Our service group SOS village has been working towards getting goggles for the kids for nearly half a year. Our initial idea was to make a poster and rely on the OSC community to provide goggles for us. The posters were up for around 5 months and we only ended up getting 5 pairs of goggles. So we had to come up with a new strategy. Whilst talking to another leader (Anais) and our service teacher we came up with the idea to do a bake sale. But we didn’t want to do a normal bake sale because every other service group does bake sales. So we came up with the idea to bake cookies with the kids and then sell those along with some hot chocolate to get people into the Christmas spirit.
As service leaders we planned the whole thing in 1 week. We started by finding a simple recipe that we thought the kids would be able to follow. Then I made a list of everything we need in order to make the cookies, all the ingredients and utensils. Since our service group consists of all different grades we had to make sure to communicate with the other to make sure they all brought what they needed. We then had to go see if we were able to access the space with the oven and tables so we can actually bake the cookies.
Once the day came we were all prepared but then we got the news that the kids weren’t coming! It was very disappointing as we worked really hard to get it organised we were all excited. But we still made it work and we did it as a service group. We had a lot of fun baking the cookies as a group. We had split into 2 groups with the leaders spread out and we had a little competition to se who could make the better cookies. My team obviously won. Once we had all the dough ready we had to put it all in the oven to bake. But the issue we had was that it wouldn’t all fit into the oven and we ended up running our of time. But I had a free block the next day so I finished baking the rest then. We started selling the cookies and hot chocolate the next day at lunch. We decided to make the cookies a reasonable price, hoping that we would end up selling them all. We made LKR.. which meant it was a successful bake sale.
But whilst we were doing the bake sale the teacher in-charge of the service group Gecko Gear came over to talk to us. She said that they would be able to provide our service kids with an OSC drawstring bag, towels, goggles and an OSC wristband. This was such an incredible offer so we said that it would be great if they could do that. We are still waiting on those to arrive but we’ve been told they are almost ready. Once we start service up again this year we will be able to give the gifts to the kids. Our mission will be accomplished. As for the money we raised, we are going to use it to fund the snacks and drinks we provide after each session. Overall it was very successful and a very fun experience!