“So, I guess we change up our idea?”
– Disara and I During the Past Year.
My CAS project has taken so many one-eighties by this point, I’m surprised that Disara and I managed to even complete it. What started off as a Youth Sustainability Awareness campaign addressing the youth of Sri Lanka to take initiative to reduce their contribution to the current environmental crisis through a radio talk show changed to an in-school interview with an environmental activist about plastic pollution which THEN turned to us doing a lake clean up which FINALLY ended up with us making stickers for our service group, Care for Paws, to raise awareness and support animal rights.
Like I said, our CAS project took one hell of a turn.
Just a little bit of an explanation regarding why our CAS project had to change so much was mainly because we took more than we could handle and no amount of planning and preparation was truly enough. The intensity of academic rigor in November was underestimated; IAs back-to-back, EE completions, and college applications, it was all just too much to handle. Before we knew it, it was already December, way past the timeline we had decided to complete the project. We had to re-plan and re-organize, find a different route. Which led us to doing the presentation of Amir Zakeri’s documentary “50-Minutes to Save the World” which wasn’t exactly the greatest success either. In conjunction with this, we decided to still follow through the local school workshops via Disara’s contact at Vishaka Vidayala, a local girls’ school in Colombo. This plan did not follow through either as there was very poor communication with the person we were organizing the event with. Every time we were available they weren’t and I would ask to set meetings with them and they would not cooperate to make this process any smoother. Then again, before we knew it, it was mocks week. Stressed out by that we chose to drop our CAS project for a while. After that strenuous week, we decided to scratch everything we had done and to start from square one with reasonable and achievable goals. Earlier we were too keen on attempting to focus on global topics on a national level.
After spending some time pondering, Disara remembered how our service group had the intention of creating stickers to sell and make funds off to be contributed to our annual sterilization and vaccination camp. She shared her idea with me and I was keen to do it. We were running out of time and at this point, anything would work. We started off by brainstorming ideas; size, aesthetics, message, audience. we had decided from the very beginning to donate the stickers to Care for Paws so the theme had to stick with animal rights. Since a very common sticker theme that was popular with the youth is the VSCO aesthetic, the trend of young girls carrying hydro flasks and pasting “save the turtles” stickers, we decided to design our stickers to fit that particular theme. We then brainstormed different types of stickers, with Disara suggesting we have one of the Care for Paws logo. We decided to do five more stickers and Disara came up with a dog surfing on a wave and an animal rights slogan on a bowl sticker. I came up with the idea of a monkey alongside the caption, “no monkey business”, which was a pun since monkeys are commonly exploited in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. I also came up with the idea of an elephant alongside the caption, “no ride, no die”, referencing the colloquial expression, “ride or die” but subtextually addressing elephant exploitation in the tourism industry as well. I also designed the dogs over people stickers, which I was very proud of.
One Saturday afternoon we met at our favorite cafe, Cafe Noire, to work on designing the stickers. We sat at the cafe for about three hours sketching, drawing, erasing and redrawing the stickers. We decided to design three stickers each to ensure that we were both contributing. By the end of the session we were left with six drawings for potential stickers which we were both super proud of, finally, it felt like we were doing the right thing and walking down the right path. That following week on a Wednesday we agreed to stay after school and color the stickers in the art room, as they have high-quality color pencils that would give our stickers that extra touch. With xxxtentacion playing in the background, we were able to complete the coloring within two hours. Disara enjoyed the session much more than I did because well, I am not the most experienced of artists. Nevertheless, it was fun work that we both enjoyed, stress-free.
Using a scanning application on Disara’s iPhone we were able to scan the stickers and make them digital. Now we have the stickers completed and we just need to get them printed. I cannot wait to hand them over to our service members but wow, Disara and I went through way too much to get here. I will be honest, I have done much cooler things over the past few years but this one by far, was the most challenging ordeal Disara and I dealt with. But I am glad to have done it with her and to close the chapters of my service-related activities with the one person I started all of this with.
