Last year, I found service to be one of the hardest aspects to work on appropriately and consistently however, I feel that my service group, Room to Read (RTR) has adapted themselves well to the change creating for a decently productive year.

Literary Afternoon: We didn’t host as many events as we would have if service learning was physical, we managed to hold one event for the entire secondary school in partnership with Sri Lankan author, Andrew Fidel Fernando. During this session we dub as “Literary Afternoons” Mr. Fidel Fernando discussed his most recent publications, Upon a Sleepless Isle. This event of ours was initially intended to raise funds for construction projects we have in store for a local school we are working with however, due to some restrictions funds were unable to be raised. This year we plan on hosting another one, ideally physically with another author we’ve worked with in the past, Ashok Ferry. He will be talking about his most recent book, The Unmarraigable Man. 

Pledge to Donate: Late February, after the Literary Afternoon with Mr. Fidel Fernando we created a pledge for students and teachers of the OSC community to sign in order to raise some money for the upcoming construction we hope to move forth with. Vidyaloka Vidyalaya is the school we are working on, it is a community of around 100 people and is located in the Hokkandara suburb. The school building itself is quite bare and we want to maximise the educational outcome of it by creating a comfortable place for the students to learn.

I only joined Room to Read last year but so far, I have found it to be quite enjoyable and interesting as it relates strongly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Quality Education. In the future we also plan on working with providing the children with good and enough food to ensure their school days are healthy thus, addressing Zero Hunger. 

The service semester has yet to official begin this year however, myself, along with service teacher, Ms. Lockwood, service leaders Zoe Pringiers and Liam Modder as well as peer, Thevuni Kumarasena have already been working in hopes to make this academic year even better. Co-leader Zoe Pringiers has already started out the year strong by donating stationery and school supplies to school children in the town of Kegalle located in the Sabaragamuwa Province, east of the Western Province.

Learning Outcomes: 

• LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
• LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
• LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
• LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance