Saturday, November 14, 2009
I'm just back from a YOG volunteers briefing. Today's one pertains to 'Language Services Volunteers', which includes language-related roles like interpreting and translating..
So language is a very important issue at the Games, since only 1/3 of the participants can understand English. And that really means that the language volunteers are expected to be highly-proficient in the languages. Which is why, among the 150-odd volunteers at today's briefing, some of them are native speakers residing in Singapore.
Being rather inconfident at my grasp of Japanese, I went on to express interest in other roles after the briefing, like NOC and protocol assistants, which need not require such a high-level of proficiency. They'll schedule me in for those briefings in future as well.
Personally I view YOG as an event not-to-be-missed, simply because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of the Olympics. Since it's coming to our shores, I cannot find any reason not to be a part. It will also be the biggest-ever event that the country will be hosting, in a much bigger scale than any IMF-World bank meetings/ IOC meetings/ APEC/ any high-level Summits/ F1 etc. The additional fact that this YOG is the Inaugural one, definitely adds up to the historical significance and meaning.
Join me! The registrations are still open until FEB 2010, because they are filling up 20,000 volunteer slots, in about 400 different roles. Be it at competition venues or Youth Olympics Village or even the International media centre, you name the role--and they'll have it, as long as you're aged 14 to 65, and are willing to volunteer. Today I saw many foreigners eager to be part of the event, so as Singaporeans, I guess we should be more proactive.
人生是黑白的.
1:37 PM <3
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