Wrapping up CAS - Final reflection

Creativity

I decided to undertake a new challenge this year by starting a completely different activity: nail art. It has certainly helped me to develop new skills in terms of mastering paintbrush strokes on small areas and perfecting nail polish application techniques. It also gave me the opportunity to develop new skillswhen I designed my own spa in terms of drawing and editing my own logo and coming up with a structureof the building that would be most attractive to clients. I was able to engage with issues of global importance in my debate (refer http://malindies.blogspot.com/2011/02/nail-art-course-i-think-im-being.html) when I addressed how the daily use of chemicals can seriously harm users if not handled responsibly.

Action

In the badminton after school activity, I was able to develop new skills with the aid of the coach, Mr. Nimal. I personally felt that I have gained a better understanding of how to move around court in the quickest way thanks to improved footwork. At the same time I was able to increase my awareness of areas of growth because I realized that I need to improve on my backhand because it does not seem to come naturally during matches.

Service (and creativity)

Since I was a leader in the ‘Hope for Kids’ Cancer Hospital service project that organized a major concert this year, I had plenty of opportunities to plan and initiate activities. These include the voice workshop, the tech run and the rehearsal. They also allowed me to work collaboratively with others who not only included the people in the project but the performers as well. At times in was simply too much work but I stayed committed and persevered with our plans until we got everything, from the sound to the posters to the program, sorted out. There were times when we had to consider the ethical implications of our actions because we could not visit the hospital at all during the period. I felt rather guilty for putting the kids second but we had to consider the long term benefits we can make possible with our funds. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay on to see this happen because I had to pass on leadership to the younger members.

New leaders

Chris and I have been leaders for a year now and it’s time to hand over responsibility to the younger members. We had a discussion with Ms. Tanuja, considering all the existing members. Some aspects we took into account were enthusiasm, commitment, leadership skills and age (they had to be in Grade 9 or older). We also had to make sure that the two leaders will be able to get along with each other to prevent problems when it comes to decision making. Finally, we decided on Upandha (Grade 9) and Sandushi (Grade 11) because we felt that they were the most suitable.

They were ecstatic when they found out! J

Versus Cancer Video

Showtime!

At first we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to sell our tickets. What we should have worried about was running out of tickets. This is exactly what happened! The turnout was so huge that all the vehicles created a block outside the auditorium: this news really didn’t make me feel any less nervous particularly since this was the first time I was a MC. The teachers had run out of tickets and had to write out chits instead to let everyone in! Thankfully, Mr. Rana had expanded the auditorium’s capacity by manipulating the seating arrangements so (almost) everyone got a seat.

One concern was that The Revelations choir did not find enough mics to perform as expected but they thankfully managed to make do with what we had. We also had to make some alterations to our initial program (The Revelations requested to go first and some dancers wanted to go on a bit earlier as well) but there were no significant deviations from the printed program. The transitions between one performance to another took some time, resulting in the concert going on for 3 hours, over the limit we had of 2 hours.

But we pulled it off! The audience responded very positively to the show as the performers were indeed very talented. The diversity of what we had to offer was said to be an unique feature of our concert that made it so enjoyable coupled with the knowledge that all funds go towards a good cause. Our t-shirts were extremely popular, Chris and I wore them while we were MC’ing as a form of subtle advertising, although the pledge forms were not.

Personally, I felt extremely proud when I was leaving that auditorium, knowing what I’d manage to accomplish with my team and being showered with positive feedback. Starting off as just us 5 girls, I think we managed to set a standard to our school, bring it out of its bubble and show everyone what we’re capable of.

