This year was my first year being co-leader (with Nehe and Emily) of the Housing & Habitat service group. At the beginning of the year, as a service group, we made plans for the first semester. This included:

• Finish pulling apart the wood pallets
• Starts assembling the wood pieces to make the chairs
• Planning for our project with the Janoda Foundation (we planned to make a railway for the kindergarteners) during Week Without Walls (WWW)
• Prepare for the annual Home Run (this included making posters and making a video)

This semester we started off where we picked off at the end of last year. We continued taking apart the wood pallets in preparation to assemble the chairs for our ongoing project “Uplift”. Around two weeks before the end of the semester, we had finished taking apart all the wood pallets hence, our process in making the chairs began. I had the job of drilling a hole through the wood where the nails would be placed to connect each wood piece. I also tried sawing the wood pieces into the correct sizes for each section of the chair. By the end of the semester, we didn’t get to complete making a chair however, we began the process and started to attach pieces of wood.

In terms of the Home Run, it was thoughtfully planned as it is Housing and Habitat’s main event to raise funds for future projects. However, due to the presidential elections, it had to be postponed to the following semester on the 15th of January. This in hand, gave us more time to just sharpen our plans to make it a really successful event. We managed to partner up with Care For Paws (another service group) with the aim to bring more people to the event with their dogs. It would provide an opportunity for the Care for Paws service group to advertise their future plans as well as support ours.

In addition, Nehe and I based our CAS project with our service as we took the opportunity to make t-shirts to represent Housing and Habitat. This was another benefit of postponing the Home Run as it gave us more time to thoroughly plan our project with advertising as well as selling the t-shirts to the school community. We hope to raise enough money with our CAS project in order to help our service group’s in addition, to the funds produced by the Home Run.

We also had the idea to make a railway for the Janoda Foundation kindergarteners to help them with simple English.  This semester we just had time to order the specific wood for its assembly, measure out how long we wanted it to be and much wood we would need. We planned to include the alphabet and colours as the design for the railway. At the start of semester two, this Week Without Walls project and Home Run will definitely be our priorities. As a senior, I will not be traveling to the Janoda Foundation for WWW as I will be in the examination for the mocks which is a shame as I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the Foundation last year.

As a whole, I thought that this year went pretty fast. We planned a lot and we did a lot. I learned a lot in terms of co-leading a service group as I had to speak during assemblies and teach new members of the different skills required. It was an overall benefit for me and I’m glad to have had been chosen for the role. I will hope that our increasing productivity during service will be constant for the next semester with success in our projects.