In my eyes, Gecko Gear is the gift that keeps on giving.
As seniors of Gecko Gear, there are major goals we, as a service, are working towards. In late October, SAISA Girls Volleyball will be held at OSC. With this heavy task on the horizon, there are a multitude of tasks that must be done as an individual and as a service. For instance, because I am traveling to Amman, Jordan for Boys Varsity Volleyball the sales are all up to the other members of Gecko Gear. This year, Gecko Gear made large steps in the ideal direction for all services. In early August, the team took the initiative to sell our merchandise to the OSC community on our school’s Open Day. Here, we amounted to around 100 USD in sales. Then, on September 28th, I ran the merchandise stall at the Welcome Back picnic from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM with a rotation of other peers.
Gecko Gear Stall Design (Photo: OSC Photographer)
In total, this amounted to over 70000 LKR in profits (around $240) that we were able to donate to the service budget. This amount was such a help that the OSC service coordinate personally emailed us thanking us for the financial support and community building we are doing to welcome the Kids on Campus into our school. The Kids on Campus is the pride of OSC’s service, it consists of a variety of underpriveleged children such as orphans, domestic abuse victims, etc. that are brought onto campus every week to not only work on their english proficiency skills but also to learn valuable life skills like swimming and character building. Gecko Gear not only pays for the transport of these kids to school and back, the googles, towels, and bags for SOS Village, but our financial support to the school as a whole has now allowed for the expansion of the OSC Kids on Campus intitative to allow an additional 20 students onto campus.
In terms of designing, this year I have been in charge of designing the tournament logo and order form for SAISA Girls Volleyball. With our service members having to attend classes, time to sell merchandise is limited. However, to combat this I developed an order form so we are able to collect orders and deliver them when free.
Along with the Logo, I also designed the tournament shirt with the logo on the front and the schools on the back:
However, not everything was smooth sailing. At the beginning of the year we thankfully were able to expand our service to 15 members. Despite this, they are all inexperienced and in grades 6-8. Unfortunately this raises problems for the future of Gecko Gear as both co-founders and leaders are graduating so we need someone to pass the torch to. Thankfully, the OSC community is happy for all the work Gecko Gear has done and we were even invited to talk at OSC’s “books and cookies” which is the informal news center for what is going on in the OSC community. Hopefully here we are able to recruit a couple senior members to the service group in time to train them for the future of the OSC community.