Dp1 is almost over leaving behind lots of beautiful memories. During the past 2 semesters at OSC, service has been an important part of my life. I signed up the service group ‘Grils For Girls’ mainly because of the issue they were addressing. Sexual harassment is increasing around the globe but not the actions taking against them. So as a group we work with groups of girls from Emerge Center Lanka to help them ease their minds and rehabilitate them. It’s a lot of fun and we always exchange a lot of things among ourselves; may it be how to cook, weave bracelets, make smoothies or even play cricket.

The girls participated in Wall climbing.
P.c: Savindi Jayasuriya

The girls helped us with making tacos. P.c: Savindi Jayasuriya

During the past year, we did a lot of activities with them like playing cricket, volleyball, wall climbing, making smoothies, making tacos, singing songs and many more. All of these activities brought unique experiences to all of us. I personally learnt a lot about working collaboratively. All of the girls were a family. They were so cooperative with each other to the extent that I was surprised. They are also very skilled with household work and I was very impressed by their artistry in cooking. The group consisted of singers, dancers, painters, skilled sportsmen and it was a great experience working with them. However, with the current situation, the Emerge Center has decided to close down its compartment for a year and we are definitely going to miss working with such lovely girls.

Each service day is reserved for different individuals. This way each of us gets to plan out an activity for the girls and conduct it. I believe this is really good as it improves your planning skills. When you are planning an activity for them have to take into consideration many things. For example, it cannot be something that might remind them of a past incident etc. And also conducting the activity can be challenging too. The girls are not very fluent English speakers so there was always an issue with language. Me being a Sinhala speaker, I found it helpful to communicate with the girls easily and also to aid the other OSC members with talking to them.

So I think service has always been fun and productive. All the girls from OSC work really hard in all service projects and I am really proud to work alongside such a team.  With the Emerge Center being closed next year we wish to conduct some other activities to work for the empowerment of women. I hope to extend my complete to support for all the future endeavours of the service group. Even though with the Covid-19 situation we haven’t been able to engage in any practical events with the girls I believe our aspiration stands strong.

At the girls graduation ceremony.
P.c: Mrs. D