Don't judge.

About a month ago I applied for the Youth Leadership Program (YLP), which sends 5 selected students to the States for a month. Fully paid. Now who wouldn't wanna apply? Who wouldn't wanna go? So I sent in my application and hoped for the best. In the end I didn't get in, but then I received a call that I was selected to attend a camp in Cherating. "Not many people get this opportunity to go," said the one who called me.

View from my hotel room. 

I had no idea what the camp was about and how many people were going to be there. I thought that this camp was for like... 50 of the top applicants who didn't make it for the YLP program to get a sort of 2nd chance. But since I had no idea the real purpose of the camp, I got really exited.

When my camp forms came in the mail I was really confused. The agenda didn't look like it was for YLP students. But all the same I wanted to go. The name of the camp was Click! camp.

How we were greeted.

Kendrick also applied for YLP, and he got selected for Click!. For me it was kinda nice knowing that I knew someone who was going, because at the end of the day there was someone I could relate to, and talk about camp, even after camp is over. There were only about 30 of us on the bus, and thats when I found out that there were only 13 YLP students, and the rest on the bus were ELS students in PJ. The rest of the campers would be from Kelantan, Terengganu and some Selangor schools. So there would be about 150 of us.  From that moment, I began having doubts about Click!. Now why on earth would they send 13 YLP students for an English camp?


                                    

The only thing we got done on the first day, our group flag.

To summarize the first day, us YLP's weren't having a great time. In fact, we were annoyed. Most of us were elected as group leaders, and since there were 10 groups, some groups only had one YLPer with 10 others they don't know. My group was named Untitled Mystery. You might think it a funny name, but I thought it was kinda cool. :D I was fortunate to have Kendrick in my group, so things were a little bit easier to handle. First glance at my group and you would think none of them even speak English. None of them were even open to giving suggestions for our cultural performance. It was like they were staring at me, and I was the great big book of answers. On top of that, we had to do the Hokey Pokey. When the facilitator asked "Who has done the Hokey Pokey before?" only what... 20 of us put up our hands out of 150? So at night all YLPs gathered for supper and complained about the day. We decided, that if tomorrow gets worse we would have to tell the facilitator and have something done.

Final result. We got 2nd place for this project.

On the second day things got better. During group activities, my group opened up more to suggestions and we were the fastest group to finish the activity. We got the theme "Patriotism" and we had to go on a scavenger hunt around the hotel. So some from my group went to get balloons, some got leaves, sticks, flowers... anything they thought would be necessary to stick onto a mounting board to create a Jalur Gemilang. One of the guys from my group, Zaim, is really creative. He designed our group flag, and he also did the layout of the Jalur Gemilang in pencil so we could stick things on the board more accurately.

Not the actual performance. This was the preliminary round.

Today we also had a group from Kelantan show up, which meant another 8 members or so for each group. With the help of the Kelantanese and my now loosened-up group, we successfully rehearsed our cultural performance. So what happens is we have 3 guys singing dikir barat, and a group sitting down dancing to the song, and on the other side we have 3 other members who would be singing Tik Tok by Ke$ha. And I must say, we were the best grou.p to perform. And fast forward to the 3rd day, my group and a choral speaking group were selected to perform in front of the US Ambassador for their     Alumni dinner that night.                                                                                  


On the last day, we had to do community service around Pahang. Every group was assigned a different place. There was the single mom centre, pre-schools, tele-centres... and my group got the turtle sanctuary. I will not go to far on the turtles. But I will say that we did a pretty good clean-up job while we were there. :) Some people even cried for our closing ceremony.  And I guess, thats the end of our camp.








So why is the title Don't Judge?
After our first day, the YLP's sat together again for breakfast. One of the head facilitators wasn't happy with our unsociable attitude so he had a talk with us, and we asked what was our purpose here at Click!.

Cultural night. 

So we were here to help the other participants, since us from YLP were more exposed and we spoke better English. If we were elected group leaders, we would have to encourage our members to give more suggestions to our activities and stuff like that. If we weren't elected leaders, still give suggestions and hopefully the other members will see that its alright to give suggestions.

I judged my group to quickly. My group members are really smart people. They even had better ideas than I did. When we ran out of blue stuff to stick to our Jalur Gemilang, the quietest boy in our group, Niral, calmly took tissue paper and coloured it blue with a blue marker, in the midst of the rest of the group panicking.

Beach :D

It was time to lower my ego. Being a group leader doesn't make you the best in your team, it just means your there to guide your group. And in my case, encourage them. After we finished any activity, I would tell my group, "Good job!", and not only did it make the group feel good to know we doing awesome, even if we weren't (but we were awesome anyway :D), it made me feel good too.
The people from Kelantan, Terengganu and the other Selangor schools and I were no different from each other. We listened to the same music, we were all from local secondary schools, and our goals for the end of camp were all the same. To be better leaders, or speak better English. I even learned a few Kelantan phrases from my Kelantanese group members, who are actually really funny people.

So Click! was really a learning experience for me. And surprisingly after many leadership camps that I have attended, Click! taught me the most about being a leader. And if I'm ever a group leader for something else again, or even societies in school, I know I can do better. :D

So, even though I had my doubts about Click! in the beginning, I first wanna thank the facilitators for telling me my purpose in camp, and my group facilitators for keeping an eye on me. If it wasn't for them, I probably would have complained the whole camp and not learn a thing.

So thank you Click!, for teaching me how to be a better leader.

*lights out*