And for the record,

We earned a grand total of Rs. 250,000 J

Rehearsal

Due to the lack of time, we wound up having to schedule our only rehearsal on the day of the concert itself! We all showed up bright and early but almost all the other performers failed to do so…resulting in unnecessary delays. Pri (backstage) had to continuously communicate with Saba and Mo (lights) to let them know when the performers are going onstage. In addition to this, the spotlight had to be focused on the MCs (me and Chris) every time we went on to introduce the next performance which took some adjustments. We had quite a fright because one of the two spotlights had blown but we managed with just one all the same. Problems concerning the sound arose as well especially when the drums were being played for the larger bands so that had to be attended to by Mr. Rana. Overall, the whole run through didn’t go as smoothly as I would’ve liked although we were glad to have had the opportunity to identify and attempt to fix the major faults.

Pre-concert pressure

To say that there were a lot of preparatory work that had to be done in the few days leading up to the concert would be a tremendous understatement. Here’s a concise list that summarizes the small tasks that gradually built up:

• · Making sure our sponsors’ posters got put up in the auditorium – this was mostly Mr. Rana’s job.
• · Collecting the printouts of Natalie’s photos and putting them on display for people to see as they enter.

• · Finalizing the lineup; this was a lot more difficult than anticipated because we had to make sure that the peaks and troughs of the concert came at precisely the right intervals, balancing the soft with loud, the songs with dances, the Western with Eastern performances.
• · Designing and printing out programs for the concert as well as the invitations for the invitees done by me and Dylan respectively.

• · Getting Pesta, our canteen, to donate snack parcels for the performers. They generously provided us with 50 packets comprising of short eats, cake and a drink in return for selling food during the break.
• · Assigning ticket sellers (teachers), t-shirt sellers (Upandha) and pledge form handlers (Emily and Ms. Shameela).
• · Putting aside reserved tickets, mostly for the performers’ friends and families, in clearly labeled envelopes.
• Editing Priyanka’s MC script (done by Ms. Fernando) and practicing it. Turns out it’s going to be me and Chris!

Lights? Check. Sound? Check. Performers? Performers?!?

Now comes all the technical details. A tech run was essential to ensure that all participants got precisely the right atmosphere for their performance. Saba and Mo agreed to control the lights with the help of Mr. Rana the auditorium manager so we called everyone over on Saturday to get everything sorted out. The majority of the performers were able to come but it was quite frustrating when you leave a task incomplete for the rest of them. Upandha came along armed with her laptop to show us the video she created which we planned to show the audience before the show. It served two roles: to spread awareness of cancer and to inform the viewers what exactly Hope for Kids is. She had done a wonderful job but we felt that it needed a few tweaks for it to be perfect and Tara helped her out with those adjustments.

Voice workshop

Ms. Grant, our drama teacher, who also has invaluable singing experience, agreed to give the singers some tips before the big day. Around 8 participants showed up and Christina and I stayed as well to make sure things ran smoothly. And we might have tried (and failed!) to join the vocalizing with the rest. There were also two 6^th grade girls who wanted to audition and sang ‘Girl put you records on’. They were adorable but they just weren’t loud enough to perform in an auditorium that can hold over 400 people! Overall, we felt that the workshop managed to help the singers gain confidence as well as creating a sense of unity among the them since we needed to promote the notion that all of us were acting together for this cause.

Musing over coffee

The time had come for us to have a proper meeting to put all our ideas together and add the final touches to the proceedings. The team met up at Coffee Bean, Colombo to talk things over. One of the major issues we had was deciding on the design for the Hope for Kids t-shirts that we were planning on selling at the concert. Suraaj, one of our friends who specializes in design, had come up with various designs and all we had to do was pick the one we liked. Sounds easy doesn’t it? We ended up having a lengthy argument on which design looked better depending on what we believed the majority of potential buyers would look for. Finally we had a vote to settle the dispute diplomatically, allowing Chris to hand over the final design to the t-shirt printers, a friend of her father’s. Pri and Thish teamed off to write the script for the MC’s while Chris, Tara and I jotted down a list of everyone that had to be thanked and invited to attend the concert. This included our principal, headmistress, sponsors, Suraaj and Natalie.

