End of Semester- Service Update

My last entry for service, we were trying to find ways to teach the SOS kids key words to help when we go swimming, such as; go to the wall, don’t jump, kick, stop, etc.. Since then We have done pretty okay with that but a major improvement we have done is running the swim sessions with them. Now we make sure to send three people down to the pool 10 minutes early to set up the pool noodles and float belts, then to be changed so as soon as the kids come downstairs we have people in the pool ready for them. Not only that, we started numbering off the kids to two groups on either side of the pool to split them up. Now we are able to keep track of them so they don’t jump in early, this helps because we can now do a little beginner swim session. We start with kicking while sitting on the wall, getting into the water and kicking, blowing bubbles underwater and then finally using a kickboard to kick to the other side of the pool. We have done this two times successfully and since they kids know the routine I’m sure we will be able to continue this on. After the short session we let them swim freely and play which always goes pretty well. 

 

This whole semester we have been collecting google donations but we don’t have enough to give back to SOS village. We’ve decided to bake with the SOS kids and then sell the cookies with hot chocolate at school to raise money to buy goggles for the SOS village kids. When Thursday rolled around we had everything set up to bake but the SOS village kids were unable to come to school that week. Though this wasn’t our plan it worked out for the better because it proved to be quite difficult just with the OSC students in our service baking. Everyone was everywhere and it was very messy since we got some calculations for the recipe mixed up. I would have loved to have done this project with the SOS kids but I’m glad that it was just our service group because I know for a fact it would have been mayhem (especially with the language barrier, baking is not the easiest). We ended up not estimating how fast cookies would take to bake so a few students took home batches of dough to bake at home and then brought the next day for the sale. 

 

Now we did the cookie and hot chocolate the following day to make sure the cookies were fresh. I had a free block before so I had planned to leave some time to prepare the sale although I underestimated how much time I would need since we had a few complications with the hot chocolate. After figuring it out, it went pretty smoothly and we sold all of our cookies and some of the hot chocolate. All the money we raised will be put towards buying goggles and a bag for each SOS village kid with some help from the gecko gear service group. One thing we could have done better is making an order for who would watch over the sale because a lot of the OSC students never came by to help out with the sale. Not only that, if we were going to do something like this again we would need to really nail down a plan before we go ahead with it, thankfully it all worked out in the end.