In just over a year, I’ve gone from being a new student who joined the service last year to becoming one of the service leaders this year. This year, our service team has seen an influx of younger members, including a significant group of 6th graders, making us one of the larger services.
So far, we’ve had two service sessions. During the first week, we kicked things off with a bunch of icebreakers to help everyone get to know each other better—especially the new 7th graders. Then we moved on to discussing our goals and planning our traditional events. We’ve already organized some exciting activities, like the literary festival where students can showcase their writing, and the concert that features performances from students at OSC and Vidyaloka. We also have our annual book drives to collect books for those in need. These books will be placed in the new library at Vidyaloka school. Plus, we’re planning our “Books and Cookies” event, where parents and students can join us for an afternoon of reading and snacks. These events don’t just bring our service group together—they also encourage participation from the wider community, helping to create a sense of unity and involvement.
We also spent some time brainstorming new and creative ways to raise money for the library. One of our ideas is to have our swimming coach run a marathon to raise funds for our service projects. We’ve been coming up with more fundraising ideas too, to make sure we can keep supporting the library and our service work. In the second week, we got back to our usual schedule with the Vidyaloka students. Our activities included reading, catching up on letters from their penpals (who had also made self-portraits), and spending some time at the playground, which the kids love.
More recently, we’ve been focused on another penpal activity. Last year, the Vidyaloka students wrote to kids in the USA, and this year, through Luka’s help (now in Slovenia), we’ve started a new penpal program through video messages. We use icebreakers and personal questions and then help the kids write scripts to talk about their lives in Sri Lanka. It’s been really cool to see how everything is coming together. Aside from that, we’ve been trying to make the new Vidyaloka students feel more comfortable by bringing them cookies and offering drinks. We always end the day with a fun game, like Charades or Simon says. We’ve also started planning this year’s concert, which was a big hit last time. Hopefully, we’ll come up with even better ideas this year!
Looking ahead, I’d love to check out the library’s building process and maybe get more involved with the students outside of the time we spend with them at OSC. I think it would be nice to visit their school and see how they’re doing.
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