Home Run Project:

Housing and Habitat / Care for Paws Home Run collaboration (23/04/22)

On April 23, we carried out a project and activity that has been in our service group’s tradition for many years. It took us a couple of months to fully plan out the entire event, as there were a lot of components and elements worth considering.

The first step was to decide on a date and time that would be convenient for our target audience. Since we had done it in April, it was a very busy time during the school year, which brought us to the final decision to do it on a Saturday at 8:00 am so that students would be able to take part with family members. Another decision we needed to make was the price of the tickets. Previously, went it was last done in 2019, the price of the tickets was 500 rupees per person. But due to inflation, we decided to increase the price by 250 rupees to 750 so that we could make as much profit as possible without making it too expensive.

The next step was to then make a poster to advertise the event. A couple of members of our service group got together to design a poster that would be published in the daily bulletin as early as possible.

Home Run Poster (Credit: Arvin)

After making it known to everyone in the school community about this event, we had to create a 5 km route for people to run. This step was the most time-consuming part, as we had to put a lot of thought into where to place people and water stops to help guide the runners. A couple of us DP students got together and created a route while discussing possible drawbacks and other alternatives. Once we had created the best possible route, we had to allocate water stops and where we would put service members to act as a guide.

Home Run Route (Credit: Nik)

Nearing the end of the planning process, both service groups got together to assign roles and people to certain water and direction stops.  We also spoke to some admin members to help us collect a list of materials we needed such as water, tables, chairs, etc.  The final part of this process was to then carry out the event as successfully as possible.

Each and every service group member came to school around 6:45 am to help set up certain things within school such as posters of the route, signs, and the transaction area for runners to buy tickets. Another extremely important course of action was the placing of tables and chairs throughout the route for water and direction stops. Once that was done, service members got into a van so that we would be sent and allocated to our assigned stops. At around 8:00 am, people started to show up at school, and the event started around 20 minutes later. Thankfully, everyone got to the finish line safely, and most importantly, everyone had fun.

Runners (Credit: OSC photographer)

Teachers, parents, and kids leaving school for the start of the event  (Credit: OSC photographer)

Unfortunately, there were certain hiccups and bumps in the road as some people got lost because we did not successfully place service members to act as a direction stop. Because of this, some people went the wrong way and took the wrong turns, causing them to run a bit more. Thankfully, we were quick to react by fixing the position of service members so that the runners in the back would not get lost. Either than that, we were very successful and happy with the outcome, as we were able to raise enough money to buy the tools and materials needed for our next project.

Learning outcomes:

LO2: Even though we made a major mistake by misplacing tables and people throughout the route, there is no doubt that we will learn from these mistakes in order not to repeat them for future home runs.

LO4: As one of the acting group leaders of this service group, I and the other group leaders and service members put in a lot of time and thought into planning this event. Because of this, we demonstrated commitment and perseverance throughout the entire process as we stuck to it even when obstacles were presented to us.