Doing service through DLP was perhaps one of the biggest challenges we faced, in particular housing and habitat due to the fact that most of the service activities and task were dependent on hands on activity. As a result most of our time during service lessons were dedicated to finding activities or programs that we could run. We decided to reach out to our old contacts, such as Mr Gamage from the Janoda foundation. We were wondering if it the foundation were still running their projects from WW, such as helping clean the orphanage. Unfortunately, we did not receive a response. As a result we looked towards old contacts that we had made. One of the groups in particular seemed to have values and a message similar to ours, so we decided to reach out to them. Mr Lockwood gave us the contact and was able to help us organise a zoom meeting on the Thursday that we were running mock exams. We met with Melissa Jayasuriya who was one of the administrators for Habitat for Humanity along with one of her colleagues.

We discussed about the potential ways in which we would be able to participate and assist in their projects, one being the brick by brick project. The project is based on funding and constructing homes for the low income families in the rural regions of Sri Lanka, we felt that this project was the most suitable for us to assist with due to the fact that it significantly parallel’s our services ideals. In regards to the project, there were two ways in which we were able to contribute. Firstly being able to raise money for a fully built 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom house, or by making donations in increments.  We ultimately decided that raising donations in increments would be more realistic and achievable, due to the prevailing situation it would be difficult to hold large scale events. OSC is one of many schools that have worked with Habitat for Humanity, such as St Thomases school. Who held a car wash in order to raise money another one of Habitat for Humanity’s projects. We are in the process of holding another meeting with her in order to clarify a few things from the previous meeting as well as planning long term goals.

I’m extremely excited for the service to have a clear goal head of itself and I hope that this along with any other endeavour’s with Habitat for Humanity in the future are a success.