Service: Cookies and Candy Canes on Sale for a Good Cause!

As a sort of part 2 to our successful collection of shoes and monetary contributions during the Primary Movie Event and then donation of them to students at Moratumulla Methodist High School and Moratuwa Kadalana R.C School, we decided to raise funds for a new good cause that came to our attention. Over the past couple of months our Habitat for Humanity team has helped build and complete a house for a blind family. We felt particularly attached to this family and thus chose to help some more by contributing to their home furnishings and appliances for which they were in desperate need. To do so, while keeping in mind the approaching christmas holidays, we decided to bake and sell cookies as well as candy canes to the students and teachers at OSC. We planned and initiated this activity during our habitat for humanity meetings and showed perseverance and commitment in this activity as the leaders met regularly to discuss our progress and I sent an email to the school and parents detailing what we wished to achieve with this fundraiser. We chose to sell our cookies and candy canes from the 12th to the 15th of december (right before winter break) during break time, lunch and after-school so as to raise maximum profits. Camille and I spoke during assembly the previous week as an additional effort and reminder for everyone to contribute to our cause. We all worked collaboratively with one another over the course of this process of collecting funds and in the end it really paid off, literally (we raised 74,000 rps. , 74o$)!

Service: Donation of shoes

On the 22nd of November, Camie, Damien, Ahmed, Mr. Riehm and I drove over to the Habitat for Humanity offices and officially turned over the shoes we had collected from the Primary Movie Event. By following through with our goal of organising a movie night in order to collect shoes and in the end donating these, we have shown perseverance and commitment in our activities, in addition to working collaboratively with others. They were very appreciative and although we were unable ourselves to pass on these shoes to the students at Moratumulla Methodist High School and Moratuwa Kadalana R.C School, because of school schedule restrictions, it was clear that this simple gesture of collecting shoes would make a big difference in the lives of these students. Thus, we left the offices content with our work and eager to continue our work towards improving the quality of life of those in need.

Action: Yoga

Twice a week on Monday and Thursday nights, I attend a yoga class with my mom. By doing yoga I am undertaking a new challenge as this type of exercise was previously unfamiliar to me. These yoga classes last one and a half hours and each class has a different goal. Often we focus on a single body part that needs stretching and relaxation, such as the back, the legs, the arms, etc... We also do rain and sun salutations which build strength and increase flexibility.

Creativity: UN Day Performance

On the 14th of October, OSC held its annual UN Day celebration, which underlines the importance of multi-culturalism, a prominent factor at OSC. At the end of the day we held an assembly and a few of us performed "We are the World". This song was chosen because as students and children, it was appropriate, in addition to being able to be sung in several different languages, a bonus as international students. We each sang a verse in a different language-Nadeera (Sinhala), Camie (Spanish), Chrisni (Mandarin), Mo (Thai) and I (French) and then sang the verse together in English with the help of the audience. As a group we met up several times for rehearsals and through this I worked collaboratively with others and showed perseverance and commitment in my activity.

Service: Primary Movie Event

On the 23rd of September, the OSC CAS group, Habitat for Humanity held a primary movie event. Camie, Damien and I, as leaders of this group, organised this for weeks before-hand. The idea for this event started when a Habitat for Humanity correspondent of ours emailed to notify us that it would be very much appreciated if we could find some way of donating shoes to the under-privileged children in the Moratuwa area of Sri Lanka. We thought about what a great cause this was and decided that the best way of collecting a large number of shoes would be a primary movie event. Part of our preparation for this event included: buying popcorn and juice to give out to the primary students, sending an email out to the primary parents and teachers giving them all the details of the event (i.e. if no shoes are donated than a ticket can be bought for 300rps.), giving an announcement during the primary assembly, setting up big mats on the floor of the auditorium and checking that the movie worked with the projector.

Although we found the start of the event quite chaotic since a lot more primary students attended our event than we had expected, we managed well with the help of a couple primary teachers. In the end the event was actually quite a success; we collected 55 pairs of shoes, raised 18500 rps.(185$) and were told that the primary students who had attended had really enjoyed themselves. By organising this event for a good cause, I have been engaged with issues of global importance.

Creativity: Singing at Assembly

On the 14th of September, Camie and I sang a cover of "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato in Assembly. I showed perseverance and commitment in this activity and worked collaboratively with others by meeting up several times over a two week period and practicing: doing harmony, changing up the song from the original and just generally creating a performance we hoped the school would enjoy. Although we don't have a video of the actual performance we recorded a video later that day with the piano at my house. I've included it below, enjoy. (:

More hands-on work for Habitat for Humanity!

