(Shehan Karunatilake and Dr. Leigh. Pic cred: Ms. Lockwood.)

The Literary Festival was a great success!

The Literary Festival, held during the SCN festival last Saturday, was an event that RTR has been planning for the last few months. It consisted of many esteemed Sri Lankan authors giving talks, as well as conservation and writing workshops. All proceeds of this event went to the library construction taking place at our partner school, Vidyaloka Vidyalaya – and there were additional donation opportunities for the conservation projects featured.

Many people showed up to this festival – which was especially gratifying considering that this is the first time that RTR has held a similar event!

There was quite a bit of planning that had to be conducted in order to make sure that the Literary Festival was a success. Namely, the distribution and selling of tickets, publicity, and event organizing. I believe that all the RTR members worked very hard to ensure that we gave our all during this time. I participated mainly in making posters and having them featured in newsletters.

(The primary writing workshop was a great success! Pic cred: Ms. Lockwood.)

On the day of, I introduced Ashok Ferrey as well as the hosts for his session. Admittedly, it was a bit nerve-wracking to talk in front of all those parents, but I believe that I was able to do it well! The rest of the festival was spent ensuring that the events ran smoothly, and I was quite proud to see so many people enjoy the Literary Festival as well as engage with popular Sri Lankan authors.

Today, during service, we consolidated and found that we raised over Rs. 200,000! This was quite amazing, and it’s great to see how much our hard work has paid off. RTR plans on possibly conducting another Literary Festival during the next academic year – which, unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend.

(Giving the introduction for Ashok Ferrey’s session. Pic cred: Ms. Lockwood.)

Learning outcomes:

• LO1 – Strength & growth
  • I believe that I have grown quite a lot in terms of my organisation and ability to manage time in the process of planning and helping conduct the Literary Festival. Especially considering that this was done in addition to studying for upcoming exams and other extracurriculars.
  • I think that these skills will be highly beneficial in the real world and moving forward after graduation!

• LO3 – Initiative & planning
  • There was definitely a lot of planning and hard work behind this Literary Festival, and as a service leader, this required, a lot of times where we had to take initiative. 
  • As this was the first literary festival that RTR has hosted, the planning was quite new to us. Therefore, I think that this time can be utilised as a templated for next year’s Literary Festival planning (yes, there will be another one!).

• LO4 – Working collaboratively with others
  • As always, without everyone’s hands on deck we would not have been able to accomplish carrying out the Literary Festival. A particular instance where there was teamwork was when selling the tickets for the author sessions – the divide-and-conquer method worked quite well!