In Primary 4, I was told to sing at an old folks’ home. Our teacher said it was “good to help others,” but no one explained what that meant or who we were really there for. We rehearsed, performed, smiled, then left as soon as the bus came. No one told us who we had met or what they might have felt. It was just another school task.

That is how many children in Singapore first experience volunteering. We clock Values in Action(VIA) hours to earn bonus points that count toward our school grades and national exams. Kindness becomes something to trade. Volunteering stops being about people. It becomes about points.

I remember searching for events that gave the most hours with the least effort. We were not unkind, just tired. Between school and CCAs, there was little space left to care. Reflection exercises felt empty. We filled out forms online and never spoke of them again. No one ever asked, “What did that mean to you?”

Eventually, I stopped asking myself too.

In 2019, something changed. I was tired of ticking boxes. So when I heard about a service trip to an orphanage in Batam, my entire class immediately signed up. We applied, went for interviews, and planned for months. I signed up because I wanted to know what it felt like to give without being told to.

And it did feel different.

I was the only volunteer who spoke Bahasa Indonesia, so I was put in charge of teaching the children English. But our lessons quickly became something else. We kicked soccer balls across uneven patches of grass until our shirts were soaked through. We built clumsy cardboard robots with glue-covered hands and cheered when their arms moved an inch. Between lessons, they pulled me aside in the hallway to share stories about their siblings, their favourite foods, their dreams for the future. One boy said he wanted to be a doctor so he could help the poor. A girl told me she wanted to be a teacher, so no child would ever feel alone like she once had. They were barefoot, often hungry, and slept on thin mats yet they gave more joy, more trust, more warmth than I had seen in any classroom back home.

On the last day, the youngest boy, just five years old, was asked to speak. Everyone expected a thank you. Instead, he said softly, “I want to apologise to the seniors for not having good facilities. The toilets were not clean enough. Maybe you are not used to this kind of place.”

He did not see himself as someone receiving help. He saw himself as a host who had failed to make his guests feel comfortable. I felt my throat tightened and the weight of it all settled in.I only then realise how transactional my idea of service had been — how much of it was built on the belief that I had something to offer and others were there to receive. But he reminded me that real generosity is not about having more. It is about the instinct to care, even when you have little. 

When I boarded the ferry back to Singapore, I carried more than lesson plans and photos. I carried a different heart. Even now I still think of those children. I remember their faces, some of their names, and the quiet pride with which they gave everything they had.

Since then, I have stopped asking which activity gives the most hours. I ask instead who I want to stand beside. What cause deserves not just my time but my full attention. Because real service is not about showing up once. It is about choosing to care and staying with it.

Can schools teach compassion? I think they can, but not through short-term exposure. Children already know how to feel. The real work is helping them stay with those feelings. When we see someone begging on the street, we feel something. But no one teaches us how to sit with it. We are taught to move on, not to ask what it means.

Perhaps it’s time we taught young people not just to show up, but to stay. To stop measuring compassion by time spent or points earned, and start treating it as a commitment to understand another human being. Not just for an hour. But long after we leave.