As the school year comes to an end, I have successfully accomplished three main goals of the 8 criteria. Being in charge of Sunflower Village as the student body, has enabled me to develop and proceed with showing perseverance and commitment towards the activity, enabled me to work collaboratively with others and develop new skills.
When we started the program for the first time, I was inexperienced and somewhat nervous of what to do. The first day when the kids arrived from the school, I was confused of what to do. I was in charge of a team of 5 people from OSC, and had to train 12 kids how to swim, which some of them hadn’t even been in a pool before. It was somewhat a difficult task to get them all in the pool as some of them were afraid even with our help. It was also not the case where I sit outside the pool and boss my team around, but instead this is where working collaboratively came into play. It meant that I myself was in the pool, partaking like any other member of the group. No ranks, no bossing around, no disputes but to simply make things flow the way it was supposed. And that involved collaboration from all my team members. Most of my group from OSC could speak Sinhalese, which made it easy for me to work systematically to get the kids in the pool and kicking. This also enabled me to understand which person from our school was able to handle certain kids better. Thus made the operation inside the pool mush better.
Throughout the service, I kept a consistent reputation of being committed to my duty. Other than days which I was physically ill, I attended all the lessons on every Thursday afternoon. Amongst this there were times where we fell short of members in our team. Either they were absent to school or the service itself. This demanded me to manage a group 12 kids with almost half the number of OSC students. Nevertheless, we managed with the assistance of the swimming instructors. This again shows reflects my collaborative skills takes into account dealing with problems which appear through the course of the year.
Speaking in terms of new skills which I learnt during service, there is one in particular. And that is, the ability to lead a service program first hand with no previous experience. I found this much of a strength which I had within me, that I was not quite sure I had. It is somewhat a big deal for me being the leader of the activity where I once was the one in the pool taking instructions from others.
Overall, I honestly must admit that this year was a success for myself, my team, and the kids themselves. And that is purely because of the fact that we had kids who didn't even know how blow bubbles underwater and at the end of the year, they were swimming full lengths of the OSC pool from what we had taught them across the deep end. Their eagerness to learn instead of play during the time which we provide them as "free time" is another reason for us to feel as a successful program!