T-shirt designs

Front

Back

Capturing the moment

There’re always times when you realize the value of having contacts and this was one of them. Chris’ former classmate’s elder sister is a freelance photographer and she agreed to take some photographs of the children for our publicity! After some complicating arrangements, we took Natalie, the photographer, over to the hospital. To our dismay, the door to the playroom was locked and we had no idea who had the key! Not wanting to waste our or Natalie’s time, we asked some of the kids to come down anyway and she managed to take some beautiful shots at the swings just outside. We had to ask Mr. Mohan to print them out but we felt so guilty about exploiting his kindness that we insisted that we’ll pay for these.

Posters all over Colombo!

Ms. Tanuja gave us some brilliant news! One of her friends, Mr. Mohan, who owns a printing firm, has very generously agreed to print out all poster and tickets for us. It was an offer we couldn’t possibly afford to decline especially since sponsors weren’t confirmed at this point. Now all we had to do was design the ticket and poster and send it over to him to get printed. We asked for 500 tickets in books of 25 and 80 posters. Since we were running out of time, we used the poster Dylan initially designed for the auditions to give us a head start. By this time, Ms. Dihara from the administration has managed to finalize our sponsorships so we were able to put in their logos as well. We had Mobitel as our main sponsor, who managed to cover our sound cost completely, and Yes FM, a radio station, as our media sponsor.

The posters arrived the following Saturday so Ms. Tanuja, Christina, Priyanka, Tara and I, aided with four participants from outside OSC who volunteered to help, met us that morning to go stick them up. Ms. Shameela, who is in charge of service activities, got us a van to transport us around Colombo. We first went to a nearby Go Kart place, which only opened at 4 in the afternoon, so we Pri and Tara agreed to go to Jungle Juice nearby while we headed off to Waters Edge. Ms. Tanuja, Chritina and I spoke to the manager and convinced her to not only stick up posters but also sell some tickets. Pleased with our achievements, we went to Odel, a popular store in Colombo, where we all split up to cover more ground. I stayed at Odel, Christina went to Budz, a restaurant nearby, Pri headed off to CoCo Verandah and Ms. Tanuja took the van with Tara to go to CR&FC grounds. Odel refused to sell tickets unless we let them earn a 10% profit from what they sell so we had to back out because we didn’t want to give away what we earned. However, we did manage to stick some posters up and Ms. Tanuja came back saying that we could also sell tickets the next day at Jazz, which is a monthly social gathering at CR&FC grounds.

Next we went to Galleface where the best hotels were, dropping off Pri and Tara at Barefoot and Christina at McDonalds. Ms. Tanuja and I went to Cinnamon Grand to ask if we could put some posters there and they agreed to, taking some away..we never saw them put them up though! Crescat is a shopping centre right next to the hotel, so we spent some time asking some shops to put the posters up while we were waiting for the others.

Thinking we’d done enough for the day, we headed back to school, having stayed out at least 2 hours more than we expected. Since the next day was Jazz, Chris managed to go and publicize the event handing out photocopied brochures with the help of some friends. From a stroke of luck, she bumped into a lady who worked for Sunday Time, a newspaper, who said she’d gladly publish online an article on our concert! Now that was certainly worth her time.

The article can be viewed at:

http://www.dailymirror.lk/entertainment/music/6471-fighting-cancer-with-music.html

Auditions at school…

After school started, we could now focus on getting more performers from OSC so group emails were sent out to everyone encouraging them to participate, giving them the details of the Cancer Hospital and what exactly the cause is for. The auditions were arranged for the second Monday and Tuesday into school at the auditorium. We also welcomed any non-OSC participants, who missed out on the first two auditions, to come in during these times as well. Some of the people who turned up were Sadini, who came again to practice her dance onstage, Amit and his band from Gateway school and the OSC band comprising of Brice, James and Maisoon. We had a few requests from other performers who couldn’t come on these dates to have another time arranged so we spontaneously had some informal auditions to suit them. They included Camille singing with Mr. Smith accompanying her on the guitar and the three girls Emily, Anna and Daisy singing ‘Hey Soul Sister’ with Daisy on the piano.

