As I advance through this year, I try to remind myself of the goals I set at the start of the year. Often, I forget about the goals I set at the beginning of the year, and by the end of the year, I realize that I haven’t made much progress. As a service leader, it is my job to make sure that our service is on track with our goals, and what we aim to do going forward. In past years, our service has been unsuccessful due to COVID-19 restrictions, however, this year Gecko Inc has made leaps toward being a more successful and efficient service. Recently, our service has been given access by our school to bring the children from Kottawa Vidyadana Mahavidyalaya back so we can continue to teach basic water safety and swimming skills.

This was a new experience even for me, as I became the leader of this service during the time of COVID. Since then we have only developed integrity and built a stronger foundation for the service. So meeting the kids for the first time was quite an eye-opening experience, which provided and helped me discover new self-awareness. The first session was greatly successful, and the majority of the kids were super involved and enjoyed their time. As the sessions went on, the kids become more and more comfortable in the water; they can now put their heads under the water, and kick proficiently and they are working on their different strokes, such as freestyle and breaststroke. The kids are also becoming more comfortable around us, just last session they were finally able to build to courage to ask my name and age. I am sure as these next years come along the kids in our service will go a long way with their comfort and ability in the water, and I am excited to see what next steps we can take to further develop those skills.

My consensus from these new experiences is that these kids really opened a new perspective for me, as I realized that as the sessions went on, most of these kids had never even encountered a pool before, let alone swim in one. Building their confidence around the pool was really important as this experience was so new for them.