students in terms of providing free medical examination and other costs. In addition, YSS also provides food allowance to us and if we were in need of anything for our projects, such as paints for mural painting, we simply had to request them from the officer in charge.

2. New friends, local and international!

This is a common benefit no matter which new activity you are involved in. Meeting new friends through this volunteering platform however is more than that. You are not only getting to know or getting close with like-minded people who love the idea of giving back to the society as much as you do, you are also befriending current student leaders, influential youths and people who take charge in things that they do.

So aside from adding more people into your connection circle, you are being inspired by the new friends you have made who seems to achieve many things in their campus life.

For every mission, YSS would team up student volunteers and divide them to different locations or villages. As for my mission, there were 5 villages("Ban in Lao language") in total and each team consisted of about 13 student volunteers. The wonderful thing about each team is that they consisted of youths who came from different institutions and from each part of Malaysia. It is all about variety. I did not know anyone from my team at first, but we were all so inclusive of each other and throughout the 3 weeks times we spent together, we had grown to be close friends now. We learnt from each other, provided supports and inspired each other for a successful mission.

Moreover, you are not only getting new Malaysian friends, but also international friends. During our mission, there were about 10 Lao counterparts, who were students at Ban Keun Teachers' College for each team. We stayed, cooked, ate, executed every project and literally did everything together. Indeed, the bond of the people who worked closely together to achieve a goal meant to benefit other people is stronger and the sweet memories last forever.

            With fellow volunteers & counterparts

Till this day, long after we separated to continue with our own life, I still keep in touch with the new friends I have made. This way, we continue to learn new things from each other. 

                         With Ms. Phongphat

3. Promoting sustainability in each project

UN SDGs are ambitious visions trying to make the world an ideal place to live in. But it is impressive and plausible that YSS paid very much attention to them and integrated the SDGs into their missions. Sustainabilities are even used to determine whether a project is successful or not. Thus, YSS encourages volunteers to come out with projects which enhance these SDGs.

Before I joined YSS, I felt that many volunteering activities are more one-off in nature. Like the one soup kitchen volunteering program I joined while I was in the residential college where you went there one time to volunteer and that is it. Or maybe another volunteering program where we went to an Old Folks House to carry out activities and never went back there again. The point is, as an individual, I felt that these did not leave much impact to our life. Of course, it is another story if you constantly do these.

So, when I was in YSS and seeing how a project should be sustainable, I discovered a new sight to volunteering. When a project is sustainable, there is impact. It can continue to be impactful even after we are gone. For example, by simply painting a mural on a school wall about a proper way to wash ones' hands could be impactful too as it will stay there and whoever look at it would learn something new. Therefore, I was deeply moved to find out about this.

4. Live, eat and breath with the local community

This is one of the values YSS take pride of. To do this, the student volunteers were required to live with selected host families for the entire period of the mission. The term host is used instead of "Keluarga Angkat" or its literal English translation, adoptive family program because YSS wants to avoid emotional attachment between the volunteers and the families. It is said that they wanted to avoid situations where volunteers came back home crying having to part with the families. This is as such that the main reason we went there in the first place was to carry out volunteering missions and contribute to the local communities.

I think it's quite a successful concept. From my own mission, it was surprising to discover that when it was time for us all to leave, our counterparts were the ones crying so hard. Of course, to say that there was no total emotional attachment with our host families is not entirely correct. After all, they tried their best to provide good sleeping and resting spaces for us, some even prepared food for us. At night when we called it a day and went home to rest, we would spend some times interacting with the host families as well.

                     With the host family

                  The view from the house

So, there were those feelings of gratefulness and missing the kindness that they showered us throughout our times there. But, as we spent more times with our counterparts, naturally, we were more attached to each other.

We were paired with Lao counterpart for each house. I find this to be really practical. First of all, the host families were local communities who did not speak English at all. Language was a barrier between us. By having a counterpart staying together with us, we could learn Lao language from him or her and reduce the difficulty in communicating with the host families. This encourages exchange of language and cultures between both parties. We could share about ourselves to the host families and with the help of our counterparts, they would also tell us about themselves.

Furthermore, you would be interacting with the local communities such as the villagers in the course of executing each project. As it is important to find out what project could contribute to the needs of the local communities, you would also need to communicate with them. These communicating process essentially allows you to understand the local communities more and therefore, you eat, live and breath with them.

5. Alumni YSS

There is this prestige or the aura of exclusiveness by being a YSS student volunteer as the places are quite limited. I consider myself to be extremely lucky to be able to join in the crowds of amazing youths. So I think being its alumni is an achievement worthy to be proud of. Upon successfully finishing a mission, YSS student volunteers would receive special numbers indicating their alumni identification.

A YSS alumni will be accorded with various opportunities and benefits to continue being polished as global volunteers icon. For example, you are able to participate in another mission of your choice (depending on whether there are enough spots) and guide the new volunteers to execute successful projects. There are weekly volunteering initatives which you could take part in and also the famous annual Volunteers Leadership Development Programme ("VLDP") where past YSS student volunteers inside and out of the country are gathered together for a few days.

After the mission ended, you would always be updated of these opportunities. Therefore, you would still feel very inclusive in the circle of YSS alumnus even long after your mission is over. In fact, you may even find your future career opportunity here.

With all that being said, being a YSS student volunteer was definitely one of the greatest moments in my life. The biggest takeaway is in how I learned to view volunteering in a different way. Instead of making volunteering a one-off thing, we strived to make every project impactful and sustainable, even after we left. I am thankful for the rare opportunity blessed upon me and I hope YSS would continue to attract many new talents and passionate student volunteers.