As apart of my service this year during the past 3 quarters, I have participated and been involved in the Girls for Girls service group. As mentioned previously, the group focuses on raising awareness, uplifting, and creating a safe and welcome environment for women who have been subject to abuse within their lives.

At the start of my involvement in this service, I noted that I initially had not participated in a group like Girls for Girls, nor had I initially intended to due to previous service-oriented plans. However, in joining this service, I feel as though I have adapted well and have developed an atmosphere for which I feel comfortable in sharing my ideas and future aims for the service. This service has made me more open-minded, invested in the well-being of others, and in general more aware of the social injustices and cultural climate of Sri Lanka – especially in regards to the women in this country.

Upon joining the service group, I created a set of goals for myself as well as hopefully for the service as a whole to achieve within its allocated + external time this year. In creating these goals before hand, I was able to integrate a plan into my mindset which helped in influencing how I tackled assignments and contributed my ideas during service sessions (LO3). In this planning process, we (as a whole) were able to achieve the following;

1. Utilise skills from other classes that can be adapted to cater to the needs of the service e.g. inspirational artwork, article writing, poem writing
   1. This is prominent in the work that I, and many other members of the service, contributed in regards to the groups’ website, which involves content of any medium that relates to the focus/concentration of the service. In my case, I constructed a poem which circulated around the role of South Asian women in the work place; creating an eye-opener for change and empowerment by depicted the hardships and injustices that female garment factory workers endure within SA.
2. Create useful and relevant content that further promotes the ‘brand’ / themes of the service e.g. quotes, articles via Instagram to connect more with the students of OSC (connect our service to the generation of social media to increase awareness and be more accessible to pupils)
   1. This is visible in our attempts and work towards integrating uplifting quotes for women-empowerment within the daily bulletin – as well as assigning 2 members (doga and myself) to run a Girls for Girls Instagram account which manages the same concepts of the service group but projecting them into a more perhaps accessible and current form.

I overall am really glad that these were able to be achieved considering the circumstances in which our service and many others have had to undergo (in light of the pandemic and not being able to interact with the girls/women that we aid). However, I still feel as though there is possibility to achieve another one of my goals before the school year comes to an end.

Previously I had introduced a goal of mine;

1. Involve myself in events and fundraisers e.g. contribute new, unique ideas that serve as a way to educated others on our personal mission as a service group, as well as to raise money for the young women we work with

Though I comprehend that having a phsycial fundraiser would be more interactive and enjoyable for the OSC community to take part in, I still feel as though we (as a service group) can maintain the efforts we have developed throughout the year thus far and manage to come up with some way to spread the message of our service. If we can, I feel as though for quarter 4 we should work towards a Zoom-a-thon or online fundraiser of sorts to continue promoting Girls for Girls within the community (LO4).