Geez. I can barely keep track.

After successfully presenting at our school’s Books and Cookies’ a weekly presentation opportunity to present news and accomplishments of the school, the rest of the semester consisted of chaos. First on the agenda was the huge SAISA Girls Volleyball that was being hosted at OSC. While I helped design the logo and tournament shirts, and helped with other projects related to the tournament I was unable to sell and support Gecko Gear during it as I was in Amman, Jordan, competing in Boys Volleyball myself.

Nevertheless, Gecko Gear is building such a wonderful community that everyone in the service, and even some peers in different services, were dedicated to helping sell clothes and other merchandise. Overall, I am becoming more aware of what needs to improve as I hope to improve my Photoshop, canva, and designing skills in general. SAISA was very successful as we made over LKR 500,000 in profits during the tournament or over $1700.

Thanks to our great success at school, they were able to dedicate us a special room to use as a shop and storage room.

Following a very successful SAISA, our most successful yet, Zoe and I, the service leaders, presented at the aforementioned books and cookies.

What came next on the agenda was organizing a clothing drive as we had been collecting and kept collecting clothes that are not in use anymore from the OSC community. These clothes were then distributed to underprivileged communities of a nearby temple. On top of this, we worked in cooperation with a few other services. Firstly, we coordinated a tote bag design with ‘Hope for Kids’. Secondly, we organized a joint bake sale with ‘Justice and Equality’. Building relations with both service groups and achieving the sense of community and interdependence the OSC service program strives for.

After these collaborations, SAISA designs were on the horizon and my main contributions were to the basketball jerseys for the near year in which Adam and I worked on together.

And recently, after all the designs were done for SAISA, we went to distribute clothes for our clothing drive. A bunch of which were my clothes that were too small for me.

With a very successful semester 1, I feel so grateful for such an amazing opportunity to give back to surrounding communities while learning valuable design skills and marketing skills.