Although the whole purpose of the auditions were to eliminate people, it was nearly impossible to do so because they were all so talented! Emily, Anna and Daisy often kept losing confidence in themselves whenever they made a slight mistake, making faces at each other and making it extremely obvious that they had gone off pitch or forgotten the words. Aside from this, there were no major faults we could detect but we had wisely asked our music teacher to come along as well to give them more professional advice.

The list of participants is growing longer but we still had to get the sponsors finalized because, to our horror, sound was going to cost Rs. 60,000! Add along the printing cost of Rs. 20,000 for acquiring all the posters and tickets and we got ourselves a grand total of Rs. 80,000 as costs! Will this really be as efficient as we want it to be..?

Goals for this year..!

Creativity

Nail art course: I thought it'd be really interesting to try something completely new so I spontaneously signed up for a course in nail art. Let's see how it goes!

Action

Badminton: I have played badminton for five years in my previous school but did not continue it here last year because I chose the Yearbook elective. Now I signed up for badminton every Monday after school and am looking forward to playing again :)

Service and Creativity

Leader of the 'Hope for Kids' Cancer Hospital service group: We have our concert coming up and a lot of organising to do. We have a lot more members this year so it'll be more challenging as a leader to ensure everyone does their fair part of the work. After the concert, we'll also need to confirm what we're going to use the money for. We're hoping to visit the playroom once every Thursday after school to meet the kids although I doubt we'll have the time until after the concert.. Fingers crossed!

Summing up Grade 11

Now that it's time to start a new year, here's how I think I managed to achieve the Critical Learning Outcomes in Grade 11:

Creativity

My perseverance and commitment to playing the piano has allowed me to reach my goal of passing Grade 6 with merit which was more than what I hoped for. I gained an increased awareness of my ability to play under pressure although I still need to work on my sight reading which is an area for growth.

Performing in the dance the Sri Lankans organized for UN day, has increased my awareness of my ability to dance and allowed me to work collaboratively with others to put it all together. Despite letdowns and flaws, our commitment and perseverance resulted in a very successful performance that the audience thoroughly enjoyed!

Joining the Yearbook elective this year was a new challenge which helped me develop my photoshop skills as I have never used them seriously before. I had to work collaboratively with others, listening to and supplying criticism and working on the same page together with another member.

Action

Climbing to the top of Sigiriya has increased my awareness of my level of stamina and was able to reach the top without feeling to queasy about the height, unlike most other climbers! It also developed my understanding of my country’s history which I did not know in great detail before.

Starting to swim again enabled me to work on my areas for growth which included corrective my freestyle and backstrokes and working on my butterfly stroke which was a new skill that I developed.

Service

Tutoring a younger students mathematics for the first semester has made me more aware of my ability to teach comprehensively even though it is something I do informally on almost a daily basis with my younger brother and fellow students.

Becoming a member of ‘Hope for Kids’ Cancer Service Group allowed me to get engaged with an issue of global importance which made me more aware of the suffering that goes on in the world. Often we had to consider the ethical implications of our actions when it came to fundraising. For example, our principal had to remind us that it is morally wrong to have a bake sale for raise funds when there are so many malnourished children elsewhere.

Creativity and Service

I received my first taste of leadership during out Week Without Walls trip to Hambantota when I was made a sub-leader to be in charge of games due to my ability to converse in Sinhalese with the school children. I had to plan and initiate games that the children would enjoy and understand, for they would not be familiar with what we are used to, which required a lot of collaborative work. A part of this involved narrating a mute play performed by the rest of the group in front of the children and their parents which was a new challenge for me as I was not completely confident in my fluency of Sinhalese nor was I comfortable speaking in front of an audience though the experience did allow me to develop these skills.

