In the month of December, the Hope For Kids team did a lot of different actions to compensate for everything we do every year during Christmas at the CCC house for the cancer patients. Kenji and I started the month by planning the things we wanted to do for the children and one of them was sending the CCC house what they required in terms of food essentials. We got a list of the number of items we needed to get along with what items had to be bought like milk and sugar.
One of our main focuses for hope for kids also is to bring out the creative side in the children at the CCC house and therefore we do a lot of craft and art activities with them. After the whole group discussed several ideas we decided to focus on 3 Christmas crafts which were a Christmas tree, a Christmas ornament, and snowflakes. We then divided everyone into three groups with each group having at least 1 Sinhala speaker who could give the voice over for the video so that we could communicate effectively with the children. Each person in a group was assigned a different role with each person doing the craft, editing, or giving the voiceover.
After we had a list of the food essentials, we asked all groups for the list of materials the children would require to complete the crafts. After having the lists ready we picked a day, and Kenji and I along with our supervisors Ms.Tanuja and Mr.Darren went to get those items.
While we bought all the materials that needed to be packed at the same time in our sessions on Thursday we continued to work on the video and since I decided I will be editing the video for the Christmas tree group I got the videos and the voice-overs from Pep and Thalal and Anjali prepared the script for the order the video clips went in and then helped pick a song for the background. After creating the videos, the videos were uploaded on youtube and the link was sent to the parents.
Christmas is never complete without some presents. Even though we were unable to go and shop for the present we were very fortunate since the owners of a toy shop sent us pictures etc. and they had it delivered to school. All of these items including food, presents, and craft materials were packed from school and sent to the children before Christmas.