Food and Fun Fair : Selling cards for Alzheimer's again.

On Saturday 12th of March was our school's Food and Fun Fair. This is an event where all students, teachers and parents gather for a Mela type experience. A variety of stalls and activities are put up and basically everyone has a lot of FUN. :)

Our Alzheimer's group thought that this would a good opportunity where we could raise some funds for our activity by selling some of the beautiful cards from before. We collaboratively planned and initiated a stall where we could sell them during the event. We saw them as a very promising sales item as we'd had such success when we sold them the first time.

I think our group was really great in working together, and a special well done should go out to Radhika and Alisha of Grade 10 who went around asking people all over the fair whether they'd like to buy our cards. Their enthusiasm was really motivating. :)

By the end of the day we had managed to raise around Rs 13,000. I feel that we really couldn't have done it without our teamwork!

First ever Key Club at OSC!

The Key Club is an international organization that supports students like us in leading and conducting community service based activities in order to promote character building and developing leadership. On the 24th of February, OSC appointed it's first ever Key Club board members.The Key Club in Sri Lanka is supported by an organization called Kiwanis, whose director and president graced this occasion in appointing the positions of the newly appointed leaders of Key Club in OSC, and Sri Lanka.

The previous day we had nominated and elected the board members and they were as follows:
President - Damien Martin
Vice President - Harini Liyanage (me!)
Secretary - Annie Gillstedt
Treasurer - Terunaga Tamura
Chief Editor - Heesoo Kim
Directors - Aparna Iyer, Maheshi Dharmasiri, Sandushi Pathirage, Keisha Gani, Avindhya Koralagamage.

I was extremely honored and proud to be elected this position and as the Vice President I know that I have many duties and responsibilities to fulfill. I plan to support and work collaboratively with the President and the other board members in further enhancing our Community Service programme in OSC. With the support of the other leaders of various Service activities who are all members of the Key Club, I think we can make a difference and strengthen our Service programs even more. It is really great that OSC has become a part of Key Club as we now have support of the wider international community in our various programs. We are really appreciative and grateful of our Service Supervisor Ms. Shameela Rajudin for introducing the Key Club to us.

My official duties were also introduced to me during the ceremony and I am willing and looking forward to completing them to the best of my abilities during my time in this club.


The newly appointed Key Club board members.

Update for Tennis

Last week's tennis lesson took place on a clay court instead of a concrete one, and in the sunny morning heat instead of the milder sun in the evening. This was the first time I'd played under such conditions so it was an interesting challenge having to adapt to it quickly. This is because the ball bounces less on the clay coat and of course the heat is stronger.
However, it seems that after that lesson I seem to play more efficiently on the concrete court as well. In fact, my coach called that lesson the "break through" and said that I am now able to return a larger number of balls successfully than before when rallying/playing. He said it was a marked sign of improvement and I was really happy about that. :)

Here are some pictures of me playing on the clay court:

Alzheimer's: first job as a new leader. :)

On monday last week, the leaders of the different CAS projects were in charge of putting up a presentation for the PTA of our school. This was the perfect opportunity to show our parents what we have been doing to help the community! :)
I was required to speak to people and tell them about our Service project, and this was also quite a challenge because we really had to know the information thoroughly! My co-leader Hee Soo and I, also made a Powerpoint presentation to go along with our display. We presented our overall display with the help of our last-years group leader Anishka. I think we worked really well and were very good in terms of getting things done and backing each other up while explaining, displaying great teamwork!

Week Without Walls 2011 - Hambantota.