I was given the opportunity to become a leader of the ‘Hope for Kids’ Cancer Hospital Service group at school. Having never been a leader for an extended period of time before, this was a completely new challenge for me which allowed me to exercise my leadership and organizing capabilities to the fullest extent. A major project that ‘Hope for Kids’ worked on was the fundraising concert which we initiated as a group. It required an immense amount of planning and creative thinking to reach to where it stands now at the beginning of Grade 12. It gave me an increased awareness of my ability to work collaboratively with fellow group members and others who were also involved such as the auditorium manager, security guards, school secretaries, sponsors and of course the performers. This experience has undoubtedly aided me to develop my communication and interactive skills although they are still areas for growth that I hope to work on next year. This project also let me raise awareness of childhood cancer to the Colombo community which is definitely an issue of global importance.

Time for auditions…

We decided to hold the concert on the 4^th of September (Saturday) in our school auditorium. Once this was confirmed we got down to work: publicity, sponsors, sounds, printer, food stalls and lighting all had to be considered. In addition to all this, we had to audition everyone who was interested in participating since several schools had got back to us by then. We opted to have a separate one for OSC students once school starts next year as that was easier to organize. For everyone else, we got the auditorium booked for the 19^th of June (Saturday morning from 9-11) and informed the relevant schools about it. Dylan made us a fantastic poster to put up around all the schools as well so anyone who has not heard of it yet would be able to find out.

Christina, Thishakya and I arrived, eager to see the participants…However only one group turned up…but it had 30 people! The Royal College choir performed for us and they were instantly signed up. We then decided that we should have another audition on the 24^th of July so that the others can have another chance to show up.

And show up they did! The second time we had over 10 performances ranging from singing, by students from OSC, BSC and Gateway, to dancing (Sadini from OSC). I made a note of their names, schools and the approximate duration of their performance(s) to help us with future organizing. Plans were made to have another audition once school starts as well as a rehearsal. Our work’s far from over!

Investing funds in a larger scale project

We soon realized that all our awareness and fund raising have been restricted to the school’s community. We decided to target a wider range of people as we cannot expect the OSC students to make too much of a commitment to our service program when they have their own to take care of. Chris came up with a brilliant idea of having an open air concert, inviting local bands to play on our field, and immediately brought the idea up to Ms Chamila, the service coordinator. She was extremely enthusiastic but suggested chamber music concert instead and advised us against using the field since we would have to pay extra for sounds: we do have our own auditorium after all! After some discussions with Ms Williams, our Head of School, and Mr. Coles, our Principal, it was confirmed!

We opted to have a concert of various performances by schools around Colombo, as well as ours of course, such as choirs, musical performances, dances etc. This would be an affective way of spreading awareness over a lot more people while simultaneously encouraging OSC students to socialize with other schools’ students. School addresses were found; invitation letters were drafted, redrafted, printed on impressive paper (with the school’s letterhead!) and sent off to school all around Colombo. Then came the wait for replies…

Movies, popcorn and brownies

We finally decided on showing ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ to the Secondary students, as it was a perfect means of raising awareness since it’s a heart wrenching story of how a girl deals with leukemia, and ‘Up’ for the Primary students (an animation: we didn’t want to show them anything too sad!). We spoke to the respective heads of school to get permission and advice on when to show the films. Mr. Rana, the auditorium manager was consulted on when it would be free for the Secodary showing while the Multi-Purpose Room was sufficient for the Primary one.

http://www.movie-list.com/posters/big/zoom/mysisterskeeper.jpg

Permission letters had to be typed up for the Primary school students to stay after school; Ms Tanuja offered to give them out to each teacher as she teaches a Primary class. We decided to buy popcorn from the canteen and get some drinks to give them before the movie. Sabagenerously agreed to make her famous brownies for us to sell at the Secondary showing so all refreshments were sorted! We charged 300/= a ticket for the primary (inclusive of drink and popcorn), 250/= for the Secondary and 50/= for the brownies. Nyira and Harini were put in charge of making publicity posters and Tara edited them.

www.impawards.com/2009/up.html

The turnout for the Secondary movie was somewhat disappointing, probably because it had to be held on a Monday; the Primary one was a lot more successful. We were quite pleased with ourselves as we had not just raised funds (over Rs 15,000) but have also taught ourselves negotiating and organization abilities.

