Use of English Question 2 2004   

Which group would you like to offer help, poor elderly or primary schoolchildren? Although I want to help both groups, I would like to choose helping elderly people in this voluntary work project. In this essay, I will state my reasons for helping the elderly.

  Primary schoolchildren immigrated from the mainland need help, because they have many problems in adapting to the living and study condition in Hong Kong. Especially for those students who have not learned English before, learning English in primary schools would be a great challenge, because many schools use English as the medium of instruction. On the other hand, there is social stigma on the immigrated from the mainland. Other schoolmates may make jokes and laugh at them. Under this atmosphere, the young children will have low self-esteem. It seems that we should put our focus on helping these children; however, we should reconsider the objective of the project. This project aims at telling those people neglected by the society that, Hong Kong students care about them. Nevertheless, primary students can get help from schools, social workers, parents etc. Compared with those elderly people, who are living alone and are worrying about their meals, which group need our help? Therefore, I suggest helping elderly in our project, as they need more immediate help.

  Frankly speaking, elderly people are very passive. Only a very small percentage of the elderly people will seek help when they encounter problems. I have joined a voluntary work in helping old people. The elderly are actually very lonely and boring. Many of them are very pessimistic. They live in a very congested apartment;   they have no hope in life. However, they would not seek help from neighbours, social workers or any one else and there are two reasons for this phenomenon. First, it is due to their conservative belief. They think that seeking help from others is troublesome, and it exposes their weaknesses. Second, many old people are suffering from illnesses, such as diabetes, eye diseases etc. It is inconvenient to take a long journey in consulting a  social worker provided by the government. In this case, we should take the lead to help them. , I am sure that they will be willing to share their feeling with us. Thus, offering help to elderly is more meaningful than offering help to the primary schoolchildren.

  One may think that, ‘the HKSAR government had already given the old people a various aspects of assistances, why do we still need to help them?’ In fact, the assistance offered to the elderly is very insufficient. With the deficit budget of the HKSAR government, the monetary assistance to the elderly people over 65 will be reduced. Furthermore, the hospitals will not offer medicine to the patients now; many old people have to buy medicines from pharmacy by themselves. From all these, we may understand the reasons for the elderly to lose hope about their future. Although we are helpless in giving them monetary assistance, we may give them hope in this activity. We can give them positive messages about life, telling them the story of Doctor Tse Yuen Man, who was scarified during SARS. I am confident that these can give them hope and add colour in life. From my experience, many old people who live in squatter area, like the Shek Kip Mei Estates, are extremely poor. When our voluntary work team bring some oranges and biscuits to them, the elderly simile sweetly. They are quite willing to share their experience with us; we also learnt to cherish our life from their stories. Therefore, in visiting and helping elderly, we can also learn a lesson from them.

  It is always blessed to give than to receive. Although we cannot help both group of newly immigrated primary schoolchildren and elderly people, it is still a good chance to offer help to those in need. I suggest that our school join this project again in the following academic year, and we can offer help to the primary schoolchildren next time.