It was a perfect day to spend relaxing at the Bottle Tree Park in Yishun. Yet, 16 staff from Standard Chartered Bank's Group Technology team were not there for that. Instead, they used the beautiful Saturday morning journeying back to the days of old and learnt to make bricks from mud.
As they do in a village, the volunteers had to don their sunhats and use a "changkol" or hoe to dig a two-feet deep hole to find the clay to make bricks. It was back to basics at this Ground-Up Initiative activity aimed at creating environmental awareness in Singapore.
Apart from digging, the volunteers had to separate the soil from the clay with their bare hands. They then had to mix the clay with palm fibres and mush them up with their feet so that the material was bound to a level where the bricks would not break.
At the end of the day, the volunteers though exhausted, were extremely satisfied with their experience as they learnt to appreciate nature. Borrowing GUI's tagline, it was truly connecting people, connecting earth, to heal the land and the human spirit.
Contributed by Standard Chartered Bank
This story was first published on SG Cares (www.sgcares.org), a volunteering initiative by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre.