Leaders!

Soon afterwards, Sush and Renato, our leaders, announced that they will be ‘making way’ for new leaders from Grade 11 so that they can concentrate on their exams. Christina, Tara and I all volunteered immediately but there can only be two leaders… In the end, it was decided that the person that has the highest attendance record would be given this position and that went directly to me! Christina became my co-leader as she came in second and we both eagerly made plans for a productive second semester. Unfortunately, we were unable to visit the hospital as frequently as we would have liked since the hospital didn’t allow many visitors due to an outbreak of influenza in the children’s ward. The immediate plans we had to have a movie night (or in this case a ‘movie afternoon’) for both the Primary and Secondary school students.

Food and Fun Fair – Exercising creativity…and plaiting techniques :)

On the 13^th of March, our school held a fair and each service was given the opportunity to have their own stall to make funds.

A few ideas we came up with for ours were:

· Face painting

· Selling t-shirts specially designed for Hope for Kids

· Selling postcards with the children’s drawings on them

· Making ribbon bracelets/ hair bands

· Games with fun prizes

Finally we settled for buying yellow ribbons, the ‘official colour’ of Hope for Kids, and making bracelets to sell since it is a plan that can be easily implemented in the limited time we had. Face painting was also very tempting but that was already taken by another stall. Refusing to give up on the idea, we decided to draw the Hope for Kids logo (the yellow sun) on people’s cheeks as we thought this was a great way of raising awareness.

On the day of the fair, Priyanka and I got down to cutting up the ribbons Ms Tanuja (our supervisor) was able to get for us when I suddenly realized that simply handing out ribbons and expecting people to pay for them isn’t enough. We should make a bit more effort! I suggested tying three ribbons together and plaiting them which looked considerable better than just plain ribbon if I do say so myself. J Thishakya soon joined us and we were plaiting away until it was time for us to move into the field.

We hadn’t made enough plaited bracelets so I stayed at the Grade 11 stall making some more with help from Tara, Pri and Thish while Chris ran about selling them. Anishka helped us out with the face painting and both ideas were a huge success! We raised nearly Rs 6000! Ms Tanuja informed us that the Primary School ‘Spooky House’ has agreed to donate their earnings to our funds so we ended up with a lot more than expected.

http://christinacas.blogspot.com/2010/03/food-fun-fair-13th-march.html

Week Without Walls at Hambantota

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."
Every year, OSC gives its students the opportunity to ‘get down and dirty’ to help the community by organizing ‘a Week Without Walls’ where we are taken somewhere that needs help for five days. Hambantota is a town on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka that was devastated by the tsunami in 2004 and this is where the Grade 11 class was taken this year. Unexpectedly, our work started long before we got there because there was so much preparatory work to get sorted out beforehand. The grade was split into 2 groups (named ‘Shaaa’ and ‘Hunas’) and each one had their separate school to take care of. The main group leaders were elected within the groups; I was in the Shaaa group that had ThiSHAka and SaCHA as leadersJ. Our main objectives were to paint the school and playground equipment, give each schoolchild a gift parcel, paint a mural and to organize a concert for them. Each of these categories had their sub-leaders and I was put in charge of the concert as well as helping the games leader (who couldn’t speak Sinhala!) to communicate with the kids.
It was the gifts that required most work: each of us handed in Rs. 1000 and Christina (leader of the Hunas group) along with Anishka, Priyanka and Devnash combed Nugegoda’s pavements for suitable gifts. They managed to come across some unbelievable bargains which we quickly and efficiently sorted out into “boys’ gifts” parcels and “girls’ gifts” parcels. For the concert, we decided to sing “Surangani” (a popular Sinhala Baila song) and “Old MacDonald had a Farm”. After consulting my mum for more ideas, we thought of performing a small skit about a ‘Cottonwool baby’ who refused to eat her rice. J Thishakya, Prashant (games leader) and I got together and brainstormed some kids games we could play and on what days to play them: we settled with Duck Duck Goose, tag and a few other traditional Sri Lankan games. Aside from all this, we also had to be taught how to paint and mix the different paint types by the service staff who were all extremely helpful.
After putting everything we needed together in time, we all sat back in our bus seats for the 6 hour ride…

