On the 11th of March 2023, our service group, Housing & Habitat in collaboration with Care for Paws organized and hosted our service’s annual fundraiser, the Home Run! The goal of the fundraiser is to raise money for our service group so that we may create and build essential needs for local schools and areas that are less fortunate. Our target audience has been a local school near OSC called Vidyaloka Vidyalaya for the past few months. To raise money, we organized a fun and interactive 5 km run open for anyone to join and run to donate some money. This links to another goal of the Home Run which is to bring our school members being students, teachers, and parents together to build a sense of community while they advocate and engage in a global issue. Regarding the service group, the goal of the Home Run is also to initiate and plan a service activity that is open for anyone to join while playing a part to help diminish a local scale issue.

To successfully host the fundraiser, a lot of time was put into the planning process. Before publicizing and notifying the school of the Home Run, we had to decide on a date to host the event as well as the route the school community would run. Traditionally, our service group hosts the event during the second half of the school year. This year, we chose to hold the event on the 11th of March. The reason for this is that it fell on a Saturday during a week when there was no local holiday, meaning that parents and students would be more available to participate in the Run. We also decided to do it during this time as the season 3 SAISA tryouts were going on, meaning that all the athletes would be encouraged by coaches to participate in the event.  As usual, we decided that the run should start early in the morning before the traffic of the heat gets too bad. As a service group, we also believed that 1000 LKR would be a reasonable entrance fee to run so that we could raise a decent amount of money.

To make it known to the school about the fundraiser and the details of it, we created a poster that was shared through the bulletin as well as putting flyers of it around the school.

(Home Run Poster)

During the planning process, I was in charge of creating a 5km route that would be easy and safe for the school community to run. To do so, google maps was used to see and decide what roads we thought would be safe. From there, I drew out the route and measured it on google maps making sure that it was around 5 km. On top of that, we needed to assign points throughout the map for directions and water stops, which I was also in charge of. Using the map that was created, I created stops throughout the map where I thought people could potentially get lost or would need refreshments. In the end, I had decided and was agreed with by the rest of the service group that nine water and direction stops would be the right amount to avoid any difficulties throughout the fundraiser.

Since we were also in collaboration with another service group, Care for Paws, we arranged a meeting with them where we assigned people to certain stops. As the service leader, I and the other leaders also had to contact the security staff to arrange a van and truck on the day to help set up tables and chairs while also transporting the service members to their designated stop.

On the day of the fundraiser itself, all the service members met at school about two hours before it started so that we could set up the chairs and tables across the route. About 30 minutes before it started, all the service members were taken to their stops in a van to get ready for the runners. At 8 am, people started coming to school to pay and get ready for the run. With all the runners that participated, we were able to gain around 70,000 LKR which was more than we raised the year before. From 8:20 to around 10 am, the entire school community ran, biked, and walked the 5 km route. Thankfully, no one got lost or injured throughout the 5 km run.

Beginning of the run – Credit: OSC Photographer

Runners! Credit: OSC Photographer

My role on the day of the home run was to direct the runners. However, since I was a senior and a leader, I was placed at a direction stop where I needed to help the runners cross the road without any accidents. Thankfully, to reduce the likelihood of any injuries, I had the security guards of the school help stop the cars on the road for the runners to pass. With the direction stop I was at, I had to direct the runners on which road to go down as well as how to get back to school as they would run back to my stop after running around a lake.

Directing the runners – Credit: OSC Photographer

Overall, I believe that my CAS project was a success as we were able to successfully plan and host the Home Run. On top of that, we were able to better plan one with more runners than the previous Home Run the year before. Additionally, I was able to contribute a lot to this service activity by planning the event and leading our service group as best I could for it to be successful.

Learning Outcomes:

LO3: Although this event was planned by our entire service group, I as one of the leaders had to help lead and navigate new members who have never been a part of the Home Run. As well as that, I was able to contribute to the planning process by creating the route and assigning both water and direction stops.

LO6: While this is a fundraiser to bring our school community together to have fun, the goal of the Home Run is to also raise awareness across the community on how certain people do not have any shelter or infrastructure. Thus this fundraiser creates awareness around the global issue by having people engage with it by donating and doing a bit of exercise for a good cause.