This year instead of doing fundraisers, we are going on builds, which involve the hands-on physical work of those included in this CAS. This made me consider the ethical implications of our actions in that when we were doing fundraisers on a fairly regular basis, we would have to ask our OSC community for financial aid and donations. Although we were raising money for a good cause, we felt that we would feel better if we were doing more hands-on work and that is why we decided to try to go on more regular builds.

Goals for 12th grade year!

Summer has now come to a close and with that I must re-enter the CAS mindset and note down some goals I hope to achieve in the coming year. Last year I was quite successful in completing the goals I had set for myself and now, once more, I am excited to work on achieving these goals again.

Goals for 12th grade year:

• Creativity: My goal last year was to reach a basic level of competence in a musical intrument and I achieved that goal by practicing guitar regularly at home. This year, in addition to continuing with the guitar, I would like to take some piano lessons at the local Yamaha store. I will look into doing this but with the workload I have this year and school activities, this might prove difficult to find the time.
• Action: My goal last year was to go to the gym in order to stay healthy and fit but I found that the location and hours of the gym by my house was not convenient and now, this year with the added workload and responsibilities I need to find a different way of incorporating action into my life. Similarly to last year I am a leader for Habitat for Humanity and therefore will be participating in monthly builds. This is a great way for me to get exercise since it demands rigorous heavy lifting and such.
• Service: As mentioned before-hand, I am a leader of the Community Service group Habitat for Humanity and similarly to last year my goal are to focus on going on builds and trying to build as many houses for the less-priviledged as possible. Another goal that I hope to accomplish for Community Service is to create a blog for Habitat for Humanity so as to reflect on our builds and achievements. We hope to do this so that instead of having reflections of our builds on many individual blogs, it will all be on one.

End of the year reflection

This year has gone by remarquably quickly and with it many great C.A.S. opportunities.

For creativity, I have participated in a great number of activities including guitar lessons, performing at the OSCars, acting in plays and much more...

For action, Habitat For Humanity has given me lots of opportunities to be active and get a ton of hard work done. In addition, I helped out with an active after-school activity for young primary students for a couple weeks and helped out during the Food and Fun Fair with our grade's soccer booth. Week Without Walls was also a chance to do some active work.

For service, this year has been great since I have gone on many builds as one of the leaders of Habitat For Humanity. As mentioned above I also helped out Mrs. Shipley with active activies for primary students.

At the start of grade 11 I set some goals for myself that I hoped to achieve throughout the two years of IB. I am glad to say that they have mostly been reached.

My Creativity goal was to reach a basic level of competence in a musical instrument which I did with the guitar from regular practice at home.

My Action goal was to stay fit while having fun and I initially signed up with a trainer at a gym and did this for several months but found that it really wasn't a very practical location nor did the times available at the gym fit in with my busy school schedule and academic demands. I semi reached my goal since I tried to participate as regularly as possible in Habitat builds and enjoyed swimming and yoga on the weekends.

Finally, my Service goal was to take a break from the fundraisers often held by Habitat last year and really get my hands dirty. This we have done with almost monthly Habitat builds which I have considerably written about on my blog in the past year. Overall, I feel that I have made a very good attempt and completion of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of grade 11.

In terms of the 8 criteria outcomes I feel I have done a very good job of relating them to most of the activities I participate in. I have mentioned 6 of these outcomes in the past year and am sure I will have no difficulty integrating the last 2 into my blog during my 12th grade year.

Action/Service: Another build (:

On the 26th of March, Ms. Wolf, Esfar, James and I left on a Habitat For Humanity build. Esfar and I had gone on builds before but this was James' first time. The site we went to was a new one that none of us had ever been to before, it could be seen though that other people from Habitat For Humanity had already been to this site and had helped contruct houses. After a bit of delay getting to the site due to some confusion regarding the sites location and because of bad weather, we arrived and got straight to work.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that 4 girls from the Asian International School were already there helping out and that we would be working with them on constructing one of the houses faster and more efficiently. Similar to last time I went on a build, we put together the various components that make up cement and then formed chains of people to pass the containers filled with cement. At the end of the line was the mason who laid down the cement and smoothed it out to make the floor. We worked hard doing this over and over again until we were called for lunch (prepared by local women, we each gave 300rp for the lunch).

After lunch, we had a small ceremony of thanks with some of the locals and then left back to Colombo, happy with the work we had accomplished and eager to jump into the shower ASAP!

àIn addition, on the 30th of April we went on another build and essentially did the same work as the previous build I described above. The weather was nice so we were able to work for several hours straight completing an entire floor of a house.

