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.