The home run is an annual event, run by the Housing and Habitat service group in collaboration with Care for Paws. As a leaders and/or seniors, the organisers of this event this year strove to make the event as good as possible, priotizing an easy but fun route, ironclad water/direction stop placement and of course to just make the event fun. Our goal was to raise funds (more then last years 65k) to help our partner school; Vidyaloka Vidyalaya School, located near school. The money we gained (70ishk) is going to our service’s fund (a goal of mine from the start of DP was to leave our service better then I got there, in terms of accound balance which was very low, future projects and just better structure) which we can use to buy wood and other important materials that as we need.

 

The planning for the project technically started last year, as soon as we finished the previous years event, where we reflected on how we could improve, narrowing it to two main areas; publicity (gaining a larger crowd and thus profit) and route, both of which were vastly improved.

 

 

 

That being said, we did not spend the entire period between last years event and this years event meticoulusly planning, for, one of our main peices of reflection we unanimously agreed on last year was that we spent too long planning, and therefore this year, esspecially knowing exactly what we needed to do, the process was much easier and took 3 weeks less, as well as only a group of about 6 student, versus the chaos of last year with a whole group.

The next thing we specifically improved on was the advertisement for the event; we made better posters, printed sooner, placed more tactically and made more aware to the general public. We also threw a bakesale a week and a half before where we advertised the Home Run event.

 

As you can see, we made these posters captivating. 

Two weeks before the event, the small group of us initially planning the event opened it up to the whole group (including Housing and Habitat and Care for Paws), opening the route up to critisim and introducing the roles (which, as per last years aforementioned chaos, were predecided to minimize complaining). The roles were predecided based on what people volunteered to do, with specific partner pairings decided by the small group, keeping in mind the dynamics of our group to enable people to effectivly collaborate.

 

Finally the day of the event. We got to school at 6:30, the predecided time, and began reminding people of their roles, and making sure everyone had Diyaths phone number and went to the bathroom and stuff. My stop was the second last one, and allowed me to make sure the stops near me functioned properly. The event ended at 10, about an hour and a half as the run officially started at 8:30.

 

In order to reflect on the event we made a big doc and told our service group (inviting the Care for Paws group as well) to add feedback under four headers: what went well, things to improve on, big concerns, and next year we should… This was extremely effective and we got a lasting source of feedback for the event, which we further broke down with the whole group, theoretically making next years planning even easier, and the event even better, a lasting legacy of sorts hopefully.

 

To summarize feedback:

What went well: mainly concerned with the route (now justifiably better than last years), communication with Mr Ajith (who set up the transportation for coordinators and chairs and stuff) and the bikers placement, having only one person who got lost.

 

Things to improve on: planning the event (make it more efficeint), more chairs for service members to sit on, publicising the race part of the event (making sure people knew there was a running clock), and better direction stops.

Big concerns: just one, police interferenace, which we cant really do anything about except spreading sinhala speakers and avoiding police hotspots

Next year we should: make sure more people know! (esspecially targetted to parents who were largely uninformed), starting earlier (at 8), creating a whole event (food vendors, racing heats? biking events? etc, theres so much space for us to improve), adding music at school to get people hype, and a better date (weekend right after SAISA season 2 to maximize participants).

 

As a personal reflection, I can overall say that I am very proud of this event and the changes we made, having to revive the event from the dirt after 2 years of not doing it. This was a challenge, and one that we succeeded in. Im also proud of how we’re leaving the service as seniors in terms of this event, our service group is very prepared and has all the tools and connections to improve on the event.