As we have now gotten back into the routine of face-to-face school, the service programme has finally been able to start back up in person, after over a year of being put on hold. Mentioned in previous posts, I am a member of the ‘Girls for Girls’ service group, which works with Sri Lankan women, specifically victims of sexual abuse, with goals to provide them with opportunities as well as activities to empower and fulfil them creatively and actively (LO6).
Since joining the service in DP1, I have achieved one of my largest goals within the service – becoming co-leader! This responsibility is something I feel well prepared for as I have many ideas and suggestions in order to strengthen the service even after graduation.
In order to settle back into service, the initial meeting was used as an opportunity to get to know new and old members of the service, as well as discuss our values and goals as a group for the current year. We also discussed a creative project to represent our service – filming a introductory video for the ‘Emerge Lanka’ social media page (the organisation which G4G’s works with). ‘Emerge works with teenage survivors of sexual abuse in Sri Lanka, helping them to heal, develop skills for self-sufficiency, and build a better future for themselves and others’.
The process of creating the video took planning done in the first session so that we could efficiently film the clips required during the following session. Each member of the group was asked to create a decorated poster featuring a word they associate with most in terms of the values of the service; for example, my word was ’empowerment’ as I believe a sense of empowerment should be felt by all, both the girls we work with and the girls who are members of the service. The video was organised to be around 1-2 minutes featuring a small segment from each of the girls, introducing themselves and explaining their chosen word. Additionally, ideas were brainstormed in the first session regarding to content for the video. Members suggested useful ideas to the co-leaders such as incorporating clips of the types of activities we hope to do with the girls from Emerge Lanka like sports, painting, and cooking for example. Hearing these suggestions were really useful as I feel they will contribute greatly to showing the service as a collective, not only in terms of our values but also our opportunities and activities (LO3/LO5).
