Library Service Work in the Hills of Sri Lanka
The purpose of the GeckoNet service group consist mainly to help promote and spread awareness of the other services our school participates in. Whether that is through recording videos, posting information on the daily bulletin or promoting through our website, the Gecko Nets team is meant to help spread the awareness of the importance in these services. In particular one of our service groups we have been working with is Room to Read. According to them: “OSC’s Room to Read is a service where our goal is to create a well-resourced reading place for the community. We help local communities who don’t have the facilities or a place where they can read and educate themselves”. Room to Read is one of our newest service groups in OSC yet are already making progressive changes in the broader community. In fact, recently the Room to Read coordinator (Ms. Raina Lockwood) worked with a external group called Book and Me (sometimes referred to Library on Wheels), a small group dedicated to brining books across Sri Lanka via their vehicles.
The project with Room to Read and Book and Me was to bring books to a remote village nearing the central part of Sri Lanka. As part of my service group I participated to help record the event so that it would be promoted once Room to Read had assisted everyone at the village. Little did I know how long this trip was going to be. The goal for today’s trip would take us to a place called Isurugama village. This village recently had been affected by a landslide which lead to many of the people being relocated elsewhere.
One of the biggest issues the village was facing was that the distance between their homes and the school was 4kms long plus they were on a mountainside meaning they had to travel every day 8 km just to be able to study. Room to read’s goal was to help support the students by supplying them with books, pens and other sorts of school utensils.
Our ride would start early at 8 in the morning when a small group of 5 people including myself would get into our van and head out. Our trip would take us about 4 hours on the main roads dodging and weaving through traffic and the roads themselves. After endless hours after hours of traveling all across the country side of Sri Lanka we finally made it to Isurugama village.
When we arrived there was a crowed of many excited parents and kids both playing and waiting for the supplies to arrive. When we finally were ready to give out the items to people, we were given a thank you by one of the children who had been practicing his English. Afterwards we began our distribution to all of the kids. After giving the kids all of their supplies, we interviewed them and asked them about the school and what problems they were facing.
This experience has been very interesting as I was able to interact with people who had a different background than me. It was also good to be engaged in hands on service work after being in lockdown for so long. In regards to my learning outcome this experience was related to LO# 6 Global engagement. I participated in real world problem (access to good learning resources and disparities in incomes) which are prevalent in rural Sri Lanka. I eventually used my images and video to help promote and spread awareness about these issues.