Country Cottage Arts

Wednesday,  20 October 2010

GOLD is the acronym for Generating Opportunities for Learning Disabilities. The centre, which is located at the 3 C Complex in Subang Jaya is a place where 'special ' school children and teenagers are taught practical skills like bottle painting, baking and cooking, ceramic and decal, handcrafts like beadings, papercraft, etc ,. By imparting such skills to them, these children who have varying degrees of learning disabilities, are encouraged to be independant and also become confident members  of our society, the secondary aim being they also get to earn a living  and  learn practical skills to occupy their time usefully and gainfully in future.   It is done purely on a volunteer basis and  parents and concerned individuals are part of the volunteers who conduct such classes.

As I am involved in 'you know what' , I volunteered to teach them painting .  My session with them has been fixed for Monday afternoons.

My first volunteer session was actually quite fun.  I handed them flat basecoat brushes and guided them in painting the basecoat for the various boards.  Some of the students were very very meticulous with the painting while others simply plonked their brushes in and out .  Some put in too much water and some didn't want to stop painting ! But the common thing among them was they were happy painting and had fun.  What I thought of as a monotonous and most bothersome part  of decorative painting ( the basecoating part !) was a happy accomplishment for these kids . It was a learning and humbling experience for me.

Puan Juairiah, under whose able hands the centre is managed , is a lovely lady with a big heart, for does it not take someone with a very big heart to run the center on a volunteer basis and not get paid for it? Ms Airene helps in the co-ordination  and managing of  the centre, volunteering, of course.













The GOLD centre will be having a bazaar sale at the Berjaya University at Times Square on Monday 25th October from 9 am to 3pm.  Members of the public are invited to visit and buy the handicrafts and cookies made by these enterprising students.  I will be there helping to showcase their painting  talents and will also offer some of my decorative art items for sale, a percentage of which sale will go to GOLD fund-raising. 


For those who would like to contribute acrylic paints, brushes  and such, please do email me at - luckylaksh11@gmail.com. ( As at of this moment, GOLD does not have funds for acrylic paints and brushes and I am using my own supplies to meet their needs.) 



Happy reading and painting


Lakshmi