Once a lifetime experience... YOG

The Youth Olympic Games - YOG is organised once every 4 years, and there are 5 continents, so after rotation, the next time YOG is going to be held in Asia, it will be 20 years later.

And there are 43 countries in Asia, let's just assume only 20 countries bid for the games, and by rotation again, the next time it will be Singapore may be 100 years later?!

So unless, we can live till 200 years old, we probably will not be able to participate in another YOG in Singapore again. And of course, I doubt the Organising Committee will want a 200-year-old volunteer, too even if we can live to 200-year-old.

That quote by the SYOGOC totally etched in my mind.
Yup, it is an once-in-lifetime opportunity.

And thus, here I am.
I am at the briefing for the recruitment of volunteers for Language Services. :)





There are about 150-160 of us, eagerly to find out the opportunities for us at YOG.

For those who have studied a third or fourth language (out of interest, of course) will understand this burning desire to put what we have learnt into use. And that's probably what is driving most of us in this lecture theatre.

The SYOGOC (they call themselves "Shiok" btw, instead of "SYO-GOC" :P) shared with us the various opportunities to volunteer as translators at media centre, Youth Olympic Village, Cultural Education Programme, behind the scenes as the Multi-Language Switch Board (where you can dial a number and ask for instant translation), or at information counters, or as NOC assistants, Protocol assistants, etc.

There are 34 areas we can volunteer in, Language Services is just one. And there are many many roles we can try out as well. Some would require additional interviews (for instance, the translators, the NOC assistants, Protocol assistants, etc).

Nevertheless, I am very eager to participate. Hope they call me up for an interview soon! :)

P.S: Wanna join me? Find out more!

I'm in... Are you?

Here's a photoblog experience of the YOG 2010 Volunteers Open House, which I went yesterday:

Held at Singapore Expo Hall 2 yesterday, the Open House was a carnival of activities- exhibition, games, stage performances, etc.
But first we had to collect our 'passport' at the registration booth:



and I received this... my name tag for the day:



And next we went through the exhibition, which shows volunteers-to-be the background of YOG, what we can expect from YOG, and most importantly, the requirements of volunteers (time commitment) and this... (one of the important reasons why I visited the Open House) - positions available:



There are a lot, a lot of posts, including Assistant Manager post for finance, IT Helpdesk, and of course, not forgetting posts which I'm interested in, such as translator, tour guides etc. But do note, they are all volunteer positions. No monetary payment. And if I'm not wrong, they require about 20,000 volunteers in all.

A volunteer-to-be needs to put aside time for training (likely a few days and the commitment level is dependent on the post you've volunteered for) to commerce in September 2009 all the way to August 2010, and at least 4 consecutive days during the 2-week YOG period.

Thinking that more information may be made available in the Resource Pack, we went to queue for the pack, and were very surprised to find an extremely long and winding queue. It's almost like reliving the day when I queued for bak-kwa during Chinese New Year years ago :P

A bit disappointing though, the pack did not have the details which we were looking for. Perhaps more details will be disseminated at a later stage, and we will have a clearer idea on which positions we can volunteer for.

And lastly, we ended the day with a photoshoot, and plastering our photos on the pledge wall. It is made of 3 pillars, showing the Olympic values, namely Friendship, Excellence and Respect.



Nice? The photographer has taken a really nice shot of my friend. :) If you're looking for me in the picture above, mmm.. sorry, I'm not there. :P

I'm looking forward to volunteering at YOG 2010 :)
Hope that my work commitments will allow me to participate in this possibly once-a-lifetime event. :)

P.S: Going through the event did bring back lots of memories when the team worked on the bid for YOG. Time really flies!