TOK – Disabled Basketball Hands-on-Tokyo
Throughout the last few months, I have been involved in hands on Tokyo volunteering service to help disabled children learn to play and to learn the rules of basketball. For this, the volunteers are required to help, support and cheer for the children while they practice their skills for the games played. The children are all mentally but not physically disabled.
Whenever a volunteering activity takes place, there is always the argument about what could have taken place instead. In economic terms there is an opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost = The benefit that could have been gained from an alternative use of the same resources.
This got me thinking about all of the factors that led to the basketball activity taking place. The gymnasium is at least an hour away from my house, and most of the volunteers and the children commute to the gym. The money spent on commuting, basketball teachers, and for the gymnasium could instead have been used to pay for their hospital fees, assisting fees, or used to find the older children work. Seeing that it is harder for them to find work among society. All of the children are mentally disabled to different degrees. Some of them are not even able to carry out certain exercises let along remember the experiences of playing basketball. We could also use the money to help the children to become more independent alone, after their parents and their teachers are no longer there to help.
I also realised that the time I spent commuting to and from the gymnasium could instead have been used to spread awareness about disabled children in Japan. I could have made posters around my school, local stations and the streets to encourage people in my school to have active participation as well. Other ways to spread awareness could have also been to send emails around, and to the ward offices to send around free papers to the local community.
Through my experiences, I have begun to realise the ethical implications needed to become involved in this activity, and the global issues that it has touched upon. When thinking about the ethical implications involved in the basketball, I began to consider my priorities and what I could do to help the children in the best possible way that I could. I also began to realise that it is possible to extract ethical implications through everyday life, through the simple things that you wouldn’t usually consider. Ethical implicating occur in most CAS activities and seeing both sides of the story helps you to do what you can do to help the people involved in the best possible way. Also, you begin to realise the things that you can do to your best possible advantage to support the people who need your help.
In considering Global issues I realised the amount that one person can help, and what you can do to help your community in the best possible way. One of things that I have been most interested in is learning about each of the children and getting to know each of them better.
Source:
http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/14webbk/2013/03/17/tok-two-birds-one-stone-of-reason/
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