This is my second year as a member of the Advocate, the literary magazine of the Overseas School of Colombo. We mainly work towards promoting creativity among the student body and creating a stage where they would be comfortable to be recognized for their artistic skills. This year we also have four new members from different grades and it’s exciting to work with them and share the experiences.

Over the past few years, we have been organizing different competitions, providing an opportunity for the students to showcase their different skills in poetry, prose, and photography. But this year we decided to broaden our contents and include artwork. I believe this would help the numerous artists in the school to have the chance to publish some of their work. Since COVID has us learning virtually meetings are held via zoom where we check in with our progress on our respective tasks. We have also moved the magazine to a PDF form rather than a hard copy to suit the virtual setting. Additionally, we also designed a website for the magazine which would serve as a guide for our audience and is updated regularly when new editions are released and on submission dates.

The cover page of the Advocate Publication 2020

The Advocate poster used for the IB wellness day.

To make the process faster and less stressful we decided the tasks among the group members so that two worked on organizing the emails, two on editing the submissions, and the others on creating a website. I and Eleez were given the task of designing a template for the website and editing the submissions for the annual submission. It was a time-consuming activity as we had to go through all the submissions and look for any mistakes, from grammar to typos. Next, we decided on a color scheme and the type of font to be used. Since we were working independently we had to create separate pdf forms and merge them together. Never been strong in tech and design, this was a new experience for me, and was able to familiarize myself with it.

Learning outcomes;

• Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
• Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth.
• Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.