It’s my first year in Housing & Habitat(H&H) after moving from my 2-year commitment in SOS village. As I began my new service I had to learn new goals and what were their future plans going to be as a service group. My primary knowledge of H&H consisted of projects that helped build homes as well as provide renewable electricity for unfortunate families in Sri Lanka. I also knew that they organize the Home Run which is a major fundraiser for the service group. I realized that this service is way more hands-on to developing the community as a whole compared to individuals likewise in SOS village. I also learned that the group needed to have some knowledge of how to use tools to build or construct.

At the moment, I’m trying to engage and cooperate with the service and by doing so I’m part of a group that will be designing the new shirts of H&H with 2 other members, Rizqi and Dominic. We have created and collaborated on various shirt ideas which will include the idea of houses in the front and a city in the back. We have already agreed on the final product which will be assisted and manufacture by our member Harin.

We are looking forward to organizing the Home Run which will include a new partnership with another service group, Care for Paws. With their help, we will hopefully invite more people to join the Home run with of course their dogs on the 5km route.

We have pinned the map on where there should be signs for unobvious routes as well as water stands. This year we also want to cut costs and waste on unrenewable cups and so we have created posters which will be placed around the school and on social media to inform to bring renewable bottles. We were afraid that we would not have enough people for the pair per water stand but thankfully Care for Paws will aid us on that through our partnership. The service leaders, Nehe, Liana, and Emily have also split the group into different stations to where they will operate on the Run. I will be biking up and down the route alongside Emily since we both have bikes however, there will be a cashier and water stand stations. Regarding refreshments, we have planned to bring fruits and hopefully a winning prize for the top 3 contestants.

Part of planning the Home Run we had to map out the route and pin corners and intersections that could possibly make the runner confused. Liana, Aman and I went with our service advisor Mr. Rossberg to map the route using the school’s van. We managed to go through the route twice and ended up with this GSP Map. Aman, Harry, Mathew, and Nehe who are all part of H&H also collaborated to create a video to represent our 5k Home Run and showcase it in the assembly. A poster was also made to spread the event around the school and to inform contenders extra information about the Run.

Our H&H 5k Home Run video

We are still undergoing the plans and arrangements for our first project of the year and by the looks of it, I think it will be loads of fun.