Every year, Room to Read hosts a literary festival featuring prominent local authors to promote literary works in Sri Lanka and use the funds to help our partner school, Vidyaloka, with any of the development work in their school, like building their school library. This event serves as a large fundraiser for our service group but also engages the community as it uplifts local artists and their literary accomplishments. This was my second year helping run this event with Room to Read, making the process very familiar and less stressful, seeing as I was not flying blind. The planning and organisation for the event is relatively straightforward as it is held in our very own school library, making publicity and day-of planning our primary tasks. In addition to the authors engaging in conversation and Q&As, we had interactive creative writing workshops for younger students with a passion for writing. This just serves as one of the many examples of how we aim to make our fundraisers as beneficial to the community as possible while remaining fun and interesting.
This year, we publicised the festival for weeks prior and made some changes from last year in hopes of involving different areas of our own OSC community and our local community. We asked students from both OSC and Vidyaloka to perform in between authors’ sessions, with students choosing to do group dances or musical pieces. This was an amazing opportunity for everyone to witness the talent present in our community and give our author’s session moderators a break from all their talking! Moreover, including the Vidyaloka students or students from other schools who work with other OSC service groups in these events fosters a welcoming and uplifting environment in our school. The students always jump at the opportunity to exhibit their talents, and getting provided that forum for them to do so in front of a support audience is one of the highlights of my service experience.
Overall, the day ran smoothly, with successful sessions and no organisational mishaps. However, we did see a substantial decline in the number of attendees this year as compared to last year which has given us something to reflect on. Though our publicity within the school has remained persistent, after speaking with parents and those who do not spend time on our campus, I realised that it could be beneficial to gear our publicity towards parent groups. Literary festivals typically require a specific audience and that is not always children and teenagers but instead could be interested parents and guardians. My experiences with the festival this year have helped me understand the importance of details and considering the audience when planning an event. Ultimately, any feedback and lessons we learn this year we intend to implement next year and hopefully run yet another sophisticated, engaging, festival with something for everyone.
