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.