"I cried because I had no shoes…until I saw someone who had no feet."
Day 1: When we first arrived at the school we were greeted by all the kids with a small bouquet of flowers in their hands, lined up and eager to hand them over to each of us! We were touched by this simple, welcoming gesture. Not wanting to waste any time, we split the kids up into 2 groups for the games and I was in charge of one of them. The night before we decided that instead of Duck Duck Goose we should say Eluwa Eluwa Kotiya (Goat Goat Tiger) which the kids can relate to better. They loved the game although only a few understood what they had to do so we all had to join in to keep the game flowing! After a few minutes the kids got distracted and started playing on the equipment instead, allowing us to get down to business.

The rest of the day was spent removing the rust on the playground equipment and starting to paint some of them. Thishakya and I concentrated mostly on the swing while the others worked on the slide, see-saws and the mural.
Day 2: The second day was a lot more productive mostly because we knew what to expect this time. After the games, we immediately went back to our assigned jobs, determined to accomplish as much as possible. I finished painting the swing with Gurleen’s help and discovered firsthand how difficult it is to remove that kind of paint from skin (my hands didn’t look the same for at least a week)!! I then moved to the inside of the building to help Thishakya paint the pillars yellow: we finished this completely. Afterwards, Ms Fernando, Thishakya, Prashant and Sacha and I all started working on the green walls putting on 2/3 coats. The main problem we had was cleaning the brushes because there weren’t enough to go around but we managed to work around that without much difficulty. By the end of the day, the mural was completed as were most of the walls and equipment. We were absolutely exhausted but we had the next day’s goals set which we had every intention of reaching.

Day 3: Since we had to leave time for the concert, we opted to not have the games session but to complete our work as well as we could instead. The wooden furniture were taken outside to be painted while Yiseul, Thishakya and I worked on the doors. We also managed to finish the floor and get some balloons blown in time for the concert which we had to have outside because the floor was not dry. Despite its simplicity, the kids, parents and teacher loved our performances and were especially amused by the skit where we had to mime the ‘Cotton baby’ being blown above the clouds by a strong wind! Handing out the packages did not go as well as we had hoped because we only brought enough for the schoolchildren but there were other kids at the concert as well (siblings and older village children) who we accidentally gave some parcels to. Thankfully, not all the schoolchildren were able to make it that day so at least the kids who were present were able to walk away with something. Ms Malini, the school headmistress, without being satisfied by all the small treats she gave us consistently during our visits, organized a small feast for us at her home to reiterate her gratefulness for what we did. With great difficulty, we managed to convince them that it was late and we had to leave so we said our goodbyes.


"In the world there are givers and takers: the takers eat better but the givers sleep better."
Looking back at what we had achieved, I realized that adding so much colour into the learning environment of young children had effects on their minds that I’ve never considered before. As Ms Fernando explained, the first few years of a child’s life is when we form the person s/he is to become, the remainder of their schooling years are just fine-tuning what has already been formed. Both groups managed to achieve what we had planned before and we all agreed that it had been an enlightening and unforgettable experience. Special thanks to Mr De Silva (head organizer), Ms Craig, Ms Fernando and Mr Barla for being with us through every step of the way.

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