Action: Food and Fun Fair

On the 12th of March we had our annual Food and Fun Fair at OSC and grade 11 chose to do a soccer shootout. Compared to last years coconut bowling, this was a simpler activity to pull off. Beforehand we planned and initiated this activity by having our grade take a vote as to what activity they wanted to do and then we made a schedule so people could sign up for a 20 minute period in the day and work at the 11th grade stand. When the day came though, we soon found out that no one was really following the schedule. This lead to Sascha, Camille, Mo and I and a few others spending most of the day at the stand. In the end though we raised lots of money and as a grade decided to send it to Japan flood relief.

Creativity: The Oscars

This year at the Oscars, an event at OSC designed to resemble the real Oscars but without the movie aspect, and with nominations consisting of things like ‘best dressed’ and ‘best laugh’, I performed a song, ‘Hey Soul Sister’, with Camille and Bharat. I increased my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth because even though I already knew I could sing and perform in front of an audience without getting extreme stage fright, it was an opportunity to remind myself of my strengths in this area and to showcase them. In terms of growth, I will continue to work at home on improving my guitar skills so that maybe one day I can both play the guitar and sing onstage.

I also worked collaboratively with others in that Camille, Bharat and I organised and scheduled rehearsals and then followed through with them and also did two sound checks before the night of the performance so that there would be no technical issues. In the end our collaboration was the main reason our performance went on without a hitch.

Creativity/Action/Service: Week Without Walls 2011

Class of 2012!

Day 1- Arrival Day

We left school the morning of January 24th for Week Without Walls, our destination Hambantota! We first stopped for snacks, then later on for lunch. After this we stopped at the Hambantota Harbor where we enjoyed a steady breeze and a view of the work that is being done collaboratively between the Chinese and the Sinhalese (85% Chinese to 15% Sinhalese). This harbor is projected to be complete by 2020. We then drove to where we would be staying for the next week, Hambantota Peacock Hotel. We were given some time to relax and settle in and then we all got together for a meeting to discuss what we hoped to get out of the following day and our plans for work at the kindergarten schools. After this we had dinner and then we got together once again to go over/rehearse the performances we would do for the concert at the kindergarten on Thursday.

Day 2- Kindergarten School

On Tuesday morning, 11.1 and 11.2 went to the two kindergarten schools to start the much-needed work. To start things off though, we introduced ourselves and then we played some games with the kids. Then we started really working, some of us on maintenance, some on murals and others playing with the children. By the end of the day we were quite happy with the results: freshly painted walls in bright colours for the inside of the school, a large nearly completed mural and a small mural at the front of the school, with much of the playground painted as well.

Day 3- Kindergarten School

On Wednesday morning we once again left for the schools. Once arrived we distributed colouring books and pencils to all the children and spent some time colouring with them. After this we got straight to work completing the finishing touches on the murals, the playground equipment and the various pillars that needed to be re-painted around the school. We even found time to paint another small mural with the help of Mr. Lockwood.

With our work done we got to enjoy a concert put on by children who had previously graduated from the kindergarten. They had obviously put quite a bit of effort into their performance with beautiful and imaginative costumes and well prepared dances. Then it was our turn to put on a little concert for them consisting of: a Sinhalese children’s song, a song by Camie and I with Skylar on guitar, a song sung by Camie (and the grade during the chorus) with Bharat on guitar, a song played together by Skylar and Bharat, and of course not to be forgotten ''Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes''. Overall a fun and productive two days where we worked collaboratively with others and got things done.

Day 4- Yala National Park

Today we woke up very very early and went to Yala National Park. We split up into groups of 6 per jeep and set out on our search for wildlife (hopefully leopards included). The following is a list of the wildlife we saw:

• Peacocks
• Elephants
• Monetor lizards
• A variety of birds
• A Jackal (eating a deer)
• Buffalos
• Crocodiles
• Deer
• Monkeys
• AND LEOPARDS! (:

Day 5- We Returned to OSC

Action: After-school activity with primary kids

Last semester, every Thursday afternoon Sascha and I helped out with an after-school activity led by Mrs. Shipley in which we organised and participated in active games for young elementary students (3rd-4th grade). We did several different types of games such as: capture the flag, freeze tag, dodgeball, etc…

Essentially, our job consisted of gathering all the kids together and quieting them down (no easy feat) and then asking them what games they would like to play. Most of the time a few different requests for games would come up and usually we would decide depending on the majority. Sometimes during one of the many games, one of the children would fall and have a minor injury, i.e. scraped knee, in this case we would have to calm him or her down and let them sit out for a little while till they felt better. We showed perseverance and commitment in this activity since we participated in it weekly and dealt with any of the problems that would arise.