Crossroads: The Path to Helping Others

On the 25th of October, Crossroads community service group traveled to the Hong Kong Crossroads headquarters for its annual Hong Kong trip. The Hong Kong Crossroads headquarters is a place where donations are packed and sent off to areas that need donations. Along with these, they also have a few buildings in charge of simulations to raise awareness for certain situations of the poor people around the world. The main purpose of this Crossroads Hong Kong trip is to provide help to the people in the headquarters in the process of shipping donations, and raise global awareness about the life of the poor. According to Ms. Ting, the supervisor of the Crossroads group, the purpose of this trip is to increase the members’ awareness of the social issues around the world and allow the packing of the objects to finish faster. I also took part in the Crossroads trip this year and personally, I had great fun.

After arriving in the Crossroads headquarters, we took part in the paper bag simulation right away. This simulation is based on the true story of an African village that had families making paper bags to support their family. From this activity, Crossroads wanted us to learn that each person is placed in a different economic situation, but everyone tries their best in any situation to live on. For the simulation, each family had to make paper bags in a certain amount of time periods and sell them to shop keepers, receiving money from them to use it to support the family. From this simulation, senior Mark Cheng stated that “I learned how unfortunate these poor families are to live in such a situation and that no matter what the situation, people try their hardest to survive and make the best out of any situation.”

On the second day we helped the Crossroads members in the headquarters finish packing the donations. We had a lot of heavy things to pack, so it required everyone to put in much effort. During the process of packing, I was shocked by how much things we had to pack on to the cargo and that there was no way we can finish packing this. However, as everyone contributed to the process, the packing felt much easier. The more and more boxes we packed, everyone seemed to have more fun and some people wanted to pack even more than we had to. After finishing packing, everyone felt good about the fact that they took a big part in helping people in need, and they felt proud for what they accomplished. The things we packed will be sent to Uganda, and I sincerely hope that the children will be able to make great use of the things we packed for them.

Looking back at the trip, Senior Paraash Manwani stated that “I had a lot of fun during the trip and that the paper bag simulation was the most memorable activity during the trip”. He encouraged that more people join the Crossroads trip next year and hopes that people joining the trip had the same fun he experienced.