COVID-19 has impacted economies around the world greatly, here in Sri Lanka, we have seen an abrupt halt in the community interacting with local businesses, understandably people are spending in strategic ways in order to save money and they are also practicing social distancing. However, as a person that is privileged enough to still be attending school in such circumstances and coming from a family that is able to provide for me in any situation, it is important that I bring light to the idea of “supporting local businesses” and do my best to help those in my community that are struggling. I thought about the learning outcome of the ethics of actions and choices while reflecting upon this situation. Instead of buying imported products that were just as expensive as eating out, I ordered food from local restaurants when I could.
What started off as me embracing my inner foodie, my family was consistently ordering from small businesses in Colombo. For example, Three Brother’s Pizzeria, Monsoon at Park Street Mews, The Cake Factory, and more! Although we were having all of this great food, I always kept the ultimate goal in mind and that was to help my fellow Sri Lankans. I started to post pictures of all of the food we were having on Instagram, this was the ideal way for me to publicize places because of my love for photography and creativity. I made content that reached hundreds of people, and all of the businesses that I was marketing reposted my pictures. I noticed that a lot of people would ask me about my experience with each place and ask me for recommendations so I could see that this method was paying off and I was able to get the name of many different businesses out there.
I was messages through Instagram by a company called Coho Cookies, I had been frequently buying their products and they asked me if I would be interested in a collaboration. I was so surprised that they wanted to work with me and was extremely excited by the thought! They send me a variety of cookies in their signature packaging and I would spend an hour on the weekends taking pictures of them in creative ways. I edited my favorite selection and sent them back for various uses on a range of platforms. I was practicing the learning outcome of initiative and planning through my interactions with the company and completing my role as promised. I quickly accepted and ever since October, I have been creating content for their platforms. This experience has been super exciting for me but has also taught me a lot about something that I want to pursue in university, marketing. I was able to put myself right in the heart of this process and while doing so I was able to support restaurants I love.
This entire year has been a whirlwind of experiences and emotions, however, I have learned that you can leverage your passions not just in doing things that you love but also in what you do for others. I am thrilled at the opportunity to work with such great people and use my background and platform to help people discover the amazing products they have to offer. I hope to continue working with Coho Cookies and other businesses in Colombo to encourage people to support the economy. This experience closely relates to the learning outcome of commitment and perseverance as I will continue to do everything I can with the resources I have to contribute to the working landscape and try to rally up support.
This year we started out in the classrooms and then the second wave of COVID-19 hit Sri Lanka hard. With over 100 deaths and thousands of ongoing cases, we had to be more cautious and practice social distancing as much as we could. Therefore, our school thought it best to start our distance learning program up again. Due to all of the precautionary measures, we had to press pause on after-school activities but one activity that was able to operate online was Girls for Girls.l Thanks to Ms. Rangika and Ms. Dahlan, we started service back up and again, allowing me to complete my last year as a member of the service in full!
We have been meeting every Thursday after school for an hour and a half as per usual, however, we have been limited by specific activities that practice social distancing regulations. We have also recruited new members and the service is almost entirely made up of completely new faces. It has been refreshing to get to know all of the girls that have decided to join. During our first session, we got to know each other, played introductory games, and expressed our reasons for joining this particular service. It was great hearing how passionate these girls were about raising awareness and combating sexual abuse.
The next few sessions consisted of brainstorming meetings that allowed us to incorporate everyone’s interest in the service sessions. I also created a set of jobs that were to be taken up by each member so that we could maximize productivity and skills. Some examples include photographer, Facebook manager, Instagram manager, and campaign content creator. I was pleased to see so many of the members take charge and become very passionate about their roles. This relates to the outcome of collaborative skills as we needed to create structure in order to be productive and make sure that everyone stays reneged and involved in our service efforts this year.
As sessions went on, I noticed that service sessions were becoming a little repetitive and were sometimes not as productive as I hoped. In order to counter this, I came up with the idea to create a Girls for Girls website which would then become my CAS project. It was the perfect initiative as many of our activities had to be online, I thought that this idea would allow the girls to regularly produce creative content while also becoming a platform that our OSC members could interact and communicate with us through.
To inspire some motivation within the members, we organized a discussion with the communications officer at Emerge (an organization we work with that supports victims of sexual abuse). Kaavya, the representative from Emerge spoke to us about ways that we could help their initiatives. She also gave us ideas about how to implement strategies that increase productivity within groups. She also provided insight into how we could be meaningful online through our website and in gerenal.
This is when the learning outcome of initiative and planning came in as I needed to make a plan as to how I would move forward. I allocated jobs in different categories to the members such as creative writing, posters, pictures. They have spent the last two weeks working on creating meaningful content that pertains to our goals as a service. Meanwhile, the two vice leaders and I have been working on creating the actual website. We started with a plan of how we wanted to structure it, research on software that aligned best with our skills and vision, and finally started putting it together.
By the beginning of next semester, I hope this website will facilitate productivity during service time and also become an important part of how we raise awareness. This semester, we practiced the learning outcome of commitment and perseverance as we did not let distant learning prevent us from invoking change and do our work as a service for the incredible women who have survived sexual abuse. I hope that in my senior year, we can do some of the best work we have done yet and inspire the young generation of females in OSC and Sri Lanka to join us in our fight!