Last week was our much awaited Week Without Walls! This year we went to Hambantota and Yala, which are in the south of Sri Lanka. The WWW comprised of 5 days, and this is how we spent each of them :)

Day 1: the trip to Hambantota. After arrival at the hotel, our grade got together to do the essential planning that was needed to make this trip a success. Each of us set up goals that we wanted to achieve on during our visit there, especially when working with the kids at the preschools. Mine were:
* to work with consideration towards everyone in the group.
* to be patient when working with the kids
* to be of actual use in what we were planning to do at the school (i.e. not waste time/ get the work done)
* to work efficiently while improving my time management skills.
* and last but not least,
to have FUN, of course :)
We also practiced songs for the concert that we were planning to put up for the kids at the schools, and the Sinhala speaking people in our class managed to teach everyone a Sinhala song that we could perform for the kids, as they will be able to understand and connect better with a song in their own language. It was a new experience to teach this, especially when I had to sing aloud to get the accents through. This was something I would never have normally done, as singing is not my greatest strength, and it was a way in which I was challenged to do something new. :P

Day 2: was our 1st working day at the schools. One of the great things that I found out on this day was that everyone in our group worked really well together and weren't hesitant to help out with anything that needed to be done. I too, managed to do several things; play with the kids, go shopping with Mr. Lockwood to buy more supplies (I was needed for Sinhala translation), work on a mural and also help with painting the inside walls. Everyone else also did many jobs that they hadn't necessarily elected to do from before. In that sense, the team work and collaboration factor of everyone in our group was great. :)

Painting the rail track/ Announcing in Sinhala/ Playing with the kids . :)

Aparna and I painting the mural. :)

Day 3: the 2nd working day at the schools also went very smoothly. I managed to finish the first mural and at last minute notice, our group decided that we should do another one as well (as there was one empty wall left), and amazingly we managed to finish that on time too! :)

My time management skills were really put to a test here and I'm really glad that I was able to stand up to the challenge. Moreover, my ability to speak in Sinhala came of more use again, as Uthpala and I were called by the teachers of the preschool to introduce the acts that the kids put up in the concert. This was again something of a challenge, because I normally do not enjoy speaking in front of an audience. By the end of this experience, I have pretty much gotten over that fear. :)

The finished products :)

Day 4: was our trip to the Yala national park. This really great and memorable experience, and by far better than last year's Safari, because this time we saw a lot more animals than birds! In fact, we managed to see a leopard, which you need to be really lucky to spot, and also herds of deer, buffalo, a wild boar, a jackal, an elephant and several crocodiles. We also saw a lot of birds but this time a peacock actually came on the road and danced right in front of our jeep! It was a very enjoyable day, and a great learning experience too, as I learned the names of many animals that I didn't know before.

Day 5: back home after an amazing trip! :)

Alzheimer's leaders for 2011.

Me and Hee Soo have been selected as the leaders for our Alzheimer's CAS for this year. We had the first meeting for leaders today and we have already been set a task.
We are to concentrate on organizing a presentation for the PTA, on what we have done in our Service so far, indicating donations made and money raised.
We have already started on our powerpoint, and when we next meet with our group we plan to talk about posters and brochures that can be made to indicate our progress during the last semester.
We hope to get started soon! (as soon as everyone comes back from WWW)

WWW planning!

WWW 2011 is nearly here... in fact, it's just next week!
Of course, before we actually set off, there has been a lot of planning and preparation being done during the past few weeks. This is because we're going to be taking part in a very important aspect of our Service there, wherein we help out with the maintenance of a couple of post-Tsunami pre-schools, and we interact with the children and give them a small gift. I, along with Kasturi and Chrisni, were made the leaders in charge of getting the gift packs for the kids, so last Friday Kasturi and I went to purchase what we decided we might include in them. These items consisted 50 each of pencils, erasers, sharpeners, rulers, pencil cases, water bottles, lunch boxes and school bags for the children, as well as a Saree each for the 4 teachers at the 2 schools we're visiting. Firstly we had to raise money in order to purchase these things, and each member of our Grade donated Rs. 1000/- for this cause. Although it took a whole day to find and buy all the needed items, both me and Kasturi felt really proud after we had successfully bought all these things for 50 small children, managing to keep within our budget with some on-the-spot, smart-shopping decisions!
Today we helped organize the things we'd bought in the bags for each child.
This experience demanded a lot of responsibility on our part, not only in handling the money properly and safely, but also in taking initiative to talk to various shop-keepers and organizing all the required gifts.

I'm really looking forward to next week, when we will actually be off to our Week Without Walls, where I will be in the group for playing with the kids and helping out with the mural that we are going to paint on the walls.