Cover photo courtesy of Gecko Net
Second month back to school and with service starting, our group was rearing to go to make this a year full of memorable activities. As outlined before, this year we wanted to ensure that we focused in equal measure on activities related to fundraising that served the OSC community, creating awareness campaigns as well as interacting with the patients from the CCC house or Suwa Arana. As due to a Poya day we felt it was reasonable for the month of September for us to raise awarness within the OSC community. Our main goals were to host a books and cookies, courtesy of Ms. Raina’s invitation, and has an awareness for Children’s Cancer Awareness month.
During service time we were also able to accomplish a myriad of tasks such as reorganizing supplies from the previous years. This was quite a fun task as we found a banner we had used at a previous gala and we thought it would be nice to start a tradition fo writing down our names in it. That way even after my time is up as service leader, there is still something we can pass down for the next few years. We also took stock of how much cash we have in the OSC account and withdrew a few thousands to keep on hand should we ever need to buy supplies for an event last minute. Last year two of our service members, Jillian and Jaime, donated Sinhala books that we organized and cleaned. Unfortunately, we couldn’t donate them to Suwa Arana as they do not accept previously used books. Therefore we decided to donate them to another OSC service: Room to Read, where I am sure they will be put to good use.
Books and cookies: Chirath, Shinara, Vansh and I presented on the 20th of September during a Wednesday lunchtime to the secomndary community introducing our service. That we can represent the opinions of our service leaders (Chirath and I) as well as newly joined members (Vansh and Shinara). We explained past activities we did and outlined what new projects and goals we wanted to introduce. While the session was short, I’m glad that we were able at least present our service group and introduce for the first time that we would be having an awareness campaign on the 27th.
Children’s Cancer Awareness Month: September as a whole is dedicated to raising awareness about Children’s Cancer, and that is perfectly in line with our service group aims. As this is in September and due to the limited service Thursday time we would have to plan it, we wanted to condense the raising awareness to one day and use it as a method to soft launch our service. So we decided on the 27th to ask the school students and teachers to wear yellow. As you may know, each paticular cancer can be represented by a color. For example lilac is the color to represent all cancers, which is why we symbolically chose our logo to be represented in a nice light purple shade. For pediatric cancer the color is actually gold, but to make it easier for people to participate we chose the color closest to it (yellow!).
With the help of Anneli, we created a wonderful service poster to send out to all grade levels. Her and I also brainstormed a motto that we can tag into any of our posts. We were very determined to make it a somewhat uplifting and positive message that juxtoposes the heaviness of the topic we cover. After some brainstorming we landed on the idea of “Raising Awareness, One Ribbon at a Time”. This is appropriately fitting towards the new direction we want to take goals.
Firslty to market, Avinash, Shinara and I spoke at a primary assembly where we reintroduced the concept of our service to them and asked them to particpate for the upcoming awareness day. They responded with much enthusiasm and just like last year, I know there support will be fundamental in successfull fundraising. With the help of Mr.Grandbois, we were able to put it on SeeSaw for primary student families to see the message. And for secondary, Chirath and I asked Ms.Haseena to put it on the daily bulletin for secondary students to see. And finally as a reminder to teachers Mr. Russo and I drafted a mail to send to them. All this marketing saw viable impacts as many students and teachers dressed up for the occasion despite the somewhat short notice.
